Preparing for the Return to the Workplace: Strategic Considerations for Leaders
As companies explore their options to return to the workplace before a vaccine is made available, several factors need to be considered to ensure your employees return to work safely. From city regulations to company culture to individual employee risks, these factors are complex and there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
As you navigate this topic, a Task Force is a good idea to organize information and drive the process forward. The decision to return to your workplace, we believe, should be made by a company’s leadership team. Returning is a life-death decision, and considerations need to be made for both the business and employee safety.
This guide outlines key decision points for your leadership team to help you make a Return to Workplace (RTW) decision. We have also included guidance for establishing new protocols at the office with references from other thought leaders on RTW sources.
Reflektive Return to Work Decision Tool
Start with Local Regulations
Local regulations will dictate when your office, factory, restaurant, etc. can re-open. Work with your Task Force and/or your local HR Team to understand regulations across each country, state, city, and local community. Be sure to consider a wider circumference than your place of work itself to include employees commuting.
Determine the Business Impact of Returning to Work vs. Working from Home
A cost-benefit analysis of remote work will vary based on your industry, workforce, access to technology, and location. In a COVID-19 Sentiment Survey by over 7,000 employees using Reflektive we found some unique differences. Here’s a framework to guide your decision-making process:
1. Segment your organization by department, role, and location
The business impact of working remotely can vary. Tech workers and financial services, for example, have adapted to this ‘new normal’ and found success moving to a remote working environment. Others, like dentistry and manufacturing, need to be on-premises to be most productive. Identify the right sub-segments in your organization and note potential differences in productivity.
2. Estimate the additional revenue or productivity gained by returning to the workplace
For each segment, identify lost productivity that results from remote work versus in-person interactions. In making this evaluation help normalize what the new working environment will look like (with social distancing, cleaning requirements, no/ limited meetings, etc.). Taking this new working environment into consideration, it’s likely the productivity gained may be less than initially estimated. A simple formula is:
Estimated Weekly Impact of Remote Work =
Estimated productivity loss %
x Number of employees
x Average weekly salary
3. Estimate the additional revenue or productivity Lost by returning to work
For each segment, identify potential risk of absenteeism and illness that could result from in-person interactions. We recommend the below formula:
Estimated Weekly Impact of Returning to Work =
Estimated infection rate %
x Number of employees
x Average weekly salary
x Minimum of 2 weeks
Outcome: Does the additional revenue outweigh the costs in a
material way to have some or all segments of our employees return to work?
As Gartner advised, “Decide based on the work, not the worker. At organizations where employees are remaining productive remotely, require managers to make the business case for returning them to an on-site location. Be flexible; well-informed guidelines rather than rigid mandates will ease stress on employees.” Be sure to challenge whether or not an investment in your digital strategy and technologies could narrow the gap and improve the productivity of employees working at home.
Discuss How you Return to the Workplace, Based on Your Company Culture
A key decision for your leadership team is to reflect on your company culture, and how that should shape the RTW.
Do you value individualism over teamwork and collectivism?
If your work culture emphasizes the group, belonging and inclusion rather than the individual, then you will want to make a company-wide determination about the RTW.
If Taking a Collective Approach, Determine the Company-Wide Approach
When bringing your whole company back together, share the date for the RTW, or when you will make a decision about the date.
Your RTW date should be based on workplace safety. Commonly referenced RTW requirements are a significant decline of COVID-19 cases, wide availability of testing, proven therapies, and ideally a vaccine.
Communicating your plan, staying informed of employee health, and evaluating investments to improve remote productivity will be central to your strategy.
If Taking an Individual or Team Approach, Prioritize Across Employee Segments
1. Prioritize “essential” segments, using cost-benefit analysis
Revisit your estimates on the business impact of RTW. For each employee segment, run a cost-benefit analysis and stack rank segments that present significant revenue gain with low risk for the RTW. Be sure to additionally evaluate based on increased costs that result from cleaning and other health and safety protocols needed to RTW.
2. Deprioritize employees in “High Risk” categories
There are multiple reasons why an employee would be of higher risk to return to work. Examples include:
• Serious underlying medical conditions
• Older adults
• Family obligations
• Commutes on public transportation
The CDC offers information on those of high risk and populations at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. We suggest mapping employees against a 2×2 matrix once you gather information for these two areas:
Ask yourself: Do you have any “high risk” employees in “essential” segments?
If you do, look to redefine your “essential” segments of employees into smaller sub-segments, noting that your benefit to returning will be reduced. Alternatively, consider revisiting the company-wide approach to RTW. Reasons that may sway you to do so would be the desire to maintain fairness and not discriminate against employees by age, family status, health, or other risk factors.
Define Phased Approach
For those employee segments that are “essential” and “low risk”, the next step is to define a planned approach to RTW. Protocols must be defined, including guidance on entrance screening, wearing of PPE, workspace modifications, cleaning and disinfection procedures, and more. There are several useful resources on this topic available at the end of this guide detailing these preparation steps.
Beyond your protocols, people, and processes are also central to a successful RTW. We recommend identifying local response teams that include members from HR and Operations. Worth noting that you want to be clear about the responsibilities of this response team and not ask they extend to health worker responsibilities that may be needed to successfully return employees to work safely. Additionally, clarify triggers and escalation procedures that would lead to a re-exit for some or all employees. Ultimately, the key question to ask is:
Can you keep employees safe when returning to work?
If the answer is, “yes” then you are ready to proceed. If the answer is, “no”, then protocols, people, and processes will need to be revisited.
Prepare your Organization
Training your workforce on the RTW protocols is crucial for this transition. The information needs to be clear, available in several communication channels, validated and confirmed before proceeding. Managers should use 1:1s with their direct reports to assess the comfort and confidence employees have in returning to work. This sentiment can also be identified in a brief pulse survey to employees. Sentiment should be viewed in aggregate, across segments, and then down to the individual level to determine:
Do employees have a “fear of return”?
If you identify “fear”, it’s a good signal to re-evaluate your phased approach to RTW. Identify the employee concerns and see if your company can reasonably address them. If not, re-evaluate the RTW strategy and decision with the rest of your leadership team.
Ready to Return to Work
If you identify employee confidence, then it’s time to move forward and begin executing your plan. However, the task force and leadership team should continuously monitor progress and evaluate risks and employee sentiment as changes in the status of outbreaks change regularly.
Additional References and Resources
- “The Back-to-Work Playbook” by Josh Bersin
- “Return-To-Workplace (RTW) Discussion Guide” by LifeLabs Learning
- “Return to Workplace Guide for Leaders” by Gartner
- “Essential COVID-19 Resources” by Think HR
- “Workforce Strategies for a Post-COVID-19 Recovery Workbook” by Deloitte
- “This twist on the four-day workweek could get people back to work without causing new outbreaks” by Fast Company
Onboarding New Employees Remotely
Reflektive became a 100% remote workforce overnight. In addition to creating my own work-from-home setup, I’m onboarding our new head of corporate marketing along with two other members of our team in the coming weeks.
At Reflektive, our people and environment are uniquely friendly and inclusive. We strive to impart our collegial culture from Day 1. As such, many of our onboarding steps have been done face-to-face, and even those who worked from a home-office flew out to our headquarters for one or two weeks of onboarding. In this new working environment, we had to rethink our process to account for our newly remote workforce.
Our remote onboarding strategies include ways to:
- Create a sense of welcome, community and inclusion
- Accommodate our 100% digital work activities
- Establish communication channels that would otherwise happen at our desks
Here’s how we’re modifying our onboarding strategy for our newly remote workforce:
| Typical Onboarding Step | Virtual Onboarding Approach |
| Welcome email for employee informing them about their first day | – Rewritten with new details – Consider creating a personal video (shot on your phone) welcoming the new hire – Include new remote work expectations |
| Introduce new employee to colleagues via email | – Continue this activity – Add additional communication channel (Slack) along with more detailed bio and photo – Assign a virtual onboarding buddy to support the new hire in the first couple weeks. – Set up a meet & greet video for them |
| Work with IT to prepare new employee office equipment – laptop, email, and other logins | – IT to ship new laptops to employee’s home – *Glitch* Manufacturer is unable to ship new laptops. – New plan: Employee to use their personal computer – New instructions to setting up email and logins from a personal computer created and emailed to the employee for 7:30AM on their first day – Set up a meeting with IT at the start of the employee’s first day to troubleshoot any potential technical issues. |
| First-day meet & greet and office tour | – Set up a first-day morning video conference with team, along with other meet & greet video sessions for later in the day – Share home-work spaces on video conference – Send email and Slack communications introducing the new employee |
| Team lunch | – Order online lunch to be delivered during a virtual team meeting |
| New employee swag | – Ship to employee’s home as a welcome package – If your company swag is unavailable, order a nice care package from Amazon or another retailer. – Local gift cards are also a nice touch and a great way to direct resources to the businesses who need it most right now |
| Review and complete HR documents and policies | – New virtual meeting with HR team for all new hires – Add content about work from home policies and expectations – Collect documents scanned and sent via email by employee – All other forms and details remain the same |
| Company overview and introduction | – Continue with functional presentations from marketing, sales, engineering, finance, etc., now held virtually – Add new virtual session or a recorded video message with the CEO sharing more about Reflektive’s mission and vision – Set up a meet & greet with the most senior manager in your new employees’ organization for relationship-building and executive support |
| Get to know key stakeholders | – Provide list of key stakeholders to the employee — recommend they set up virtual coffee chats with these people – Share a virtual org chart with faces and names to help them understand company structure |
| Review company and department goals and plans | – Share company-wide priorities and objectives with goal management product – In one of our 1:1s, share how our team goals align with the company goals, and how the new employee supports these objectives – Schedule a session to define and enter goals into performance management solution |
| First manager meeting | – Review expectations for the role – Provide guidance to new employee to build a 30-60-90 day plan – Schedule daily 1:1s for at least two weeks to help your new team member acclimate. After the two-week period, weekly 1:1s help managers and employees stay aligned – Add a reminder to your calendar to check-in over Slack/Chat at least 1 more time during the day – Add 10 minute check-in at the end of Day 1 to answer any questions that may have arisen over the day |
| Get to know the product and services | – New employees to join trainings with new Sales hires on product overviews, pitch deck presentations, etc. This is a great way to learn from a seller’s perspective (as we all have to sell) and get to know more colleagues – Recommend useful reading and reference. Build a library of presentations, playbooks, videos and documents for new hires. – Share client stories so the new employee can understand the customer value of our solution and services. |
| Understand employee sentiment on onboarding experience | – Onboarding survey sent automatically to provide a pulse on the employee’s sentiment and progress – Encourage the employee to solicit feedback along the way from key stakeholders |
| Keep the enthusiasm high | – Be sure to share recognition frequently and publicly with the employee via Email, Slack and other channels used for employee communication – This helps build the new employee’s internal brand and sets them up for early success |
At Reflektive, we are using our product to help develop our virtual onboarding plan. Below are a few useful examples to share for our Reflektive customers:
Organizational Chart
As you introduce new employees to the organization, your organizational chart with faces, names and titles will be more important than ever. This is a neat feature in Reflektive that not too many people know about. Since we integrate with HRIS systems like ADP, Workday, SuccessFactors, Namly and BambooHR, we can easily pull organizational information for all employees to see.
From an employee’s profile, click the org chart icon below their picture and next to their title.
And then navigate from team to team across the company’s organization with a click.
Company Goals
Use Reflektive to share company goals. This feature not only is a great communication tool, it also helps to drive alignment on key organizational priorities.
Click on the Company goals, then expand to see the laddering of goals and subgoals
The org chart view is useful here too, which displays when you click the “View alignment” icon . Now you can share how each team member supports company goals.
Reflektive’s goal management product is also a great segue to talk about goal setting and accountability at your company.
Flexible 1:1s
To boost your new hire’s productivity, we recommend regular 1:1s, scheduled at a high frequency. Reflektive’s 1:1 tool is an intuitive product with the following capabilities:
- Gmail, Slack, MS Outlook, and MS Teams Integrations
- How they help: Enable employees to easily add and see 1:1 agenda items, right in their favorite workplace tools
- Reflektive Best Practice: I pull up my 1:1 agenda items in Gmail shortly before my meeting so I have better context on what we’ll be discussing
- Action Items
- How they help: Visual reminders of what you need to complete to support your new hire
- Reflektive Best Practice: Once my direct report and I align on next steps during our 1:1, I immediately add it to my Action Items. I set aside time each week to review and follow-up on my Action Items.
- Conversation Starters
- How they help: Drive meaningful conversations that an employee may have difficulty introducing, such as career conversations and coaching opportunities.
- Reflektive Best Practice: I use Conversation Starters if I notice that my direct report and I haven’t added many agenda items to our 1:1. If it’s a light week, we can catch up on career goals and share feedback on different projects.
With my 1:1s, I always follow a 4Ps approach: People, Processes, Projects, and Personal. I ask questions in each of these areas to ensure we are probing deeply across my team member’s progress. And as topics are covered you can move them off your agenda list, or reorganize your list to talk about what’s most important first.
Here’s what our 1:1s product looks like:
Onboarding Survey
If you don’t have an automated onboarding survey already set up, work with your HR partner to launch it. Our survey template covers the new hire’s recruiting and orientation experiences, as well as company and manager communication. Some questions include:
- “I received helpful company information during onboarding”
- “I understand my company’s goals”
- “I feel welcome and part of the team”
You can modify the template to add new questions, including ratings scales, free text, and multiple-choice response types. What’s more, you can customize the timing of the survey so that it is delivered at the right point in the employee journey, whether that’s 30 days, six weeks, or two months after the hire date. Once you select the timing, onboarding surveys will be automatically sent to all new hires — no manual intervention needed from the HR team.
Company-Wide Recognition
Recognition is important to keep new employees motivated, and help them feel connected to the company. No longer can you share a “great job” in your team meeting or all hands session. We are using Reflektive’s recognition feature more than we ever have. It’s a great way to give kudos or congratulate a job well done. Giving thanks is super easy – you can do it from Reflektive, Gmail, MS Teams, MS Outlook, and Slack. For extra bonus points, create an incentive program and encourage everyone to step up their recognition game!
Anytime Feedback
Beyond recognition, honest feedback can be invaluable in an employee’s early days at the company. Be sure they know how to easily solicit feedback after key milestones. As a manager, you can reach out directly to key stakeholders to get their unbiased feedback too.
Be sure to check out our online community and our resources section of the website to get more information on best practices and how to’s on the above recommendations.
If you’re looking to craft a thoughtful onboarding plan for your remote employees, please reach out here .