'Peopling' Avoidance Creates Back-to-Work Issues

As the pandemic morphs into something we are learning to live with, many nonprofit leaders are hearing strange new phrases:

“I don’t ever want to come back to the office.”

“I know I run gala events, but I don’t want to be in a crowd.”

“What do you mean, ‘come back to work?’ I’ve been working for two years, just not where you can see me.”

Turnkey runs many peer experience sharing groups for C-Suite social good executives. In those private rooms, leadership talks about struggles with workforce issues regarding where and how people work. Here’s what we’ve heard:

1. Event staff doesn’t want to do events if in-person interaction is required. Some were hired during the past two years when events were managed remotely — if there were events at all. Now, getting them to interact face-to-face in their local communities is proving difficult and involves coaching, re-training, and laying down the law.
2. Most people like working from home better than in an office. Many people are leaving jobs when they are asked to come back into an office environment, even part-time.
3. The work preferences and desires of top leadership are very different from the preferences of subordinates. The CEO wants everyone “in the room.” The subordinates don’t feel being “in the room” is necessary. There appears to be an inverse relationship between level on the hierarchy and desire to work remotely. Exacerbating the situation, productivity metrics often don’t exist that can document whether or not subordinates are more productive working remotely. The CEO, wielding the big stick, feels no need to justify their actions with metrics. Cue job flight.
4. Managing a hybrid workforce is not something many people have done before. A hybrid workforce pushes us away from traditional, more authoritarian management practices: “If I can see you working, then you’re working. I will tell you when to start and stop working.” As an industry, we aren’t good at the hybrid thing. Best practices are still emerging.
5. Remote work is more transparent. When workers left the office, work visualization tools to allow asynchronous coordination of work became far more important. In addition, online project management tools are becoming the de facto way to both get things done and to track productivity.
6. There is great tension as we leave the time where “do whatever makes you feel safe” is no longer something all organizations can support. But how do you come back from the safety-first mindset? When is the right moment? Will it ever be the right moment? Is “I feel unsafe” covering “I want to work in my pajamas and avoid commuting”?

To dig into all that, starting with No. 6, sure, there will be workers covering their desire to work from home by saying they continue to have fears of the pandemic. Maybe that’s true for some, but assuming that’s the case would be a big mistake. It shouldn’t be surprising that the pandemic has left many of us with lingering fears that will be hard to dismiss.

For example, research has shown that many people now respond to being in crowds differently because of the pandemic. This is called pandemic-induced agoraphobia, “agoraphobia” being the fear of crowds. More generally, there’s also increased fear of just going outside. We’ve had less control over our environment for nearly two years, which has had a big impact on us. Now that we can go out, there’s still a sense of anxiety.

Face-to-face interactions can also be more anxiety-provoking because of the pandemic. For most of us, in-person social skills were dulled and stifled during the pandemic. Lockdowns and work-from-home protocols overhauled the way we interact with others. It’s not just the face-to-face meetings that the pandemic eliminated, but the behaviors that go along with it. Humans need to “practice” their social skills regularly. Because socialization is such an integral part of being human, this is easy to overlook.

So, it's important to keep the psychological impact of the pandemic in mind when making workplace decisions. What was comfortable to someone before the pandemic could now be out of their current comfort zone. Rule of thumb — whenever possible, make reintegration gradual; let people take small steps.

Finally, what is needed is a new, specific type of job description that includes the amount of “peopling” the job requires. With that level of specificity, employees can choose the right job, and employers can set forth expectations for performance.