By now, we’re all a couple of months removed from “business as usual” and, although we may have adapted to working from home, most of us are ready to return to our offices and pick up where we left off. At this point, the future is still fairly uncertain but it’s still a good time to start planning for your and your team’s return to work.
There’s no question that returning to the office and working in close quarters with your team will be an adjustment. Your team may be smaller than it was before the pandemic, people may feel emotional (including yourself!), and you will all be faced with the major task of getting the business back up and running. It’s a lot to take on.
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Yet, by starting to plan for this transition now, you can ensure that you, your business, and your team are all primed and ready to jump right back into it. Here are a few things you can expect for your post-pandemic workflow.
There will be a backlog of events to address.
If most of your spring events opted to postpone, these will be your first priority when returning to work. However, in order to reduce the loss of revenue from the pandemic, you still have to keep up with sales and marketing efforts to bring on more clients. For a period of time, we will be juggling postponed events with those that were already booked for this time of year and booking events further out. It will be a busy time and you may need all hands on deck for a few months, but rest assured it will balance out after some time.
You and your team will be more productive.
Working remotely comes with its benefits and many people are, in fact, quite productive from home. Yet, if you’re anything like our team, you’ve likely been spending less time on client work to make up for the questions and check-in calls that are more efficiently addressed in person. Additionally, many of us (including me!) are far more distracted at home when we’re surrounded by family members, electronics, and—if we’re being honest—a nicely stocked fridge. In the office, we’ll be able to leave the distractions behind and get back to work.
Your time will go back to meetings.
Remember back in the day when we used to meet with clients in person? Once we move past the worst of this pandemic and businesses are free to reopen, our schedules will start to fill up again with client meetings. This is, of course, a blessing, but it can still be an adjustment when returning to work. If you feel like you’ve been getting a lot done in your six-, eight- or ten-hour workdays, remember that a fair chunk of that time will get filled with meetings.
You’ll need to make safety adjustments.
Returning to work doesn’t mean the pandemic is behind us; people will still be emotionally impacted by this experience. Business owners need to make sure their employees feel safe coming back to work, with sanitation becoming part of the everyday workflow. Developing a cleaning schedule will be crucial for ensuring a healthy workplace. We also plan to stagger our team’s office hours and encourage telework to be mindful of social distancing guidelines.
The truth of the matter is that this global health crisis is still evolving from day to day, so our industry needs to remain adaptable and ready to go when the time strikes. Although we may not be able to predict what will happen in a month—or even a week—we can still be proactive in our own planning purposes and work with our team to ensure a game plan is in place.
