Embracing the 'New Normal'

Since March 2020, we’ve all been referencing “the new normal.”

We haven’t known what would constitute the new normal; we just knew that, eventually, we’d take off the masks, begin to gather with more than a handful of people from our “pod” and return to restaurants and brick-and-mortar retailers.

Before the pandemic, I never thought the day would come when working from home was even a remote (pardon the pun) possibility for our team at Sharonview. And neither did the team. I thought our culture was what made us special (it still is), but I thought – incorrectly – that we had to all be in the office, together, for that culture to flourish.

When we sent people home two years ago, we all learned valuable lessons. I learned that a strong culture can overcome not having people side by side in an office. No one was more surprised than me.

In July 2021, I shared a post on LinkedIn that included this: “What the pandemic taught me is that a strong culture can thrive even when employees are in different locations.”

We had just moved into our new headquarters building on March 8, 2020 and most of our staff – 185 people – were sent home to work on March 11. And that has gone better than we could have imagined.

As I shared with my team and on LinkedIn last year once our hybrid work experiment was underway:

“We surveyed every team member at corporate. (Obviously, our retail staff needs to be in their branch. Those jobs can’t be done remotely.) We asked employees: If you had your druthers, where would you work? Out of the 180 corporate staff surveyed, 140 people said they wanted to work from home three days a week and at corporate two days.”

That’s what most of our team is doing. It’s up to managers and their teams to determine which days are office days and which days are work-from-home days. Our data supports the effectiveness of a hybrid model. Production went up last year once people were able to be creative about how they put in their work hours.

We’re far from the only company to embrace this new way of working. Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research proclaimed last June: “Hybrid is the future of work.”

There have been hurdles since we announced our hybrid work structure, but our team and its can-do spirit have survived them all. We continue to learn from and with each other as we navigate and even embrace these uncertain, but hopeful, times. Our new hybrid model is still a work in progress, but here are a few things we’re learning as we figure out how to stay connected even though we may not be in the office on the same days.

• Don’t overly rely on meetings via Zoom and Teams. Many of us are “Zoomed out.” I can’t imagine what we’d have done these past couple of years without it, but we need not use video conferencing every time we interact. Sometimes, a phone call suffices. A good rule of thumb for us has been: If it was a meeting in “the before times,” then use video as a meeting platform now. If it was a quick conversation in the break room before, pick up the phone.
• Not every interaction needs to be scheduled. We’ve become so accustomed to inviting teammates to video meetings that we can easily forget that not every encounter needs to be a meeting. I like picking up the phone every so often. Or “pinging” a coworker with a quick question or just to check in. Spontaneous interactions used to happen all the time when we were all in the office Monday through Friday. They still can – but only if we allow time to make or take the occasional impromptu phone call.
• Respect each other’s time away from the office. On the days when our teammates are home, I realize they may not be working a strictly 9-to-5 schedule. I get it; I’m not either. Some teammates have told me they appreciate being able to take a longer lunch to squeeze in a workout. Or they might help kids with homework or shuttle them to activities in the afternoon, and then work a little later to make up for the time away. We’re not all working the same hours anymore. We have to understand that some people won’t be at their laptops when we call or message them. And just because I happen to be working at 8 p.m. one night, I don’t expect my team to be.
• Respect each other’s work preferences. Like many workplaces, we have five generations on the Sharonview team. Some “old-timers” like me may prefer working in an office setting. It’s all we’ve ever known. I’ve told my fellow boomers that if they want to come in five days a week, have at it. But, the youngest folks on our team have never known what it means to come to an office every day. Remote work is all they know, and it feels normal to them. What works for one person may not work for the next, and savvy employers will allow some flexibility and some level of self-determination when it comes to figuring out a work schedule. Companies may need to rewrite their playbooks to account for new virtual rules of engagement.
• Management must model the behavior. If the leadership team and I told the staff it was OK to work from home – but then we didn’t do it ourselves – the team would quickly get the message that it wasn’t really acceptable. Senior leaders need to walk the talk. I’m working one, sometimes two, days a week from home. If the CEO is doing it, then everyone should feel comfortable doing it.

Leaders also have to lead the way when it comes to forging a cohesive team. As I said on LinkedIn: “As a leader, you can’t get up, walk out of your office and bump into colleagues at the copier (in this new normal). You’ve got to be intentional about scheduling calls, getting people together, touching base often. I don’t care how digitized we get, this is still a people business.”

I still prefer being in the office. But my preference isn’t everyone’s. My leadership team and I have encouraged managers and their teams to find a happy medium. Most people have opted to spend two or three days a week in the office and the other days working from home.

Our hybrid work model is allowing us to increase our talent pool. For the first time in our history, we are considering candidates that prefer a hybrid work schedule. The physical location of where an employee works from does not have to be a barrier to hiring the best talent. Companies that don’t allow flexible work arrangements may soon find themselves losing out on their top candidates.

I believe the hybrid work model is here to stay. Recent studies show that more and more companies are adopting it – and employees are responding.

As Forbes reported in November: “Google Workspace recently commissioned Economist Impact to complete a global survey on the state of hybrid work … Over 75% of respondents believe that hybrid/flexible work will be a standard practice within their organizations in the coming three years. Given that 70% of respondents said they never worked remotely before the pandemic, it’s clear that hybrid has become the dominant model for work and that it’s here to stay.”

We’re still figuring out this new normal. But it’s already clear that a new, modern way of working is one silver lining to the challenges COVID-19 has presented.

Bill Partin is President/CEO for the $1.8 billion, Indian Land, S.C.-based Sharonview Federal Credit Union.