Phase Back Where
Life requires the ability to be flexible enough to adjust to change. On a daily basis, you decide what clothes to put on to maintain the body temperature you like based on the weather. Every day. You also make clothing decisions based on what activity you must complete. This is enjoyable for most of us because we get to choose clothes from our self-curated closet. Sometimes these decisions take more thought but overall we get it done and don’t go out the door naked or in our jammies. On a personal level, this is a part of our daily phase.
Seasonal Phase
Reacting to the seasons as they change actually creates time. When every day feels the same, you can become complacent with time use and the lack of newness makes life boring, resulting in a scarcity of new memories. Memories are the stuff of life. Throughout the last year, days have blended into each other for many of us who spent more time repeating routines without leaving home. For those who had to go out to work, the opposite was happening and they often wanted life to stop with all the surprises. There wasn’t enough sameness to go on autopilot long enough to rest. Even though the weather outside might have been identical.
Name that phase
Many businesses want employees to return to their previous location to work. They cite examples of other companies who managed to make their staff return. No one actually knows if this is a good idea or not since there is no data on this decision. Long term side effects are often what keep harmful medical innovations from meeting a large scale market. The business world does not regulate emotional safety and human resources often end up dealing with those who suffer. Or employees flee to another employer who might care more. A good way to determine if your employer values mental health is to check the cultural slogans thrown around. If the past year’s goal didn’t represent the real world, that should give you some idea what your company stands for. Selfish slogans represent a disconnection with employees as well as clients. Clients like to trust in the fact that if you look like you take care of your staff, they are in good hands. If an inadequate slogan was repeated over and over in an attempt to make employees believe it, that is sorta like trying to fit a size ten foot into a size nine shoe. Not really caring and the fit impedes progress.
The Caring Phase
Companies who really want their employees to return and thrive healthfully while minimizing risk need to adjust to this new season. It is critical to demonstrate the actions that prove that an employer is willing to think more about the safety and mental health of the individual who is interacting with clients, closing the big deals, making the widgets, dealing with the emotions at work and changing their tasks to put others first. It isn’t a time to flourish successfully, it’s a time to lick our wounds and recover, regroup and challenge the usual process. To change. The company’s need to control where you are should not supersede your why you can work from anywhere. Even for companies that prospered during the pandemic, not acknowledging a need to create a better model seems tone deaf. When companies put employees first, the business grows organically because all of the employees work toward the goal willingly with the knowledge that they are cared for. There is no need to survey what is really needed because within us we know what to do; there is a seasonal change in adjusting to our next phase required. Businesses have adapted to new chapters in the world since the first caveman sold the first wheel. Since there are humans running most businesses, they really do know what to do once they choose to do so. They just have to be daring enough to do it.
Outside of the usual benefits, how does your company make you feel cared for? What tangible methods does your employer use to create an environment that others want to model? What does it take for a company to be innovative and courageous in deciding what is needed for the changing work world?
