It will be years before we understand the real and full impact of our COVID years. The impacts on our children and their education, the economy, how we socialize, and how we work are only now starting to become clear. But a few key things are already clear, at least for now. And not all of them are bad.
We still have many important business questions to answer… Do we remain largely virtual? Do we come back to the office? Do we install a hybrid culture, and what does that look like? Who gets to work from home and who has to come in? These are important questions, and each organization must, and will, work these issues out for themselves.
But one thing that COVID has allowed us to do is just relax a few elements of the way we work. Yes… COVID has allowed us to r-e-l-a-x a little. How? Lots and lots of ways.
We have relaxed our dress codes to a more “business comfortable” model.
We have relaxed the barriers between home and work. We are less fearful of acknowledging that we have things going on in our personal lives that may distract us in the moment.
We have seen each other’s kids walking around behind our colleagues on camera.
We know what each other’s pets look like.
We have welcomed each other into certain rooms in our home, via video… and yes, those views tend to be highly curated (we show what we want to show). But still.
Yes, there are lots of negatives from the last three years. It has been hard in many ways. But there has also been some good as well.
As we evolve our organizations in a post-COVID world, we need to remember that the people we work with have enjoyed these relaxed barriers. They have enjoyed being allowed to be more real, and more human, with each other. In most cases, they have proved that they can get their work done well in a virtual environment.
And so organizations and their leaders need to remember all of this as we rebuild our post-COVID business culture. If nothing else, COVID has forced leaders to examine their own agility. Leaders who ignore these changes do so at their own peril.
Have a great day.
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Agree with you Dean – it’s a different world post-covid, but not only post-covid. Perhaps covid accelerated the already occurring trend of bringing one’s whole self to work. As generations raised with social media enter the workforce transparency has been on the rise for years. Looking forward to personally evolving in that light and seeing others do the same.