3 top tips for a successful return to the office - a guide for managers
Fifty years ago the fateful Apollo 13 mission made its successful re-entry after a dramatic aborted mission to the moon. For an agonising 6 minutes of blackout, far beyond the predicted time, Houston command centre asked themselves “Did we do everything right? Did we do everything we could?”. Then finally they heard those words, “Okay Joe”.
So how well are you set up to help your team re enter after lockdown? Although our re-entry date is uncertain, it is certain that it will come. So maybe it's time to ask - have you done everything you can to prepare?
“Its life Jim but not as we know it” (ok, different movie, but you get my drift)
You simply cannot expect people to suddenly revert back to a 9-5 presence in an office. After asking people to adjust to working from home and squeezing work in around childcare in less convenional hours, you can expect some to question whether they can continue to do so.
Having led a team which had a strict no working from home policy for employee welfare and data security reasons, I would expect now to be questioning how do you make this work going forward? If it was acceptable during lockdown, how do you manage these same risks on an ongoing basis to make flexible working more permanent?
Are you ready to address those questions? As they will undoubtedly come.
2. “They did magnificently”
The average age of the ground crew at mission control in Houston for that ill fated Apollo 13 flight was 29, many of them not long out of university. They needed to pull together as a team to do something which had never been done before. “Yet they did magnificently,” said Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13.
Its important to remember to continually thank the team for their efforts through lockdown. There are always team members who step up more than others in trying times, those who pull out of the bag tricks you didn't know they had and which proved invaluable. Whether they were the closet techy whizz who remotely helped those struggling or even the one star entertainer who made the team laugh on lifeless Zoom meetings, make sure they are called out and recognised.
Have you considered how you will capitalise on the hidden talents you have uncovered? It would be a mistake to think everyone should carte blanche go back to what they were doing.
3. “Everything is a little bit the same every day. It can be depressing sometimes if you're not careful”
Canadian astronaut David St Jacques highlighted the mental toll of being away from friends and family in the International Space Station.
Beware the invisible toll that your workers may have been through also. In the quest to make up for lost time/revenue/utilisation rates etc don't lose sight that this has been (literally) no walk in the park for your team. Juggling homeschooling, constraints around domestic life and endless Zoom meetings has not been easy unless, dare I say it, you have a wife/ partner bearing the brunt of it.
I clearly remember managing my team through our response to the Christchurch terrorist attacks last year. At the start we were operating on adrenaline, then we shifted to endurance but then as more work got piled on top eventually your reserves became empty.
Yes, we are headed for turbulent times ahead but rushing into them with a tired team and failing to acknowledge what they have been through may only brew a lack of morale and motivation in the longer term.
Do you have a clear game plan that you can communicate to your team? One which acknowledges a period of readjustment. And how are you planning on engaging with your team and checking in on them personally as they settle back in?
There is no doubt that the disruption brought by Covid 19 has been a challenge to leadership and teamwork skills and that will not evaporate on re-entry. On a positive note however, it is possible that if you play your cards right, it could turn out to be a game changer in your team’s performance.
“In retrospect after years of thinking about it the explosion of Apollo 13 was probably the best thing that could have happened to the space programme.” Jim Lovell
