Post-COVID Workplace Re-Entry Considerations
Recognizing & Embracing The Human Side Of Workplace Life After The Coronavirus
By Guy Gage III , LPC , owner , PartnersCoach ®, guy @ partnerscoach . com
By Annie Yoder , CPA , CFE , CFF , principal & director of development , annie . yoder @ reacpa . com ( New Philadelphia office )
Well , COVID-19 sure threw us all a curveball when it started rearing its ugly head earlier this year . Most people will admit they never expected to live through such a crisis in their lifetime . But now that we ’ re starting to come out on the other side – back into our businesses – what now ? It can be overwhelming to even consider what steps we need to take to get our employees ( customers , too ) safely back into our offices , stores , schools … and so on . However , consider and plan you must !
But before you jump on a video call with your leadership team to begin planning the details of your employees ’ return , stop and consider this : the people you sent home a few months ago are not going to be the same people who come back .
Sure , they ’ ll probably look the same ( maybe with longer hair ?), but they ’ ll likely return with new fears , lots of questions and ultimately , a different set of priorities . As such , you have to recognize and understand the psychological framework in which people are coming back .
Four Ways To Infuse The Human Element Into The Re-Entry Process
As a leader , you have an opportunity to influence your employees ’ psychological framework in a significant way . Research shows that the psychological and emotional behavioral aspects of the human makeup are driven by different factors , specifically :
# 1 Control # 2 Stability # 3 Certainty # 4 Clarity
Before we go into more detail on each of these areas , one thing to recognize is the fact that all of these factors are illusions . Meaning , none of us are really in control . We may have thought we were in much more control than we actually are . We thought life was so much more stable than what it actually is … our sense of certainty in what we could count on was
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