Employees of all stripes are finding their way back to desks, even just a few days a week. But the transition has not been easy for everyone.In many cases, lots of simple things that people were good at before the pandemic, from meal prep to face-to-face conversations and socialising with colleagues, are no longer second nature, because workers are out of practice. Plus, because of people’s differing attitudes to remote work, re-entering the open-plan offices that workers left behind in 2020 has been uplifting for some and jarring for others or even a confusing mixture of the two.

Back To Office But Out Of Practice

Some people, after having complete control over their working environments at home, are more socially anxious and less tolerant of the irritations that come with being surrounded by colleagues. Others, meanwhile, might be so happy to be in an office with colleagues that they wind up breaching rules of social etiquette that used to be there.‘Being in the office’ isn’t the same as it was before; the way many companies use offices has changed as remote and hybrid work becomes more entrenched. The purpose the office serves now – and the rules around our behaviours in it – are still evolving.

We Forgot How We Behaved In Office

The shift from full-time remote working to a hybrid format is a required adjustment in the new way of knowledge-working – and for many, it’s been a clunky process. Many workers are finding it difficult to shake off the work-from-home habits they’ve developed that no longer belong in the office – things like taking client meetings in loungewear, stealing cheeky mid-afternoon naps or even pacing around the room to think through an idea.On the upside, some of these habits will dissipate over time, because the office will force workers back into appropriate behaviour.

The Stuff We Are Used To While Working From Home

Workers used to go to offices to do all their work, both their heads-down solo tasks as well as their group work. But now, in-office days in a hybrid environment often have a new, highly specific purpose, which is to foster socialisation and collaboration. Some workers are finding their colleagues have lost the etiquette – and even decorum ­– required in an office setting. With a focus on socialisation, many colleagues are boisterous in ways they haven’t been in the past, leaving workers who still have to get individualised work done in inhospitable situations annoyed.

The Changing Purpose Of Going To An Office

There's this need to connect on such a large level after being isolated for two or three years, so the office, for those who are going back to work, is really kind of seen as this place to finally connect and share ideas.The workers who are bothered by disruptions may also be more sensitive now than they were prior to office closures. They have adjusted so thoroughly to their remote environments, curated exactly how they want them, that even a baseline ‘normal’ amount of disruption may be too much.However, as going to the office becomes the norm, workers will adjust, as they always do.

Oversensitivity To Disruptions

How we work may have changed, but office etiquette: not so much. Have workers spent so much time at home they’ve forgotten the rules of the workplace?

Stashed ideas

Have people forgotten how to behave in the office?

Many managers are mandating their employees back to in-person work, yet they come in once every few weeks. Employees have to begrudgingly complete long and expensive commutes to sit in a small or dark room in a co-working space while the bosses work from home.

Managers require staff back to in-person work

Some bosses claim a lack of space keeps them home, while others might say they don't need to come into the office as they are doing more high-level work. There is also the possibility that some managers see working from home as a benefit of seniority. But it is not leading by example. Yet not all managers change the rules because they are in power. Statistically, managers were among the most burned-out workers in 2021. Managers act on the temptation to stay home and reduce stress even if they otherwise want to lead by example.

Not leading by example 

If the manager isn't coming in while they expect their staff to, the absence may be seen as:<ul><li>A lack of care around the most basic of employee needs.</li><li>It can breed tension and discord as well as break down the foundational relationships needed in a workplace.</li><li>It can cause a lack of trust and make employees feel ignored or deprioritised.</li><li>Teams may feel demotivated because they feel they have no control, no autonomy and aren't valued. </li></ul> This widespread lack of motivation will ultimately impact business outcomes.

The impact of an unfair rule 

The shift to remote work was quickly applied across the board, but companies struggled to standardise plans. There is no consensus on how often workers should return to the office. This means no one is on the same page and sets the stage for a damaging double standard between managers and reports. As organisations firm up their remote policies, it will also give some managers less room to interpret rules to their own advantage.

‘No one’s on the same page’

Many managers are mandating their employees back to in-person work. Except they’re not always following the same rules.

The double standard of the return-to-office

The U.S. wedding business is expected to total some $57.9 billion this year, up 2.1 percent from last year, but still well behind the heady, pre-pandemic volume of just over $70 billion.The three largest business categories are ceremony and reception hosting, photography, and planning.These businesses were rocked hard by the pandemic, as government-mandated shutdowns and personal fears led to a 35 percent reduction in wedding-related business volumes between 2019 and 2020.

Wedding Plans, Post Pandemic

According to a recent study, just 20 percent of Millennials shunned marriage in 2020; today, 36 percent say they don't want to get hitched.Further complicating matters, those who are marrying seem predisposed to smaller weddings versus the high-flying, pre-Covid days.

Marriage Is No Longer A Priority

The industry will need all the good news it can get.<ul><li>Many of the staple traditions of the wedding "event" are now being questioned by younger consumers.</li><li>Things like a paid wedding planner, big receptions, large diamond engagement rings, and matching bridesmaid dresses have all lost 10 or more points of popularity among young people.</li></ul>

All The Extravagant Rituals Are Being Questioned

After two years of pandemic losses, the industry is on the upswing, but in a different way.

Understanding the Changing Business of Weddings

Transitioning back into business travel after the pandemic isn’t as simple as buying a plane ticket. Individuals are having to remember how to pack efficiently, adjust to time zone changes, and modify their meeting schedules — and that’s on top of monitoring differences in travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, and virus risk levels throughout the world.

Back On The Road And In The Air

<ul>
<li>Evaluate the benefit. Think carefully about where you believe travel would add the greatest benefit versus working remotely.</li>
<li>Right-size the investment. Even as you’re able to fold more business travel into your schedule, question whether all the travel you used to do really needs to be added back in.</li>
<li>Pace yourself by starting small, and then building up after you see how you feel.</li>
<li>Leave margin. If you’ve got important business travel, give yourself more flexibility than you used to do, and make sure you have access to everything you need, like food and car rentals.</li>
</ul>

Transition Back Into Work Travel

<ul><li>Team retreats to craft strategy</li><li>Visits to international worksites to facilitate communication across cultural and language barriers</li><li>Sales negotiations to land deals</li><li>Conferences to network</li></ul>

Reasons To Travel: What Benefits From Getting Out

Four strategies for your next business trip.

How to Ease Back into Traveling for Work

Workcations are becoming popular in many nations. Workcations combine work and vacation, such as booking a mountain cabin for a week while working a full-time job remotely. While it may seem counter-intuitive, experts argue that we've adapted sufficiently during the pandemic to reap the benefits.

Workcation 

Before the pandemic, some white-collar workers already took advantage of bleisure travel, travel that combines business trips with leisure trips.
What is different now is that more people can take advantage of workcations. Workers can now have some downtime in a great environment and fit in a different pattern of days; taking longer over lunch, breaking earlier.
In a survey of 1,000 people who took a workcation, 80% felt the trip had increased their productivity and creativity and helped them recharge their mental and emotional batteries.

Recharged

The popularity of workcations may seem at odds with the idea that we should separate work and play. But experts see bleisure and workcations as an example of work-life integration, a more realistic concept than striving for 'work-life balance', where work and life are in competition. The main attraction to combining work and play is the flexibility it presents. Workers can decide how, where and when they want to incorporate leisure time in their work.

Capitalising on flexibility

Workcations shouldn't replace holidays. People still need time away from work. Workcations can complement paid time of, rather than becoming a substitute. Otherwise, work-related stress and burnout could increase.

Work-free vacations

We’ve been taught to keep work and play apart. Yet more of us are still taking workcations, years into the pandemic – and reaping the benefits. The trend could be here to stay.

Workcations: The travel trend mixing work and play

Post-pandemic marketing will continue to increase spending on digital channels, such as social media (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc.) because consumers have become educated in online shopping.
It’s usually more expensive for companies to break consumer habits, but the pandemic broke the habit of going to brick-and-mortar stores and steered consumers towards e-commerce and app shopping.

Inclined Towards E-Commerce

Social media continues to evolve and produce tools for retailers so they’re able to direct and track traffic coming from different channels, whether it’s from influencer marketing or direct marketing through the brand’s own platforms.
The technologies will continue to evolve that will decrease the cost of digital marketing, making it a very lucrative form of marketing for businesses of all sizes and at all stages.

Social Media Marketing Getting Affordable

If the target group is Gen Z, it’s best to turn to TikTok. If the target group is Gen Y (millennials), it’s best to turn to Instagram and YouTube. Also, Gen Z is present on Instagram and YouTube, so it’s important to analyze data of each platform before diving in to market. 
Lastly, it is important to analyze available formats and understand what best works for your industry. For example, on one hand, videos lend themselves beautifully for makeup or cooking tutorials.

The Platforms

Small businesses can leverage Instagram Live and Facebook Live to boost customer spending in a few ways. First, small businesses can partner with influencers and invite guests relevant to their industries to provide valuable information (e.g., healthy recipes to boost your immune system during the pandemic) to their customers.
Small businesses can hold their own live sessions where they tell their customers (including ex-customers and potential customers) what is new in their stores and how to buy during the pandemic, e.g., curbside pickup or seeing the items “in person” through FaceTime.

Instagram And Facebook As Marketing Tools

The first step on your social media journey is to do research—do your homework! Research where your target audience is “hanging out,” so to speak, virtually?Also, if you are going to hire help, do not hire interns or entry-level [employees]; social media has grown a lot more advanced and its use of analytical tools is on the rise. There needs to be a person who will advise you about what strategy to set that makes sense for your target demographic and industry.

Getting Started On Social Media Marketing: The first step

The second step would be to understand what content to produce that your audience can binge, so to speak. 
Content is still king on social media, and each brand needs to plan it carefully because that content is what gets the customers through the virtual door.

Getting Started On Social Media Marketing: The Second step

We would advise small businesses to have a budget equivalent to a senior-level marketer’s salary, e.g., $120,000. This is why it is often cost effective to hire an agency—a small business gets a whole team of experienced staff for the price of one employee.
As a last resort, if the small business is really in a budget crunch, hire a senior-level marketer part-time. This person will still be more cost-effective and will provide long-term solutions and anticipate future problems.

The Required Budget

There are many ways to measure ROI on social media. Some of the main key performance indicators (KPIs) we use for our clients: follower growth, website traffic from customized links, promo codes for sales, subscribers for newsletters, customers filling out forms to receive sample products (e.g., skincare), or foot traffic to physical stores.
Decide with your agency or marketing person on the ways it makes the most sense for your brand’s goals to measure ROI, and what KPIs you will use to track performance.

Measuring ROI

It’s important to discuss the common pitfalls, which again [goes] back to working with an agency or a senior-level marketing person, in order not to make those elementary mistakes. 
 One of the common pitfalls we see with influencer marketing is that small businesses will try influencer marketing for one to three months and make a swift conclusion that it does not work.

Common Pitfalls

It’s important to keep the consumer decision journey in mind—the consumer needs to see your product at least seven times before making a decision to purchase. Hence, allow some time and all your campaigns to sink in before pulling the plug. 
Spread out your budget rather than jumping the gun and going in too quickly. Pick influencers as brand advocates who share values with your brand and are there for a long-term partnership.

The Customer Is Foremost

Digital marketers and social media mega-influencers Amra and Elma Beganovich on how to develop a marketing strategy to weather the current crisis and to thrive when it’s over.

Post-Pandemic Marketing: Will Your Company Be Ready for the New Business Landscape?

Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.

Management is the belief that you don't have to do everything yourself or even know how to do everything.  All managers share a common purpose - that of helping a group of people achieve a common goal. The job of a manager: <ul><li>Building a team that works well together.</li><li>Supporting members in reaching their career goals.</li><li>Creating processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently.</li></ul>

Definition of a manager

Leadership is the skill of being able to help guide and influence people.A manager is a role. For a manager to be effective, she should be a leader. But a leader doesn't have to be a manager. The job as a manager is to empower your team to find solutions, not to "save the day".

Leadership vs Management

All the tasks that a manager has to do can be put into one of three categories:<ol><li>Purpose - the outcome your team is trying to accomplish. It is also known as the why. Your job as a manager is to ensure your team knows what success looks like and care about achieving it.</li><li>People, or the who. Are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills, and are they motivated?</li><li>Process, or how your team works together. You may have a great team that understands the end goal, but tasks can get overly complicated if it's not clear how everyone is supposed to work together.</li></ol>

Conditions that increase the success of a team

Feedback is a powerful tool to help your team grow. <ul><li>Ensure that feedback is specific and actionable.</li><li>Clarify what success looks and feels like. </li><li>The next steps. Instead of suggesting the next steps, empower your team to learn on their own. Ask what they think the next steps should be? Then allow them to guide the discussion.</li></ul>

The art of feedback

A great manager needs to get a deep knowledge of their strengths, values, comfort zones, blind spots, and biases. If you don't know how to manage yourself, you won't have a good handle on how to best support your team. Questions to help you understand yourself:<ul><li>How would people close to me describe me in three words?</li><li>What three qualities of myself am I the proudest of?</li><li>The top three pieces of positive feedback I've received?</li><li>What does my inner critic constantly tell me?</li><li>Can I name three common feedbacks on how I could be more effective?</li></ul>

Managing yourself

Good meetings have an ideal outcome, not just a purpose.  <ul><li>Decision-making meetings should get a decision made, include the stakeholders, present options or recommendations, and allow for dissenting opinions.</li><li>Informal meetings should make participants feel like they learned something that they could engage in and communicate.</li><li>Feedback meetings get everyone on the same page and end with the next steps.</li><li>Idea-generating meetings should consider all ideas from individuals that first brainstorm alone.</li></ul>

Great meetings

Hiring is the opportunity to build the future of your organisation.<ul><li>Hiring managers should list what they consider ideal candidates.</li><li>Interviews are first impressions, so try to create a great interview experience.</li><li>Seek out trusted recommendations.</li><li>Use multiple interviewers to reduce bias and notice any red flags easily missed by one person.</li></ul>

Hiring well

Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller! Congratulations, you're a manager! After you pop the champagne, accept the shiny new title, and step into this thrilling next chapter of your career, the truth descends like a fog: you don't really know what you're doing. That's exactly how Julie Zhuo felt when she became a rookie manager at the age of 25. She stared at a long list of logistics--from hiring to firing, from meeting to messaging, from planning to pitching--and faced a thousand questions and uncertainties. How was she supposed to spin teamwork into value? How could she be a good steward of her reports' careers? What was the secret to leading with confidence in new and unexpected situations? Now, having managed dozens of teams spanning tens to hundreds of people, Julie knows the most important lesson of all: great managers are made, not born. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager. The Making of a Manager is a modern field guide packed everyday examples and transformative insights, including: * How to tell a great manager from an average manager (illustrations included) * When you should look past an awkward interview and hire someone anyway * How to build trust with your reports through not being a boss * Where to look when you lose faith and lack the answers Whether you're new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you wish you had.

The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

Async communication means exchanges don’t have to happen in real-time, but rather on the schedule that works best for each person.
It allows people to set their own work hours and collaborate seamlessly across different time zones.

What’s async?

Connecting with teammates on a personal level can be an important component of culture. But team culture and human connection are primarily built by how you work together — not how you socialize together.Fostering greater social connections won’t create a stronger team culture unless you’re first operating on clear and consistent values in your work. Start there first. Don’t let a focus on creating social connections distract you from all of the other things that create a strong cultural foundation.

Team culture is primarily built by how you work together

<ol>
<li>Make attendance truly optional. Some people want to socialize, some don't. This way, you’ll serve those that truly crave this interaction and create a better outcome for all involved.</li>
<li>Treat social activities as part of the workday, not an extracurricular. </li>
<li>Remember what truly unites you: your work. The work you do is what actually brings you together. One of the biggest benefits of remote work is that it provides the opportunity to spend more on the people and things you care about outside of work. Don't sabotage that with a bunch of forced social events.</li>
</ol>

Three principles for fostering the social side of team culture

Team culture is primarily built by how you work together, not how you socialize together. Learn how Doist builds human connection on an async-first team.

How to Humanize Async Work

<ol><li>Completing a project</li><li>Receiving recognition for your work</li><li>Reaching a professional milestone</li><li>Achieving a team goal</li><li>Winning new business</li><li>Socializing with co-workers</li><li>Brainstorming sessions</li><li>Utilizing amenities</li><li>Attending meetings</li><li>Attending internal social events</li><li>Utilizing shared spaces.</li></ol> What did people find fulfilling? Getting their work done.

Providers of fulfillment at work before the pandemic

Employers wondering how to keep their employees happy post-pandemic don’t have to look far. Office workers are placing more and more value on the flexibility and personal autonomy that remote work provides far from the distractions of the office. An April 2021 FlexJobs survey with 2,100 respondents found that 65% said they want to remain full-time remote workers after the pandemic. Perhaps most worrying for employers: 58% of workers said they would search for a new job if they could not continue remote work in their current role.

Keeping employees happy post-pandemic

Ping pong table? Office yoga? Craft beer on tap? Here are the perks employees say make them happiest...

How to Keep Your Employees Happy Post-Pandemic [comic] | Doist Blog

A fear or feeling of uncertainty is never a pretty picture. This usually happens when we&#39;re frustrated about not having control over something or when we feel hurt and criticized.
The feeling of uncertainty is like having someone poke our heart and from then our defense mechanism would start to kick in until it it grows into a continuous blaze until we&#39;re in full-on disaster mode and in order to cope with this gigntic fire we either yell, throw a tantrum, shut down, or even isolate ourselves.
But during this time we must remember to be more loving towards ourselves and that it will pass.

Spinning Into Disaster Mode

The secret to preventing a meltdown from happening is to catch it early because it will still be manageable. In order to prevent a meltdown we must do the following:
<ul>
<li>Take a few deep breaths</li>
<li>Give ourselves compassion and space to then</li>
<li>Let go and move on </li>
</ul>
But how do we catch it early? The answer to that is through reflect from previous experiences and practice. When we start noticing where the spark comes from it will be easier to recognize and not to add fuel to it.

Have people forgotten how to behave in the office?

The double standard of the return-to-office

Understanding the Changing Business of Weddings

How to Ease Back into Traveling for Work

Workcations: The travel trend mixing work and play

Orla Braun