In 2020, we were confined and we started teleworking, initially for… 15 days! Eventually, it lasted more than a year. At a time when returning to work is being organized in stages, how can we facilitate the return to work on site? Isabelle Morin, trainer and coach specializing in teleworking, gives us her insight.
Step 1: take a step back to support your team
Taking a step back means first taking stock of the impacts of “imposed” teleworking in the long term. This period generated stress: ambient stress in the face of an uncontrolled health situation, the threat of illness and death hovering invisibly, personal anxieties linked to isolation, etc.
Managers, you must also be aware that two categories of teleworkers have gradually emerged.
On the one hand, some employees have gradually discovered the advantages and comfort of life that working from home offers them:
- personal/professional life balance;
- more balanced relationships with colleagues: more distance also means less affect.
They fear the resumption of face-to-face work and negotiate a maximum of teleworking.
On the other side, there are those who have failed to adapt to the teleworking format, praying day after day for a return to normal. Among them, some were overloaded: work invaded their personal lives; they are eager to return to their previous landmarks. Others suffer more from a lack of social relationships: they are impatient to meet their colleagues. Even those who were already practicing teleworking before the first confinement, one day a week for example, testify to the lack of direct contact with their colleagues since they have been teleworking at 100 %.
In both cases, it is often difficult for your colleagues to admit that the functioning and relationships are not no longer the same as before.
Step 2: be kind to yourself and your teams
Managers are doubly concerned by this situation:
- they may have experienced these difficulties themselves. In this case, the first step is to recognize their own limitations with kindness;
- their colleagues will undoubtedly have experienced similar difficulties. Managers will then be able, secondly, to communicate about those that they themselves have experienced and to listen to them, while showing the same kindness towards them.
Dare to tell your team “During the pandemic, I managed the best I could but, between overnight orders and contradictory injunctions, I encountered the same difficulties as you. Can we support each other? ”, is to be authentic. Such a manager will have the support and trust of his team.
Some tips for preparing for returning to site:
- Keep it simple
- Recreate the connection between everyone
- Free your voice in the face of accumulated tensions
- Defuse underlying interpersonal conflicts
Step 3: free up your speech to get off to a good start
Rather than trying to forget this “horrible episode”, you can bring to light the unique individual and collective experience that you and your colleagues have just had to get the most out of it. Why not open a space for discussion so that those who wish can share what they have experienced?
Let's play down this approach for managers and HR departments: of course, you are not going to improvise as a psychologist or find solutions for employees! It is simply a matter of allow them to express themselves and be heard : personal experience, incomprehension regarding the distribution of the workload, efforts made to absorb emergencies... Here, there is no question of changing the past or justifying oneself: saying things simply allows us to overcome them and to take the next step.
Some teleworkers, encountering difficulties or lacking professional stimulation, have “dropped out”. It is also an opportunity to gradually “hook them in” to the dynamics of the team and the company.
Step 4: define a clear and precise framework to promote team cohesion
The new working framework now includes the application of health instructions which give rise to their share of questions, concerns and misunderstandings: can I take off my mask during the break? Is plexiglass enough? Does someone who speaks in a meeting have the right to remove their mask so that they can be heard better?
On a daily basis, there is no shortage of areas of disagreement! It is essential that the company clearly defines the rules applicable to on-site work. A explicit common framework will avoid many unproductive debates and derogatory remarks. The HR department can provide, for example, a fun infographic that reminds you of the rules and display it in common areas.
Of course, this clear and precise framework is far from being limited to health constraints. The medium/long term issue is the general working framework: alternation of teleworking/on-site work, new organizations linked to the company's situation following the crisis, etc. Many questions remain unanswered: how to do we organize within our team? How do we develop teleworking in the long term? How do we encourage “working together” while taking into account individual situations? Etc.
Today, it is neither a question of returning to the situation before March 2020, nor of perpetuating the exceptional situation encountered since. The challenge is to invent a new mode of operation that takes advantage of these experiences, at the organizational, material and relational levels. Say goodbye to “it was better before”: it’s time to accept the present to build the future. HR services: it's up to you to propose a framework that managers will use to establish their team's new way of working in a participatory manner.
These times of exchange and collective construction are all opportunities to bring the team together, to recreate a common dynamic to get off to a good start. They will thus allow the team, upon its return, to become fully functional again, differently and better than before. Seize now this unique opportunity to develop more meaning at work on a daily basis, more efficiency for the team, more well-being for everyone!
