Help Your Employees Help You

Requiring your employees to return to the office is a controversial human resources decision for your business. But the surging Delta variant of COVID-19 gives employers second thoughts about how to handle their policies about in-office and remote employees.

Major companies have changed their return-to-office plans. Recently, Twitter announced, “after careful consideration of the CDC’s updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions, Twitter has made the decision to close our opened offices in New York and San Francisco as well as pause future office re-openings, effective immediately.”

Our recommendation is to talk openly with your employees about remote work. You can educate your employees about what you need to feel comfortable and confident with remote work, which will give them more freedom and opportunity to be successful.

You may have ended up seeing that employees were working longer hours, causing inefficiencies and burn-out. As the months passed and you modified your business dynamics, employees began to appreciate the advantages of working from home:

  • Greater freedom to set their own schedules
  • Safety from exposure to Covid
  • Ability to take care of their family needs
  • More time available without commuting

Doing their jobs without coming into the office is a significant benefit that employees should not take for granted. However, as the Peter Parker / Spider-Man principle states, “With great power comes great responsibility.” explain how they can show you that they are “on the job” no matter where they are.

Coach your employees to change their mindsets. They can think of themselves as running their own small businesses. This shift is critical for people to stop seeing themselves as just employees who take detailed and constant directions from their supervisors. It implies that they control their time management and hours as long as they meet their success metrics.

As part of “running their own business,” they will treat their supervisors and colleagues as if they are clients. They will find that if their default mode is “client mode,” with will inherently perform at a higher level over time

That degree of independence lets them work when it’s most efficient and meets their personal and family obligations. Autonomy is one of the most important contributing factors to employees’ sense of engagement with their work and company and plays a big part in employee retention.

Soteria HR is helping companies evolve into successful remote and hybrid workplaces. Reach out to us for your custom human resource needs.


  1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/how-major-tech-companies-are-responding-to-rising-delta-variant-cases.html
  2. https://hbr.org/2010/12/your-boss-is-your-client-your.html
Samantha Harwood