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Part 3
What You Missed About Remote Work in 2020
Navigating Future Ripples in Remote Work
We finally are nearing the end of the pandemic and the effects, or are we?
In 2020, the pandemic produced a big splash. However, the resulting ripples included a rapid shift to remote work, Zoom fatigue, feelings of isolation, stress built up from managing multiple responsibilities and activities at home, or just even finding a quiet place to work at home some days. Those were just the work-related ripples.
Beware Forced Transformation
Keep in mind that the pandemic represented a forced transformation in how we work. Those of us who help guide change management efforts never use “forced” and “transformation” together. Transformations take time to be absorbed by the organization and trying to push a transformation to completion can lead to numerous problems. These problems have been well known and documented from the 1990s to even recently.
Because transformations can be challenging, some organizations try the same transformation multiple times (agile, anyone?) to different types of transformations to make a change in the business. But these frequent attempts (and failures) at systemic change produce a form of change fatigue where the people of an organization refuse the change.
What Comes Next?
So if the pandemic represented one big splash, what might be the next? Most likely, the next big splash moves us back to the office.
The pandemic fundamentally changed the way we worked. Now, after more than a year, with many employees working remotely, employers change the nature of work again by moving back to the office.
Some employers see going back to the office as a return to normal, but it does introduce a change. For those employees who have grown accustomed to remote work and are being forced back into the office, tensions build.
