After 42 hours of listening to people's experiences of work, in this episode, Taryn is talking about how nobody wants to go back to the office full time. Only 3 people out of the 42 have said they would consider going back to the office full time.
People are meeting in person, but they're not going to the office. They're meeting in restaurants and coffee shops. Does this mean the office needs to turn into a coffee shop?
Even if you go back to the office, the work is all online. So your team meetings and client meetings are still happening on the screen, and offices aren't set up for that. The WiFi can't cope with all the simultaneous on-line meetings, the open-plan offices don't give people enough privacy and are too noisy for effective online work.
In the mean time, the job of a leader stays the same: build engagement, team cohesion and a sense of purpose. Before March 2020, leaders could say they were building engagement and community because people were together in the office. But that wasn't necessarily the case.
The leadership opportunity is to use become intentional and skilled at building the employee experience and meaningful team engagement. How can leaders use the online meeting tools as ways of building connection, not as task management tools?
Listen to the podcast to find out more.