The new world order that we have settled into since the pandemic now feels equal parts strange and familiar. We don’t see masks as often, but when we do, we don’t react. Whether you learn someone is working fully remote permanently or is on site every day, it seems equally normal. While the initial resistance…
After the worldwide upheaval of Covid-19, it is clear that we’re never going back to work the way we knew it. According to a World Economic Forum survey, 70% of UK respondents said they prefer hybrid work arrangements. And while most employers are working to find ways to meet the new needs of talent, they still…
When I began my career in the late nineties, I was working in Warsaw. There were not a lot of Americans, but a handful of us began to informally meet on Saturday mornings. Attendance was not required by our employer; it was just a bunch of people (mostly guys) who came into the office on…
Millions of people now work in fully or partly remote situations and it should be clear that we have arrived at a permanent shift in what ‘workplace’ means. But that suggests that workplace is simply the physical address at which you perform the duties of your job. The real definition is more complicated because our…
After centuries of working in an employer-sponsored workplace, many have started to settle into a new way of working. This includes a shift to at least partly remote work. Most of us experienced at least a temporary government-mandated stay at home order; some of us have chosen to continue it as we reach the three-year…
A few months ago, I had a client who was struggling to connect with her manager. This wasn’t a typical scenario of different work styles or communication challenges. This client was not having tough conversations with her manager; she was having no conversation at all. She began to notice on conference calls that she was…
We are now nearing the three-year anniversary of when the pandemic crept in, then quickly overtook, over lives. But we are also at least eighteen months since the rollout of vaccines that immensely lessened the risk of serious illness. In theory, we then began to resume our lives. But even as a good number of…
The idea of offices began nearly three hundred years ago in the UK. One of the first purpose-built office blocks was built in 1729. Even before that, employers often lived above their shops, and sometimes their workers lived there as well (and thus creating a more literal meaning of no escape from the job). Any sort…
As we tick off the last few days of the year, we can’t help but think about our goals for the next twelve months. Most of us do not set official New Year’s resolutions – only forty-one percent of Americans say they make these annual commitments, while a survey of (more realistic?) Britons show that only sixteen percent do…
As we head into the new year, it’s a good time to think about how to face the challenges ahead. While the blunt force trauma of the pandemic has ebbed, we are still facing a lot of uncertainty. The war in Ukraine rages on, markets remain shaky, supply shortages and disruptions are more the norm…