Effectively Communicating your Return-to-Work Strategy
For over a year now, many of us have been preparing to “return to work.” And then we didn’t. In June of last year, as COVID-19 positivity rates started dropping in lots of cities, we thought, maybe in the Fall we will all go back - the kiddos will return to school and we will return to our office spaces. And then we didn’t.
With vaccines rolling out and most schools open, organizations are once again planning for a “return to work.” The real questions are, should we force everyone to come back? What are the special cases we need to account for? Are there legal ramifications I need to be aware of when creating my Return-to-Work plan (White & Case and Marnin)? Depending on your business, there are a lot of grey areas and Tal Marnin, Partner at White & Case in New York, details it in his white paper from October 2020.
I am not an employment attorney so I will let you peruse the article for yourself. What I do specialize in is communication. And guess what? There is usually too little of it. And many of us think we are communicating too much.
What we need to communicate are the expectations. My advice? Give people options. Not everyone wants the same working arrangement. I am not suggesting you make it a free-for-all. Providing options and also communicating the times that your team members MUST be in person, helps your employees make arrangements with transit, child or elder care, etc.
No matter if you are providing a lot of options, or you need to stick to a specific arrangement, you will want to communicate the “why.” Leaders that communicate why an organization is doing what it is doing, are seen as transparent. And after a year of strangeness and ambiguity, transparent leaders are poised to increase trust and loyalty amongst team members. Oh and the “why” shouldn’t be, “because I said so.” It’s okay to have solid reasons why you need to have people back in their workspace - just make sure you share those reasons.
When you are thinking through your Return-to-Work plan, consider surveying the teams, or creating a council. Getting buy-in from team members of varying levels and from different departments can help when it is time to disseminate information, they will help persuade their teams that the plan could work.
Once it is time to communicate the plan, remember to think of many ways for your team members to access information.
Include links to the plan on several areas employees access. This might include your intranet, Slack, or other internal messaging system.
Send out information in an email and invite employees to dial in to live webinar Q&A sessions. Make sure you hold multiple events so everyone has a chance to make a session, if desired.
Wanna get creative? Is there a local business that creates small gifts or goodies (I like to think cupcakes or even small plants?) Maybe you can send a gift along with information on the plan.
And then, communicate it again.
If this past year and counting has taught us anything, it is that the only constant is change and we must be flexible and adapt. Communication and transparency will help your Return-to-Work plan succeed.
Bibliography
White & Case, and partner/author Tal Marnin, Employment Law Considerations for Returning to the Workplace in a COVID-19 World, White & Case, 7 October 2020, https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/employment-law-considerations-returning-workplace-covid-19-world. Accessed 29 April 2021.
All photo images Unsplash.com
