Clear is kind: How to refine your return-to-office plan

If you’ve been working in internal communications during the past three years, give yourself a pat on the back. COVID taxed all of us to the max.

And even now, with mandates and regulations winding down, many communications leaders still have the granddaddy of all unprecedented challenges to manage: telling people that their office presence is … expected? Required? Hybrid? Optional? Dependent on their role?

Not an easy message, whichever one you need to deliver.

If you’re in the middle of the tangled return-to-office process and things aren’t going as well as you anticipated, or if your teams haven’t begun the migration, here are a few steps that may smooth your path.

1. Look back.

When looking back, look all the way back to the beginning. Find and review every email, newsletter, and video you shared back in 2020 when your company sent people to work from home. What language did you use? What promises did you make? Is there room for interpretation about what “return” would entail?

Even if you forgot what you said way back when, there’s a chunk of your employees who most certainly did not. If your requirements for return-to-office now are not congruent with what you said then, you’ll need to add a layer of comms to acknowledge the gap and explain it.

2. Survey says…