Managing Employees Who Are Pissed Off About Returning to the Office

Sudden change, even if it is for the good, is disruptive. 

—Mahathir Mohamad

 

One of the key lessons I’ve learned in my years in the corporate world is that nothing stays the same for long. Market needs and trends are always in flux, and as a leader you need to be prepared to roll with whatever changes come your way.

The first years of this decade saw a huge jump in the numbers of remote workers. In 2021 the “professional” and office-based sectors “had over 39 percent of their workforce working remotely”—well over double the numbers from only two years earlier. It seems just yesterday that I was getting tons of requests for blog posts, trainings, and presentations specifically focused on managing remote workers. 

Information on managing remote employees is still needed (and relevant), and plenty of people still ask me for guidance in those areas. But over the past year or so there’s been a big push in the corporate world to bring remote workers back to the office. As increasing numbers of organizations adopt back-to-the-office policies, I’m hearing more and more from managers who want advice for dealing with one particular issue: how to handle managing employees who are mad about not working remotely.

If you’re feeling anxious about taking on this topic, fear not! With the right approach and good preparation, you can navigate this challenge effectively and confidently!

 

Acknowledge the Elephant in the Room

 

There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness. 

—Frank Ocean

 

Your employees aren’t stupid. They’ve seen the news headlines and social media posts about the recent surge in “return to office” mandates. Many of them have probably been hoping that they wouldn’t be affected by this shift away from remote work. 

 

 

Now that their roles are being refined as onsite, don’t try to downplay—or, worse, ignore (or obscure)—what this means. When you dance around the edges of this topic, that just leaves your employees ill-informed, anxious, and stressed out. Address the elephant in the room – that this may suck, but it is the new requirement. Making expectations clear to your employees shows them that you respect them as valued contributors to your team or department. 

 

Whether you’ve made the call for everyone to return to the office or are implementing someone else’s decision, explain to your team the rationale behind it. Help them see why this matters and how it will support the organization’s mission, and reframe the shift as not just a loss of flexibility but an opportunity to reconnect with each other. Be sure to link the organizational benefits to their own career advancement and goals, which are bolstered by more opportunities for collaboration, mentoring, and culture building. 

 

Remember, even if this change makes total sense from a business perspective, it will come as unwelcome news to many of your employees.

 

If they’ve been working remotely for a while (perhaps for their entire tenure at your organization, especially if they joined within the past five years or so), they might feel some sense of betrayal. Your role as a leader is to recognize that this change will be difficult for them, to validate its emotional impact on them, and to help them adjust to the new policy. 

 

Manage Your Own Emotions

 

The biggest part of leadership is that you lead by example with your performance first and foremost. 

—Jude Bellingham

 

Just as it’s important to be honest with your employees, you need to be honest with yourself, too. How do you feel about the back-to-the-office mandate? If you’re the one pushing everyone back to the office, have confidence in your ability to assess all the information and make the decision that you truly think is in the organization’s best interest.

 

On the other hand, if you’re merely executing someone else’s plan, then take some time to process your own feelings about it. If you think it’s a good idea, you’re well positioned to “sell” it to your team and to guide them through its implementation. But if you’re unsure about it—or hostile, even—you need to get a grip on your emotions before you try to lead others through the change.

 

 

It’s okay for you to have feelings of frustration or anger about this sort of policy shift. (It is, after all, a very big deal that can affect work–life balance, commuting time and stress, social dynamics in a shared physical workplace, and a whole host of other factors.) Remember, though, that your team takes its cues from you. If you are openly resentful or disengaged, that will make it harder for your employees to adjust to the change—and some of them might see your behavior as an invitation to act similarly. Therefore, if you need to vent, do so with your mentors or peers, not with your reports. When you undermine your employees’ confidence in the organization, you undermine their trust in you, too.

 

Invite the Conversation

 

Communication—the human connection—is the key to personal and career success. 

—Paul J. Meyer

 

Even if there’s little (or no) chance you will change the policy, it’s important to engage in an open conversation with your employees about it. Share information with them, invite their feedback, and answer their questions. 

 

Ask them, “What would make it easier for you to transition to the new policy?” It’s possible that there isn’t a whole lot you will be able to do (be sure to clarify what is—and what isn’t—in your control). But if you’re able to make some minor requested changes, consider doing so, because one small tweak can have a positive cascading effect.

 

Communicating openly about this shift doesn’t necessarily mean opening the door for the decision to be changed. But it does mean treating your employees with care and respect. They don’t expect you to wave a magic wand and magically roll back the new policy. Mostly, they just want to feel heard. Giving them that opportunity can improve the transition experience for them. 

 

Don’t Neglect the Logistics!

 

The details are not the details. They make the design. 

—Charles Eames

 

Usually, the main driver behind a push to get everyone back to the office is management’s belief that employees, teams, and departments will work better when they are all in the same physical space. That goal is impossible to achieve if this shift takes place without the changes and updates that actually make it possible for people to work onsite together.

 

If you don’t want your back-to-the-office implementation to be a case study in “how to ensure that your employees hate this new policy (and possibly management and organization too),” you must be sure to walk the talk. If the goal is to enable people to work alongside each other better, then do everything you can to facilitate that! Putting the desks and offices of team members together is an obvious starting point. 

 

For example, when one large health insurance company instituted a back-to-the-office policy last year (after a decade of allowing employees to work remotely), it claimed that its top priority was to bring everyone together for onsite collaboration. Yet when remote employees started showing up in the office, not only did many of them not have desks in the same area as their team members, but some of them actually found themselves sitting in complete isolation several floors away and interacting with their coworkers via e-mail, messaging, and video calls—exactly as they had done when working remotely. 

 

You can’t assume that allocating chairs and desks is all you need to do to create a shared workplace, though. Desk space is just the tip of the iceberg. People need a ton of other things to be able to work in the office. These include:

• Access badges. (I know this sounds obvious, but I can’t recall how many horror stories I’ve heard of access badges not working when employees showed up for the first day back to the office! Talk about an awful return-to-office experience!)
• Wifi. (Topping the inability to access the building are horror stories of employees moving back onsite and being unable to actually do their work because of lousy wifi and Internet access.)
• Adequate meeting spaces. (If you want people to collaborate in person, they need to be able to gather together.)
• Private/quiet work spaces. (If you’ve ever been in an open office and had to listen to a loud person conduct a client call, you know how important these spaces are!)
• Office supplies. (Even though the vast majority of work is done digitally these days, people still need copy paper, pens, notebooks, post-its, etc. Don’t forget toilet paper and hand soap for the bathrooms, too.)
• Breakroom supplies. (Running out of coffee is a fast ticket to societal collapse in any workplace!)

 

In general, do what you can to ease your employees’ transition from working alone in a home office (or a local coffee shop) to sharing a physical workspace with lots of other people. Look for ways to decrease noise, increase privacy, and improve foot traffic flow. Making the office more comfortable makes it possible for everyone to be more engaged and more productive!

 

Rebuild Trust by Acknowledging Wins

 

Recognition is the greatest motivator.

—Gerard C. Eakedale

 

Enacting a policy change of this caliber risks torpedoing whatever goodwill exists between management and employees. Therefore it’s vital that, as you work through the transition, you conscientiously work to amplify the positives. When you see something good, point it out! Recognize employees’ efforts and celebrate their successes. Highlight what’s working (and make adjustments to what isn’t). As employees see the organization and themselves benefit, morale gets a boost—and they’ll feel more positive about the change. 

 

Reflect and Recommit

 

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them. 

—John C. Maxwell

 

When you’re a leader, you don’t get to take a timeout when things get tough. In fact, it’s when obstacles arise that your leadership skills, knowledge, and capabilities are most needed. 

 

Leading your team through a significant change such as a move back to the office is an opportunity for you to step up to a challenge and shine! As you move through this transition, you’ll encounter plenty of challenges. Disgruntled employees, staffing upheaval when people quit rather than come back to the office, insufficient workplace resources (office space, meeting rooms, etc.) to accommodate all the newly onsite employees, dips in productivity as people get used to new schedules—the list of possible snafus is pretty long. 

 

By leading with purpose, you show your employees how to respond to adversity. When you help them develop their own ability to stand up, dust themselves off, and move forward, you facilitate their growth—and your own, too. For sure, implementing a back-to-the-office policy is a challenging task. But when you draw on all of your leadership skills, you and your team can navigate this transition successfully! 

 

What strategies have you found to be particularly successful for helping remote workers adjust to the move back to the office? Please share them in the comments below!