24th May 2021
How to return to the workplace (or not) – in a post covid world – David Zinger
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.
David Zinger, Engagement Speaker, Educator, Consultant, and Coach
Organizations are being asked to be very attuned and responsive to possible returns to the office. The most important element of the employee experience is the employee’s views, meaning, perceptions, etc. This is the time to live by the dictum from positive deviancy, “never do anything about me without me.” Fully invite employees into the future of their own work in a way that works for the organization, the individual, the team, and the clients/customers. Some people may have reached the “point of no return.”
My own view is to offer education and support to help people endure, manage, master, and transform their own engaging experiences of work. We need to learn and know how to design our work – and much of the challenge is a profound movement from spatial boundaries (working in place) to temporal transitions (working in space). If an employer is struggling then share your struggle, we work better together. Begin with ignorance, or not knowing, because stupidity is thinking you know when you don’t. Just because you start with ignorance about the changing dimensions of work doesn’t mean you stay there.
Finally, a good way to work on this together is a line quoted by Joseph Grenny, one of the originators of Crucial Conversations: “I don’t want what you don’t want, and if you don’t want it, I don’t want it either.” Let’s seize the opportunity to work on when and how and where and why and who we work with in a way that works for the full benefit of all.