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How to return to the workplace (or not) – in a post covid world – Jasmine Gartner

This snippet is part of our Ebook How to return to the workplace (or not) – in a post covid world. Advice and suggestions from our Top 101 influencers. You can download the full eBook with all the advice here.

Jasmine Gartner, Founder, Jasmine Gartner Consulting

There’s been a shift in the conversation. I’m hearing a lot more talk about how to approach going back to the office. I personally think that as long as people get the work done, then letting them work from home should be an easy choice. Except it’s all a lot more complex than “should I stay or should I go?” From an individual standpoint, it’s partially about personality – some people have loved being at home, and some have hated it, and then there’s a whole range of feelings about it in the grey area between those extremes. From an organisational standpoint, it’s created instability – no two managers seem to have the same approach, so how do you get consistency across a company?

So I suggest that from an organisational viewpoint, you spend some time thinking about your goals and your long-term strategy. It’s important to drill down and think about what is actually at play here. I suspect it has more to do with how trusted employees feel to manage their time, their lives, and their workloads, and less to do with being at the office or not.

Times of flux are hard. But they’re also ideal opportunities to listen to your employees and hear about what they think (if they want to share it) because this last strange year will have really brought things into sharp focus that we perhaps sleepwalked through previously. This is the time for reflection.