It was a long time coming! When California dropped most of its COVID restrictions, our company decided to have a celebration at our corporate headquarters here in Escondido. We wanted to bring everybody—over 100 people—back together for three reasons:
- First and foremost, everyone, everywhere, has been through a pretty rough 15 months. We wanted to give our people an opportunity to get together, face to face, and see that it could be done in a fun and safe way. To respect everyone’s individual feeling of safety, we used a unique approach where each person wore a colored wristband that indicated their comfort level. Those who wanted to keep a six-foot social distance wore a red wristband. People who preferred an elbows-only distance wore yellow. And those of us who wore green bands were basically saying, “Come on in for a hug!”
- We’ve made a lot of changes to our physical office areas during everyone’s work-from-home time, so we gave tours to anyone who asked. Our fabulous Campus Comeback Team—led by the one and only Shirley Bullard, our CAO—redesigned, remodeled, and redecorated most of our office spaces. We are so proud of our beautiful new open space designs where people can safely work together in person.
- There’s something about “breaking bread” together that brings out that real family atmosphere. Because everyone needs to eat, we hosted a made-to-order taco grill in the parking lot with beer and sodas for all and plenty of tables and chairs that made it easy to munch and mingle. It reminded us of the fun we’ve had together at past events and got us excited about today—and tomorrow.
Even though many of our people are not coming back to the office full-time, most will be back at least once or twice a week. Starting out our “new normal” with a successful, well-attended celebration was a great way to show everyone that our offices are back in business—even though everyone has been working harder than ever all this time. It’s okay to come back. It’s still the same place. Welcome!
So how is your organization bringing people back to the workplace? Make sure people feel welcome by bringing them back in a way that lets them know how important they are and how glad you are to see them again.
If you’re not yet sure how to tackle the challenges of bringing people back to your workplace, we have some great content for you to read and watch in our newly updated Returning to the Workplace Resource Center Stream. For even more information, catch our free Returning to the Workplace webinar series featuring luminaries like culture expert Stan Slap on employee culture and commitment; Craig Weber, author of Conversational Capacity, on candor and curiosity; Blanchard president Scott Blanchard on setting a vision and leading people through change, and trust expert Randy Conley on accelerating trust during times of change. Lots of free information you can use to help your organization make your people feel special!