Here Comes the “Messy Middle”

Good news! Vaccinations are readily available, restaurants are increasing capacity, friends and family are coming to the house and, for the first time in over a year, coming inside.

As things slowly return to “normal,” that means that businesses – and the office environment in particular – will go back to the way things were before, right?

Well, probably not.

Yes, we are entering a new phase. But it’s likely to be the hardest phase of all.

Consider this: More than Twelve percent of U.S. workers have physically relocated more than 50 miles, and another twenty-four percent are considering or planning to move as a result of COVID. “Second-tier” cities – places like Austin, Boise, Raleigh, Charlotte – are booming, as workers, who are no longer tied to a physical office location, have sought out places to live that are less expensive and less crowded.

Nobody knows how things will finally shake out, but one thing is certain: Many of these people are not moving back.

The Messy Middle

In the “old days” (AKA, pre-2020), most people worked in an office location. Then, with the pandemic, nearly every professional switched to working remotely.

Now, we are once again moving into uncharted territory – a permanent hybrid approach. It’s not what we did pre-pandemic, and it’s not what we did during the pandemic – it’s the Messy Middle, and it’s anything but business as usual.

To manage this new reality, companies are taking one of three approaches:

#1. Considering or Already Committed to Hybrid

These leaders are being thoughtful and proactive. They are surveying their people to find out what they need and want. They realize that for millennials and those younger in particular, it’s no longer a question of whether they can work remotely – it’s how often and under what circumstances.

Health, wellness, safety, and flexibility have been rediscovered. Everyone is a flight risk, and these companies are figuring out what needs to happen to ensure they attract and keep top talent.

#2. Wait and See

These companies want to make a smart decision, but they are not involving employees or sharing their thinking for the most part: “Let’s just get through the summer and see how things go. We will make a decision in the fall.”

The problem with this reactive approach is that uncertainty breeds stress. The longer you keep your employees in limbo, the more you contribute to their burnout and the greater their incentive to leave in search of more certainty.

Even if your plans are not yet fully baked, keeping people in the dark while waiting for the world to provide answers is not a prudent option.

#3. Wing It

These companies jump from tactic to tactic, none of it rooted in strategy or even a coherent philosophy.

Somebody in the C-Suite reads an HBR article and that becomes today’s approach. Somebody else decides that “we are better together,” and dictates that everyone must return to the office as before. Things change from week to week because none of it is tied to anything in particular.

If you want to witness an exodus of brain power and experience, this is your recipe.

What Needs to Happen

Navigating through the Messy Middle means drawing on the best of both worlds – in-office and remote. For leaders in hybrid work, these are the top priorities:

Maintaining company culture

Previously, culture was in-person focused and, for the most part, something that occurred organically. We can’t go back to this informal approach.

Many companies have worked hard during the pandemic to keep things “remote friendly.” As some people start returning to the office, the collision between in-person and remote is inevitable. Culture helps people make decisions – it needs to be addressed directly and must be consistent (“portable”) across all locations.

Maintaining team cohesion

Before the pandemic, it was left up to “the remote people” to figure out and make distance work viable. In a high-functioning hybrid environment, it’s everyone’s responsibility to ensure that processes, systems, and technology allow remote workers to have equal access and add equal value.

We can’t return to a place where we forget to patch in remote callers to a meeting, or a “side conversation” after the formal meeting changes what was agreed upon, or the watercooler grapevine functions as the true source of inside information. There is a need to formalize and explicitly share with those at a distance. Great technology alone is not enough.

Breaking down COVID-increased silos

For many people, COVID narrowed the world in which they operate and the breadth of people with whom they interact. Serendipity has been removed, hardening departmental silos as a result. Left to its own, distance breaks down human connection and relationship, negatively impacting trust, efficiency, retention, and profitability.

Formal and informal team building through intentional new team launches or onboarding new members, accountability to norms, and informal social interactions, helps employees get to know each other as people first, and coworkers second.

Balancing employee input with top-down decisions

You may not know what your final decisions will be. Nevertheless, it’s critical to seek input from employees – at all levels – and share the foundational principles or key points that will be used in developing your return to office plan.

For those who work in your organization, there is as much stress in not knowing when or how the answers will come, as there is in not knowing the answers themselves.

Recruiting and retaining top talent

With distance largely removed, workers have more options than ever before. It’s fine to say, “Our people come first,” but it needs to play out in practice. Those who don’t want to come into the office, or who need a flexible work schedule to care for an aging parent, will find those accommodations elsewhere if we don’t provide it.

Further, it’s vital that leaders remove potential imbalances between those who work in-person and those who work remote, whether that means tech support, access to resources, onboarding processes, or in-office perks like food, swag, and other intangibles.

Get Comfortable with the Messy Middle

The past is gone and it’s not coming back – the Messy Middle has arrived. Whatever form our post-pandemic workplace takes, we need to decide what to keep, what to adapt, and what to toss entirely from our previous way of doing things.

Successful companies will be those that embrace change, involve employees, formalize processes and culture, and learn to communicate clearly and consistently across the organization, as the world, inevitably, continues to surprise us.