12/06/2021

Don't Stress About Going Back to the Office

Eight ways to make the return easier

Ever since vaccinations became widely available to adults, the conversation on HR departments and C-suites and Teams conversations across the country has centered on the same topic: how, and when, are we going to come back to the office?

Some organizations rolled out plans in the summer, only to roll them back with the spread of the Delta variant; others have obsessively set dates only to push them forward at the last minute. Depending on your industry and the politics of your state, you might have been called back in months ago and are now grappling with the muddy in-between space of zooming with your colleagues while in the office.

Whatever your situation is, all of this probably feels messy, and fraught, and unsatisfying. I’ve spent the last 20 months talking to various companies, experts and employees about the pitfalls and promising changes that can accompany the shift from fully remote or optional office time to at least some mandatory in-person time, and the best overarching advice I can give is that it’s going to keep feeling messy, fraught and unsatisfying for awhile — but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways for employees and employers to mitigate and address those feelings.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.