The Unsurprising Truth about Return to Work Communications

Disappointed, but not surprised.

This summarizes my sentiments about two topics: 1) the percentage of people who remain unvaccinated in this country and are contributing to the rise in COVID-19 infections; and 2) the lack of clear communication by leadership to their teams about vaccinations and expectations around returning to work.

I’m not an expert on the first topic but I will address the second, which relates to internal communications in an increasingly uncertain world, while many teams are (still) working remote for maybe the first time.  

As a career communicator who's worked in companies large and small, alongside CEOs and founding teams, I can say confidently that most early- to mid-stage companies struggle with internal communications. How a company communicates with its employees is often a reflection of how the founding CEO communicates in general. When you get into fields like life sciences and tech, you are often met with CEOs – while brilliant, driven and passionate – who shy away from broad communications to their team and may struggle with introversion.  

Internal communications are not, generally, assigned to a person until most companies are in the hundreds to thousands of employees. Before COVID-19 propelled remote work to become the norm, smaller teams could get by… everyone might gather around a desk or shuffle into an office before a CEO to hear a company update. That doesn’t work when your team is distributed, at home with family and pets, and working different hours. And Slack does not cut it – there is, unfortunately, no replacement for seeing someone's face and hearing their voice as context for a major decision.

So, while it disappoints me, it does not surprise me to hear from people that their companies are ineffectively communicating about return-to-work, or stay-at-home, or get-vaccinated initiatives. If a company doesn’t have a strong position, infrastructure and process for communicating with its employees, it’s going to falter in the face of these deeply personal and highly charged topics. Asking an employee who’s afraid to get vaccinated to get one before returning to work – charged. Asking an employee who is vaccinated but afraid to be around unvaccinated team members – charged. Asking employees to tell you their preference around staying at home vs. coming into work, with the implication that coming into work is the CEO’s preference... yup, charged.

Personally, I WFH full time now, so I don’t have to face these questions – however, my heart hurts for people who do. My sincere hope is that leadership teams are not hasty in their communications about these decisions to their team. While it may have felt like a lot of work to make the decision on what to do next, the real work begins when you start communicating with your team.

Some advice for leadership teams:

• Designate someone to build an internal communications plan for how to roll out COVID-19 / return-to-work decisions to the team.
• Provide context on why you made the decision(s) and what you think it will do to support the goals of the business and your team.
• Tie context to core values, and in doing so, reenforce your culture. If you don’t have core values, develop them.
• Ensure two-way feedback is part of your plan. Gather questions from the team that you address in a companywide meeting before enforcing said decision(s).
• Prepare your managers first. Encourage them to have conversations with their direct reports that are driven by empathy, listening and understanding.
• Keep getting feedback, and track engagement. Add questions about return to work and COVID-19 to employee engagement surveys, or start one now if you don’t have one.

The world of work is changing… and with that how we communicate with one another. It requires more frequent, vulnerable and open exchanges – which can inspire trust in your employees and increase engagement. These times are hard, but they are ours. And they can, ultimately, make your company better if you do it right.