🔒101: Office Transitioning

Where some offices may keep employees working at home for now – or permanently – others are approaching the idea of bringing teams back to work. With COVID-19 precautions in place, things will be different. Here are some ways managers can encourage employees to transition effectively and safely back to their regular, away-from-home office environment.

Realize communication habits you learned working from home are valuable. Working from home demanded a certain transparency. Co-workers weren’t able to casually drop by your cubicle anymore, so remote work prompted more email activity, for example. Working from home, we let colleagues know what we are working on more than we might normally, says TheMuse.com’s Rachell Buell – always a good thing.

“When you return to the confines of brick and mortar, it can be tempting … to relax your communication a bit. But don’t fall into this trap,” Buell writes. “Maintaining the detailed communication that you’re used to helps prevent misunderstandings and builds trust among your team.”

Learn new tricks. Think better orchestration of traffic, such as one-way directional flows in stairways and halls. “Provide everyone with tips, tricks and courtesies to extend to one another: Press elevator buttons with pen caps; if there are already two people on the elevator, wait for the next one,” Building Design + Construction offers in a blog post.

See something? Say something. It’s a new world, with masks and hand sanitizer part of our routines. Forbes’ Avery Blank says employees should be encouraged to politely say things like, “Would you please step to the side so I can pass?” to maintain social distancing guidelines with others at work (which also protects others from you). “Don’t order someone around. People do not like being told what to do,” she says. “But speaking up might remind a person in the future to make small changes ... You are in this public health crisis together.”