Insights

Across industries, everyone is asking the same question; what will the return to work look like in a world altered by COVID-19? While we wait patiently for the governments to lift restrictions, business leaders are facing the challenge of adapting the workplace for returning employees.

Navigating a pandemic was unlikely to be part of your business’s continuity plan. Corporate leaders now have the daunting task of creating a plan for their workplaces, while sifting through the volume of information and ever-changing recommendations on how to find a new normal.

The big question on everyone’s mind right now is, how are we going to return to work post COVID-19?

We will inevitably return to work, while the “when” is still ambiguous, the more important question is how? How does this new way of working look? What, as business leaders, do we need to consider and prepare for when we have employees return?

Most importantly, what changes need to be made to ensure the health and safety of our teams?

Much of the world’s workforce has been forced into remote working as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation has suddenly thrust businesses – whether they were equipped or not – into the digital world where team meetings, conferences and one-to-ones are now mostly taking place online, as everyone complies with social distancing rules. However, once this is all over, will we all return to our normal ways of working? Or will the pandemic highlight certain changes that might be for the better and therefore permanently implemented?

Our natural affinity for life, known as biophilia, is the very essence of our humanity and binds us to all other living things. Those are the beliefs of evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, who popularised the term in his memoir, Biophilia, first published in 1984, describing it as “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike process”.