If you are asking the question “How do we return to the office?” you are probably doing it wrong. 

Hear me out. The world has changed. The way we do our work has changed. Forever. There are so many important conversations and decisions to be made about what this means for us today, so let’s all start by asking the right questions. 

1. What do we miss about being in the office together? 

2. What slipped through the gaps even though we tried hard to make it work?

3. What are things we stopped doing out of necessity but have to start doing again to meet our mission? 

Figure out what you need to solve for, make it clear what has to happen or change in this next stage. And then, practice strategic flexibility, the new buzzword, which basically says there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that will work for everyone on your staff. 

Why are we spending so much time trying to make everyone happy when each person has their own unique needs which are dependent on their life at home, and their life at work?

Ask your staff to figure out what they need, instruct them that their plans need to solve for the pain points agreed upon.  

After you have individual plans that meet the collective needs, create systems to ensure everyone’s success. Does this mean that everyone needs to have a well-maintained calendar that shows where they are during the workday?

Perhaps, you need better technology to make virtual meetings more productive, but you need less office space to maintain. Or maybe everyone gets to have one day a week where they don’t need to answer phones or do in-person intake, and they can choose if they want to work from home that day. Perhaps your core hours are 10-3 when everyone needs to be working, but the rest of the time can be scheduled based on their schedules and when they work best (any other people who actually prefer to work at 7 am and be done by 3?).

Right now we have it in our heads that this means everyone wants to work from home, but my hunch is that people are more afraid of losing their autonomy to work from home, and once that’s secure many people might actually like working from the office a few days a week (or every day). 

 So, let people make the plan, create systems that ensure accountability, and if It doesn’t work, there are probably bigger issues than where the person does their work, and you will have a way to address it when it happens instead of assuming it will.