If the numbers are to be trusted, it looks like the slightly improving Covid situation may allow us to make some progress toward returning to the new workplace.
However, the new workplace will create significant demands and require some changes from leaders — including the ways they led both before and during the pandemic.
Yes, we learned a lot, and a lot of things improved while outdated practices were finally left behind. But there are fundamental changes in expectations, requirements and the leadership required that we have never experienced before.
First, if the easing of the lockdown lasts this time, we will be entering a true hybrid workplace. Some of your team members, particularly the more educated ones, will expect to work from home. They have proven their ability to be productive. They have worked out their systems and may believe there is no justification for bringing them back to the office full-time. They may well walk away and leave if they feel forced back into a cubicle.
At the same time, other colleagues will be back in the office most of the time. How can leaders balance their teams’ needs and not create barriers or perceptions that there are first- and second-class team members? How can leaders manage the performance of people they work beside every day and those they see mostly in the virtual world? How can leaders provide personalised support, something that’s already complicated, in this hybrid world?
Whether you realise it or not, the pandemic has, or should have, transformed your workplace culture. People have learned to work in a radically different manner for the last 18 months. Their values, expectations, purpose and working methods will have changed. Leaders won’t be coming back to the same people, offices and teams, even if they look the same.
Other important questions are how can leaders promote the work culture they now need, and not the one they had before? How can leaders culturally integrate virtual workers, physically present workers, and in some cases gig-workers?
In my organisation, we did our best but we have seen many jobs shift as new roles were required. We abandoned old approaches, and job titles, which are now much less important and fail to describe half of what some people do.
There are also many new, young staff, who have never met most, and sometimes any of their colleagues in person. They have only experienced transitioning culture while firefighting the pandemic and may not understand all the expectations until they experience the new challenges. Figuring out the new leadership requirements is a challenge that needs careful handling. It also needs handling now.
More than ever, leaders need to approach these challenges with Growth and Outward Mindsets. We have never faced this situation before, and we are going to make mistakes. And even while we’re figuring out what works and what doesn’t, things in and around this inevitable hybrid workplace and workforce will continue to change.
We must see this as a design exercise and that it is okay to change things again later. Nothing is ever fixed; everything must be iterative. The pandemic taught us that flexible and agile thinking and working is important. Leaders must understand at the outset they are serving their people, not fixed ideals, and personal preferences about how work gets done.
Leaders need to also look at this initial hybrid period as a testing playground for the organisation’s new leadership approach. Set a schedule and use that time to try things out, see what works, and change what doesn’t.
Learn the rhythms of the workplace, what individuals need and what is possible. Look at what other organisations are doing and see if that could be adjusted (and it will need adjusting) to your workplace.
But don’t adopt ideas and systems just because others are (though don’t discount them for the same reason). While we are entering the unknown, we are not entering it blindly or starting from zero. However, just as the hybrid approach will change the workplace and workforce, it will change the leadership required.
I recommend that organisations and their leaders go back and start with their “Why” and be guided by this. The systems, evolving culture, and so on should be fixed on what your purpose and goals are.
Look at your objectives, look at which of your previous approaches can and should be discarded, and do so. Don’t recreate the old just for the sale of it. Look carefully at what has changed and adjust your leadership to match it.
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC — Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Talk to us about how SEAC can help your business during times of uncertainty at https://forms.gle/wf8upGdmwprxC6Ey9