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From all-day Zoom calls to flexible work schedules, living in lockdown has forced all of us to reconsider our personal and professional lives. Due to social distancing and the sustained isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic, employees everywhere have adapted from full-time office work to work-from-home schedules. Now, as lockdowns begin loosening, organisations are looking at ways to reintegrate employees into physical office spaces — but the process of returning to work comes with its own uncertainties.



How can employees successfully transition back to work after experiencing a years-long pandemic? How have their values shifted? And what psychological tools should workers rely on when making the switch back to a physical office space? According to Dr Marny Lishman there are six strategic ways you can prepare your team for a smooth return to the office. 

1. Assess and address psychological needs

At a fundamental level, people want to feel in control of their workstyle and workflow. The pandemic reinforced that the most important needs to fulfill in both our personal and professional lives are deep-rooted psychological needs — specifically, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.



As your team returns to the office, consider what workers need to continue feeling fulfilled in their professional lives. How can you help them stay engaged, focused, and excited about the work that needs to be done? If employees don’t have access to amenities that they had while working from home — for instance, being able to walk the dog during lunch or doing laundry between Zoom meetings — how can you make sure their psychological needs are still met?

2. Consider the capabilities needed to adapt to a new workflow

In order to contend with the fast-moving pace of a post-pandemic world, it’s important for employees to hone soft skills. Helping workers cultivate psychological capabilities such as self-motivation, self-direction, communication, empathy, acceptance and grit (this last one is so important) will help your organisation quickly adapt to life back in the office, and whatever else comes your way. 

3. Embrace psychological adaptability 

How can your employees capitalise on change? Encouraging workers to practice psychological adaptability — in other words, the ability to quickly shift to new workstyles and ways of doing things — will help your business remain fluid during the post-pandemic transition. Curious about how to help employees learn psychological adaptability? Encouraging your team to introduce new workflows, ideas and structures at the office can help them practice staying flexible and cool even as processes change.



4. Draw on psychological flexibility

Cultivating psychological flexibility might sound similar to being psychologically adaptable, but there are key differences between the two. Psychological flexibility involves connecting to the present moment fully as a conscious human being by engaging in exercise, taking breaks from work, chunking time, practicing mindfulness and getting proper sleep, among others. Each of these practices can help employees continue to develop psychological flexibility as they return to in-office work.

5. Apply pandemic-induced learnings

The post-pandemic transition back to work isn’t going to be a completely smooth process. Encouraging your team to reflect on what they’ve learned while away can help them better understand how they can design their best working and personal lives going forward.

6. Design, test and redesign your return-to-work approach

Don’t underestimate what your employees have learned since the pandemic began! Ask your team to apply their learnings in the form of small, actionable steps they can take based on the knowledge they’ve gained during lockdown. Then, ask them to consider, test, analyse and reevaluate those learnings as they move back to working in-person.

Interested in learning more ways to make your transition back to the office a smooth one? You can find additional tips on return-to-work strategies, recruitment support and healthy workplace habits in our ongoing webinar series — Get in touch to sign up for our 2022 webinar series. 

Read more Blogs                 Date published:   06/12/2021