The emergence of the Omicron variant has rocked the corporate world, causing a domino effect of companies delaying their return to the office.
However, this recent outbreak is also leading businesses to face the reality of what returning to the office could actually look like, rather than the idealistic view so many leaders have held.
“Employees have been positioning this as a health-and-safety issue, while managers and companies are seeing the same people who don’t want to come to the office doing all the other activities in their lives,” said Mark Ein, chairman at Kastle Systems. “A huge amount of workers want some autonomy to work from home all or some of the time.”
Companies are now at a crossroads: should they have a plan ready to go for every unexpected turn the pandemic makes? Or is it time to adopt more agile work policies?
Setting an arbitrary return-to-office date that simultaneously guarantees the safety of workers is becoming impractical.
No one knows which direction the pandemic will take over the next few years, so it’s time for businesses to have a flexible work strategy in place that makes it easy to operate when spikes of Covid occur.
The next step in pandemic-era workplace strategies should be outlining hybrid workplace arrangements.
For instance, some businesses operating with a hybrid model may require employees to be in the office a few times a week, while others could allow workers to come and go as they please.
“Companies have made the mistake of waiting for a clarity that’s been elusive, which has compounded the frustration employees have experienced,” said Bradford Bell, a professor at Cornell. “The best route is to share as much as you can and how you’re thinking, within a dynamic situation subject to change.”
