That morning, Alexia Layne-Lomon returned to her office for the first time since the pandemic began. She woke up anxiously. Her stomach feels unwell. Commuting to work, which was once a meaningless daily routine, now feels strange and risky.
Layne-Lomon, 38, of Roslindale, Massachusetts, is one of millions of employees across the country who hurriedly made the transition to remote work last year. A few weeks ago, she was built back to her to train a new employee at the anti-poverty agency where she is the director of development and grants.
The day was full of memories of how much had changed since she was last in her office.
Layne-Lomon is not yet eligible for a vaccination against Covid-19. Instead of traveling by public transport as before, she chooses to travel to work. Inside her building, everyone wore masks, elevators had capacity constraints to facilitate social distance, and traffic flow signs were installed to reduce congestion in hallways.
But when she got to her floor, Layne-Lomon saw a familiar face. Two collaborators with whom she has only virtually communicated since the pandemic began were there.
“It was nice to see them and to have that social moment and breath of relief,” she said, adding that she had to stop greeting her colleagues with hugs. “It was like, ‘Hey, look at us, we’re still all human! We’re not just these little machines!’
As office spaces that close the pandemic begin to reopen, not every employee is eager to return. With concerns from health to rusted social skills to maintain the new balance between work and privacy that some discovered when their commuting traffic disappeared, many are reluctant to give up their work setup.
“We were very focused on what was lost last year,” said Vaile Wright, a clinical psychologist and senior director of health care innovation at the American Psychological Association. “Now we’re at the point where it is, ‘I lost a lot this year, but what did I earn?’ I think, especially when it comes to work, there have been a lot of profits. ‘
Not everyone had the luxury of working from home. But for those who have it, the ability to throw in a load of laundry while they work, spend more time with the family or make more homemade meals, were silver liners in an otherwise challenging year.
“I just feel like I can take better care of myself and have the ability to do that,” said Brittney Dales, 27, a legal secretary living in San Bernardino, California. By not driving to work, she saved miles on her car and money on gas, and this gave her the opportunity to plan doctor and dentist appointments more easily after work, as well as to let her dog walk during her lunch. .
Like Layne-Lomon, Dales has recently made several trips to her office, but she does not know when and if she is expected to return regularly. Her visits to work feel overstimulating compared to the loneliness of working in her bedroom.
“The other day I was in the office and one of the lawyers was talking to me, and the printer was running, and all these background noises were happening,” she said. “I could not get my attention because I am so used to a quiet place now that a little noise – even if it was not so loud – took me out.”
Why do vaccines not take away all the anxiety?
Many companies have already welcomed workers back. According to data released on March 29, 24.2 percent of employees in ten major cities in the United States went to their offices, according to Kastle Systems, a security services manager for 3,600 buildings across the country.
The number is expected to grow as more people are vaccinated. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a May 3 target date for about 80,000 municipal office workers to return to their offices. Across the country, Microsoft has begun bringing back some employees in a ‘soft open’ of its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Meanwhile, Target Corp. in Minneapolis, with the expectation of a permanent combination of hybrid and office work, has shrunk a third.
Whatever companies decide, according to experts, they need to realize that Covid-19 vaccines should not eliminate the anxiety of employees.
In a survey released by the American Psychological Association last month, it was found that 49 percent of adults feel uncomfortable returning to personal interactions once the pandemic is over. Vaccination status did not affect this: 48 percent of those who have already been vaccinated say that they also feel uncomfortable with interactions between people.
This may be due in part to the uncertainty surrounding the vaccines, Wright said, although encouraging evidence is emerging that they offer at least six months of protection.
“We know we have effective vaccines, but we do not know how long yet. We do not yet know how effective it is against the variants. We still do not have any vaccines for children,” she said. “There is still a lot to think about.”
Workplace safety is of particular concern. In a survey of 1,000 adults conducted by workplace technology company Envoy in February, 66 percent of employees said they were concerned about their health returning to the workplace.
There are also employees’ attention to schemes: 48 percent said they want a hybrid schedule of working personally and remotely, while 41 percent said they are even willing to take a small pay cut to make it happen.
The unknowns about what office tasks will look like, from schedules to safety measures, have hurt employees, said Brad Klontz, founder of the Financial Psychology Institute and associate professor of financial psychology at Heider College of Business at Creighton University in Omaha. , Nebraska.
Employers need to be prepared for anxiety among their workers, he said. Those who were already prone to anxiety may have struggled more during the pandemic, and those who were not experienced anxiety for the first time in the past year.
“Try to find someone who has not had a sleepless night,” he said. “There are going to be lasting consequences.”
How employers and employees can make it easier
The pandemic undoubtedly posed challenges to mental health. From August to February, the percentage of adults with symptoms of an anxiety or depression disorder increased from 36.4 percent to 41.5 percent during the preceding seven days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A return to the office does not have to exacerbate the feelings, experts say. Both employers and employees can take steps to alleviate concerns.
“Assume there’s going to be some anxiety.”
“Assume there is going to be anxiety,” Klontz said. “Acceptance is really more important than trying to fight it.”
He recommended that employers be flexible in the beginning in terms of expectations.
“Understand that it’s going to be easier for some people and harder for others, especially the people who are perhaps most affected by this,” he said, referring to those who lost loved ones to Covid-19, had it themselves or still dealing with persistent health problems of the coronavirus. “Normalize the fact that it can be challenging. Say, ‘Please come talk to me if we can do something to make it easier for you.’
And after such a long period of each other’s views, everyone needs to be prepared for interactions to feel a little quiet at first, Wright said.
“Some of our social skills have probably weakened a bit, so there will be a bit of an awkward transition where we try to figure out how to speak in conversations, but also how to find the right words in the right sentences and the right question. to ask “questions in a way we have not been before,” she said.
“Working from home was exhausting at first. Then we got into our routine and found out,” she added. “I would expect that to happen here.”
She urged employers not to follow a “measure for all” approach to bringing employees back, realizing that some people may need accommodation that fits their mental and emotional needs. She also suggested that employers should be as transparent and communicative as possible about reopening plans to reduce employees’ level of insecurity before returning.
The bottom line, according to Wright, is that employees and employers need to be open.
“We need to get out of this framework that things are going to go back to how it was before because I don’t think it should,” she said.