As companies bring employees back to corporate offices this year, internal communications teams will remain in the spotlight, striving to effectively anticipate and answer any questions and concerns before they arise.
For employees who have been working from home for over a year, the idea of wearing real pants and in-person social interaction are already causing apprehension about the pending return. However, the greatest source of unease about re-entering the corporate world is — continued uncertainty. No matter what your workplace will look like when the pandemic ends, bringing clarity and comfort to returning employees is the key to success.
We recommend three pieces of content that companies can start preparing now to be ready for the transition.
#1 Welcome Back
It’s an exciting time! We suggest starting with a Welcome Back video to tell your employees how excited you are to be back together. Take this opportunity to remind your team about any standards that are still in place and set expectations about how they should interact with one another. Remember, it has been over a year since many team members have had contact with other colleagues, so they may need some guidance about how to handle things like in-person meetings.
It is also a good time to remind them of any policies that are still in place upon return such as social distancing or mask usage. Some executives may even want to use this as an opportunity to encourage employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
#2 What’s New
Work has changed over the past year, forcing many companies to evolve their expectations for employees. Maybe you’ve decided to implement a new, more flexible work-from-home policy after seeing how productive your team was in the remote world. Or perhaps that didn’t work as well for your company and being back in person is a necessity. Either way, don’t leave your employees guessing about what’s to come. Instead, use a mix of content to make sure your staff know where things stand.
#3 Re-Engagement
While you may have done an impressive job communicating with employees through the pandemic shutdowns, chances are, they were juggling too many things to be fully invested. Employees are now eager to re-engage with their work and the company mission. We recommend you take that spark and light a fire with some great re-engagement content to remind employees why they come to work for you every day.
If you’re wondering what you should include in your re-engagement video, you can get some ideas in our article, Four Things to Include in Your Employee Engagement Video, here.
Of course, we at Spiracle Media recommend that you make video a leading asset in both your internal and external communication. Our Welcome Back to Better video package is a streamlined, cost effective way to create content that supports your effort to bring employees back to offices this year.
