It’s like Brussels sprouts; boil them and force me to eat them under threat of no dessert? No way. Soak them in olive oil, crisp them in the oven, load them with salt and pepper and drown them in maple syrup? Way. If you want your people back, don’t take attendance or track their key fob swipes or force them to dress up if they don’t need to. That is the boiled Brussels sprout of office culture. Instead, offer them vestiges of their WFH life. More flexibility, perhaps a couple days a week at home, more willingness to participate in meetings virtually, less shaming when someone says they’re under the weather, more trust that they’re actually working when home, less drive-by’s and bed-checks, more pets and kids at work, music and foosball in the office, mid-day runs by the river and more wine in the fridge. Figure out what they like about being at home and try, as best you can, to re-create it at work.

Some, of course, are taking it too far. Exhibit “A”? I recently stumbled upon this LinkedIn post:

What? Do these people not pay for groceries? It’s not a free-for-all. There are still rules and expectations that an employer is more than entitled to ask of those it employs. It’s just the line has moved, and it is harder to spot. To again channel Henry Bemis, it’s blurry. Yet the thrust of Mr. Bell’s point is important. The Great Resignation is real, and employees will vote with their feet if they are not suitably persuaded as to the line’s placement.

“People are waking up to the value of living lives that allow them to connect with themselves and nurture their well-being and resilience. They’re waking up from the collective delusion that burnout is the price we have to pay for success. Companies that realize this will be less likely to be capsized by the great wave of resignations. Those that don’t may be in for a not-so-great awakening.”

-Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO at Thrive Global,

The “Great Resignation” Is a Great Cultural Shift

As Beverley McLachlin, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, pointed out in this brilliant op-ed about the frailty of freedom: “Our governments must draw the difficult lines that mark the limits of freedom in a particular situation….But governments are not free agents. They are accountable. Accountable to the people, who can vote them out at the next election if they get the line-drawing wrong.”

Employers, too, draw lines and are similarly held accountable. Get it just wrong, mandate the message rather than massage it, roll-out its rationale with a blunt instrument instead of persuasive appeal and they, too, will face the consequences. Employees, though, must equally realize that no one is irreplaceable, that pendulums swing back and forth and back again. While it may be an employee’s market right now, that won’t last forever.

Beyond wine and jeans and foosball tables, there’s a more existential reason to suggest your people come back. And, no, it’s not about productivity. It has been well documented that productivity went up during the WFH era. And, no, it’s not about culture erosion, though that point is more debatable. An indisputable area of concern for both employer and employee is knowledge transfer. I fear there will be a knowledge clot that will work its way to the brain of many organizations; a sort of air-pocket of two plus years of institutional memory and mentorship that will impact this Covid cohort for the rest of its career.

The ‘coffee maker collisions’; those happenstance mentoring moments between a superior and subordinate simply aren’t happening. And those interactions are in the best interests of all involved. The young analyst who isn’t in the right place at the right time to meet that VP and be brought into the Big Project; that VP who isn’t able to ask the name of her young charge while riding the elevator, perhaps a future star who might just have turned into her successor. The inability to pass down, through office osmosis, the unwritten rules of the road, the Marauder’s Map of workplace politics, that’s where the rubber hits the road.

Or, more appropriately, the spectacles hit the sidewalk.

Regards,

Adam