The ongoing surge of the Delta variant has led many to question the safety of returning to the office.
Although the CDC is now asking fully vaccinated people to wear masks indoors under certain circumstances and cases expected to continue climbing, many businesses are still requiring employees to return to the office.
Organizations such as JPMorgan, Apple and even the federal government are still moving forward with bringing workers back in, despite seeing success in remote working arrangements.
Research upon research has shown that most employees prefer to work flexibly and if they are not given the option, they would consider quitting.
So why do leaders continuously ignore the pleas of their workers? It all stems from cognitive bias, leaving them unable to pivot away from their antiquated ways of thinking. Instead of listening to the needs of employees, managers are stuck on going with their own intuition.
Another obstacle in place when it comes to the future of the workplace is planning fallacy. Leaders are so eager to move forward with overly optimistic plans that they lack planning for a situation such as the Delta outbreak.
Rather than keeping their strategies flexible, many are ignoring the fact that rising cases will likely mean that they must change their workplace plans. If they don’t, they will need to be prepared for an uptick in resignations.
