We’re living through disruption, unlike anything we’ve seen before. Remote working has been a significant adjustment for some organizations, and adapting to our new normal has required extra structure, intention, and care. As the curve begins to flatten, businesses and society are considering what returning to normal may look like. Although organizations have settled into new ways of working, the implications of COVID-19 on the public sector, especially as they relate to the workforce, will remain long-lasting.
Returning to the workplace can create anxiety and fear about the unknown, but at the same time, it creates an opportunity to think strategically about how to emerge stronger. Now’s the time to consider the new skills we need and redefine what’s important now and into the future.
Leaders will need to consider a reboot plan that meets the evolving needs of their organization and supports their people. Leading organizations will learn from the first stage of their crisis response to build resilience and future-proof their organization from further disruption.
Workplace culture in the new normal
Organizations will need to answer the important question of when and how to bring employees back to the workplace while meeting new business demands.
From a social distancing perspective, a return to the workplace could be at around 20 per cent to 40 per cent of the capacity from before the pandemic. What’s more, organizations are considering shifts and other plans to reduce the possibility of contact and avoid overlap between teams. And while virtual work may become a permanent feature, we still require human connection. It’s important to make sure our people can come together and work through problems in a secure way, where health and safety is a top priority. Technology and tools that support secure remote access and collaboration are essential, but it’s much more than that.
Now, more than ever, we need to have a solid workplace culture (i.e. the capabilities and practices that distinguish the workplace and make it effective) and rethink how our people behave. Codes of conduct and social contracts will be something we may see coming up even more in our return-to-work planning and there will be new expectations for employers, employees, and clients. A clear plan that brings all stakeholders into the new way of operating will help to foster that strong culture.
As organizations plan the return to work, leaders should be thinking about four areas:
1. Health and safety, privacy and social responsibility
It’s important to protect employees, maintain their privacy, and reinforce your commitment to social responsibility. Some actions include maintaining a sanitary work environment, establishing new medical protocols (e.g. anonymized temperature checking), and complying with local, provincial, and federal laws and guidelines, including privacy considerations.
From a health and safety perspective, employers and employees are going to have to work together to maintain a safe workplace and we will need to support each other through these changes from a mental health and wellness perspective.
2. Work organization and technology
A solid return-to-workplace plan should reflect an organization’s realities and capture opportunities to revisit the operating model and organizational structure. This is especially critical considering how much and how quickly digital tools and new ways of working have been introduced and will continue to be integrated into the everyday norm.
Important first steps include identifying jobs that require in-person interaction with other people or technology/machinery and assessing where productivity decreases significantly if work is performed off-site.
3. Financial performance
How to prepare for fluctuating demand after the initial crisis period is over is top of mind across all sectors. A reboot plan should explore opportunities for new revenue streams and possible cost efficiencies. You should also model scenarios related to fluctuating return-to-work plans.
4. Worker needs, preferences, and skills
By putting employees at the heart of the reboot planning process, organizations will be able to effectively consider different scenarios. This will drive managers and leaders to revisit the way they manage both in the short and long term.
To start, you can assess workers’ attitudes toward health/hygiene and understand their personal situations (e.g. childcare and financial constraints). Determine options for working models based on type of work and geographic location.
From our experience with organizational transformation in the public sector, we have insights on how departments and agencies can build their strategy to effectively plan, prepare and revisit business continuity to protect employees and the citizens they serve as we reboot Canada.
Leading by example in the new world of work
For the reboot to take hold, executives will have to lead by example with respect to virtual work to show that it can be done productively. This means reducing return-to-workplace congestion and finding opportunities for cost savings and paper reduction.
Employers should also be mindful that, even with the best planning, there will be both negative and positive perceptions by employees as they re-enter a new world of work.
- Workspaces will become more clinical: Organizations will need to remove personal items and more carefully choreograph worker entries, exits, and movements throughout the day. This could feel scripted and make people feel constrained.
- There may be no going back: Organizations have seen huge benefits from virtual working and are considering these arrangements on a permanent basis. They’re seeing productivity gains and a move to paperless processes. This flexibility and innovation in the workplace is something that will continue to be sought after as we reboot.
- Staying the course: As we reboot, managers and executives will have to work hard to help their teams avoid sliding backward and returning to practices that could erode digital gains. Using new digital practices and helping employees continue to upskill is another benefit of rapid digital transformation.
- Be well, work well: Organizations should continue to foster and develop a culture of work-life balance. There has been a mind shift, which includes looking out for each other, not coming to work when sick, checking in with colleagues that you might not have an opportunity to “see” during the day, and much more. Changes in HR policies across industries to reflect the new return to work reality are sure to become part of our reboot.
All of this comes down to being flexible—having scenarios and making sure you are planning and building on a number of them. It’s essential to plan for potential hotspots, ask what happens if different sites experience a wave, consider what happens if technology doesn’t work, and plan for what happens if things fail.
Keep transformation goals in sight
As we navigate the next steps in a reboot, we’ve heard from many public sector clients that COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation—and that this must continue. “We’re not going back to the way it was before” has been a common sentiment. Leaders across the public sector are indicating they will be looking to maintain digital-transformation gains.
Now that Canadians have experienced the speed and convenience of digital-first interactions, citizen expectations have evolved. But this also presents an opportunity for governments to accelerate virtual workforce capabilities to continue to serve Canadians in innovative ways. The pandemic has been a catalyst to ratchet up workforce adoption of digital tools. Organizations will need to support employees to keep newly developed habits and excel at digital work whether it’s on-site or not.
But mental exhaustion and transformation fatigue are real threats. It’s crucial to remember to look after your employees’ well-being, but even more so now. Many people aren’t benefiting from their usual office connections, and without a proper vision to overcome the risks to employee well-being, the mental and organizational costs can skyrocket.
Make sure you focus your plan on the needs of workers and how to manage the adoption of changes. It’s important to be in tune with employee sentiments and consistently demonstrate ways of working that you want your team to embrace, including promoting a healthy work-life balance. By embracing healthy habits, you make it acceptable for your team to do the same—and there’s a big payoff.
Returning to the workplace isn’t just about bringing people back into physical spaces; it’s also about finding opportunities to adjust business models and workforce structures to thrive in a new era.
Governments around the globe are going through the same process but are at different stages in the journey. An effective plan should address the four key pillars as mentioned above, but our reboot can also incorporate relevant, global experiences and lessons learned. Through protecting, planning, preparing, and revisiting, we will emerge as a stronger and more resilient public sector.
SIDEBAR
Transition incident management team
As your organization brings people back to the workplace, it’s important to establish a team to address issues as they arise and make sure lessons observed during the crisis are baked in. An incident management team partners with internal leadership to anticipate, identify, and resolve issues in a coordinated way.
The incident management team serves as the central repository for all return-to-the-workplace issues and incidents, with authority and responsibility to:
- track and log all issues, distilling risks, opportunities and trends that could impact the return-to-the-workplace strategy or the organization’s broader response effort
- coordinate information-sharing across transition workstreams and align efforts with leadership
- communicate existing risks and response/mitigation activities across the organization
- escalate risks and issues that require leadership decisions and action
- execute issue response and risk mitigation plans to facilitate a successful transition effort
