“Return” to Work?
Haven’t we been working this entire time? It sure feels that way.
I was only half-paying attention when the on-air correction caught my ear. I was happily typing away at some news copy when the anchor read an introduction about the latest survey on how Canadians feel about the “return to work”.
“What we’re really talking about is a return to the office,” replied the guest. And his correction slapped me awake. It also made me glad someone else wrote that intro.
The guest reminded us that we’ve been working from home this entire time — and working pretty hard too. It wasn’t lost on me that the reporter was broadcasting from his makeshift home studio, complete with ring light and shaky audio, while the anchor was one of the few allowed into the studio during this stage of lockdown.
What’s really being discussed right now is, what does the next phase of “work” look like for us. Because it’s becoming clear, there’s no going back.
It’s not just a return to the office. The service industry and trades are somehow surprised that workers aren’t keen to return to low wages and jobs that don’t have benefits. Top it with the Great Resignation and the message from workers is clear: we didn’t choose to work this way for the past 17 months, so we want to choose how we work from now on.
Every summer, no matter how my work year was structured, I would take some time to mentally reflect on my job and what I wanted for the next year. I think it’s a hold-over from years of schooling where I would spend the month of August hoping for my favourite teachers and who I wanted to have in my class. It’s a mental reset I’ve done for many years and helped me set goals for when I went “back” to work — even if I was only gone for a weekend.
But last year, in what was the mid-point of my work-from-home situation in my last job, I didn’t have the clarity to think my way through another year of working that way. I was so burned out from having to adapt to the entirety of lockdown life, I couldn’t see the path before me.
I could barely process what happened to my life between March 2020 and August 2020. Those five months were a whirlwind of understanding the viral spread of the pandemic, how to safely buy groceries, where to set up a home office and when I was ever going to see my family again.
Instead of taking stock of what worked and what I could do differently in another year working from home, I could only muster the bandwidth to promise myself to just try and make it through the year. I decided to coast. This would be a “lost year” where I didn’t try to make huge moves at work.
Then in typical pandemic-style, all plans were thrown right out the window. I lost my job in February, 2021. Even though I wasn’t planning on making huge moves, the company had different ideas.
And it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
The sudden disruption to my work week jolted me awake. And having a completely clear schedule finally gave me the clarity to look back at what worked and what didn’t work. Not just during the pandemic and working from home, but my entire career — the full path that got me to this point.
It took months, but I finally figured out a path to follow - and it’s one I’m making on my own terms.
The question of whether or not I do this work in an office outside my home is the last issue I had to figure out. True, I’m really thriving working freelance and building a media consulting business from my home. But can I continue to thrive if part of my work week is in a physical newsroom? Probably.
Whether or not we return to daily commutes, water cooler chats and break room coffee should be the last issue you address. There are bigger questions to ask of yourself and your employer when figuring out what a “return” looks like.
Starting with, does this work still work for me? Ask yourself that question, then see where the answer takes you.
