Three years ago, a virus changed the world. COVID-19 was spreading, and many companies sent their people home. The lockdown changed work forever for many, even for those organizations in which most (or all) employees remained in the workplace. Over the course of the pandemic, many have yearned for a “return to normal,” whereas others have heralded the arrival of “the new normal.”
The past three years have introduced many new (and unanticipated) changes, forced a widespread readjustment of expectations about work, and given rise to entirely new questions and challenges. Through all of this, the world has learned some valuable lessons.
People want and need to be connected to their colleagues, even if they aren’t working in physical proximity with them. When leaders and organizations realize that proximity and connection aren’t the same thing, they will make different decisions. Those who want higher productivity, improved mental health, and increased retention will prioritize creating cohesion.
Companies that provide clarity and purpose win big. When people feel a sense of safety, their anxiety decreases. It’s important for leaders to help people see how what they do matters—a realization that can be harder to achieve when they are working away from their teammates.
Organizations can play an important role in mental health. The virus and its effects demonstrated that work has an incredibly significant impact on mental health—and that organizations and leaders can help in this area, if they choose to do so. Two of the good things to emerge from the pandemic are people’s willingness to talk about mental health and fitness more and organizations’ increased efforts to help their team members.
Top-down approaches to work environments will lead to unintended consequences. This is a major reason why many “return to the office plans” have failed. Perhaps the biggest lesson to take from the pandemic is that everyone has learned things that apply to the future, and relying solely on what leaders have learned will only lead to problems.
Great results are possible without everyone being together every day. Some people were surprised to discover this during the pandemic, whereas those who believed it all along felt vindicated. The fact that people can work together at a distance and still be successful doesn’t mean that all physical offices must or should go away. Rather, this lesson is a call for organizations and leaders to create work environments with the flexibility to accommodate individual needs and situations.
The world of work keeps changing. This isn’t new, but over the past few years the pace picked up and now the stakes are higher than ever before. This shift begs organizations not to try to create a new steady-state solution but to continue flexing, adjusting, trying, and learning. (Think “pilot program to test,” not “policy carved in stone.”)
Even when things are changing fast, foundational principles matter. When everything around them seems to be changing, organizations often try to reinvent themselves instead of staying on their firm foundations. Contexts and many other factors might be evolving, but human nature, motivation, and group dynamics rarely change in the same ways. Thinking about principles first makes possible better decisions about how to adjust to what is changing.
Each organization weathered the pandemic in its own way, and each person (whether leader or employee) had a unique perspective. There was enough shared experience over those three years, though, for these lessons to have widespread applicability throughout most of the business world.