Christine vs. Work: How to Negotiate a Flexible Return to the Office
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Many of those working from home during the pandemic are now being asked to return to the office. But how do you talk to your manager if you don’t want to go back in?
The pandemic forced physical coworking spaces to temporarily shutter, and for many employees, the transition from working in an office to working from home was abrupt. However, many of us have adapted to working from home — and what may have seemed unfamiliar at first now feels more routine.
Karen Mattison, a flexible working consultant and co-founder of Timewise, offers advice on how to enter a negotiation with your manager for an alternative working arrangement during this crisis.
Tips for negotiating flexible work:
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Transcript
CHRISTINE: It’s official. The American economy is reopening. And I’m having a lot of complicated feelings about that. I’ll be real with you. I’m too scared to go back to the office right now. And I know I’m not alone.
JESS: To do my job well and equitably, I want to be out in the community. But at the same time, I’m put more at risk.
KEYSE: I am not in a rush to get back. I can work from home very effectively.
ANTONIO: Similar to a lot of people where I think it’s a bad idea. The risk of COVID-19 hasn’t disappeared.
CHRISTINE: So for the moment I’m really, really lucky. I can continue working from home. But you know, in the not so distant future I can assume one day I’m going to be asked to go back to the office. And I have to think to myself, how am I going to talk to my manager if I’m not ready?
What if I want to just continue working from home? What if that’s better? I found an expert, and she’s going to help me answer these questions.
Karen Mattison is a flexible working consultant and co-founder of Timewise, based in the UK. She helps workplaces think differently about the value of flexible working.
KAREN MATTISON: When people talk about flexible working until now, it’s always about what you can’t do. So it’s been a very limiting kind of conversation. Oh, you can’t do that. I can’t see you. How will I trust my team if I can’t see them? How will I know they’ve done their job?
And I think actually there’s so much about the possibility in terms of how can people combine caring responsibilities, reduced travel, do better things for the environment, work in a different way. And I think we just haven’t had our eyes and ears open to what’s possible. And I think now we really have.
CHRISTINE: So I should mention that even before I had my conversation with Karen, I did a little exercise. I was curious. What would I even say if I tried to negotiate working from home a little bit more and postponing reentry?
So I did a little mock interview. And here is kind of the language that I ended up using.
My request for you is, is it possible to work from home for just a little bit longer? I don’t quite feel comfortable going back in yet.
I think if the company truly cared about its staff, you know, on top of all these safety precautions, I think it would stand that you guys might listen and consider us as people and humans and maybe understand that we may not necessarily feel comfortable coming back.
I increase my risk cause I take public transportation to work. And that is my only option, really. So I would hate to take, you know, sick days or worse.
Uh, so. Thoughts? How’d I do?
KAREN MATTISON: Well, I think you did good. But I would probably go to a negotiation like that less — I think you put yourself in a down position in the beginning by just talking about your needs. Try and talk solutions as well as the problems. And I think when you started, you just said, I’m just not ready to come back.
Now I think while that might be true, you could put it in a different way. So what you could have done is said to him, there’s been some amazing things about working from home that I think we’ve all taken. I’ve spoken to colleagues, and it’s been an incredible experiment about what we can achieve. What do you think? And sort of get him to talk about what has worked well.
And then maybe think for yourself, what’s your deal-breaker? Are you saying you never want to go? Or you don’t want to travel every day? Or you don’t want to go in at rush hour?
And then say, I’ve been thinking about how we could design work maybe for this next phase of COVID-19 and how we could design the roles so people will feel safe, but also the business gets what the business needs.
CHRISTINE: Essentially, you just want to try to put yourself in your manager’s shoes. I know. Easier said than done, right?
But Karen had some great advice. Try to steer away from the “why.” Like, why you’re negotiating for this or why you need a flexible work schedule.
Instead, you want to focus on the “how.” You want to explain how your solution is going to help them and ultimately benefit the business. And this part is so crucial because they’re probably thinking about how all of this is just going to go wrong.
KAREN MATTISON: But managers worry about the floodgates opening. If I do it for you, fine. I know I’ll trust you, and you’ll do fine. But what about all my poor performers over there? What am I going to do with them if I can’t see them?
CHRISTINE: At the end it was like, what am I actually trying to get out of this? Like, it was kind of like, it was teased instead of like, up front, as you said, a solution. Like, here is the vision.
What are other common ways that people might, you know, naturally go in as a down position that you’ve seen?
KAREN MATTISON: People start with an apology. Or people start talking about their complex. So, you know, people might say, well, I need to work flexibly because my children’s nursery finishes at 4:00, and that means I’ve got to leave at 3:00. And sometimes I might miss the train, or I can’t find parking.
And then it’s like, hang on a sec. I’m dealing with your chaos. I’ve got my own chaos. And it’s like, no. So I think generally people put themselves in a down position by telling you what they can’t do rather than talking about what they think they could deliver.
CHRISTINE: Look. Doing this kind of thing is really tricky. And it can be especially daunting if you’ve never done it before. But like anything else in life, it just gets easier with practice. And Karen suggests doing some role play maybe with a friend or with someone in your network who happens to be a manager.
If you take anything from this video, Karen has an ace in the hole for if and when negotiations seem to be going in the wrong direction.
KAREN MATTISON: If it’s not going well, and you feel yourself being backed into a corner, the one thing that I would try that’s actually really underutilized is the trial period. Could we try it for a month and review on both sides how it goes?
And I think when people use that, it generally ends up pretty well. And people use that for when they come back from maternity leave or in these times as well. Can we try it for a month? Can we try it for two months? I understand you don’t want to commit to it.
Because I think one of the things that will back an employer into the corner is if they think they agree to something now, and that’s forever. So try that.
CHRISTINE: So to recap, one, negotiating this kind of thing takes a lot of practice. And two, it’s critical to see it from your manager’s point of view.
Just to be safe, I wanted to see Karen do it.
KAREN MATTISON: I feel nervous now.
CHRISTINE: It’s showtime.
KAREN MATTISON: I understand that there’s a huge number of people now coming through to ask for flexible working. So I understand that you don’t have a policy for that at the moment. But I’m wondering if we could work together and see if we could come up with one that worked for the business and worked for the employees.
I don’t feel completely comfortable on my journey to work. So I’m just wondering whether, for example, you can give some flexibility on when I can come to work. So I’d be really happy to come very early in the morning and leave mid-afternoon so that I avoid traveling on busy commuter trains. Is that something you’d be able to offer?
If we can meet each other halfway in transitioning back to a way that’s good for the business, but where I feel safe in how I get to work and when I am at work and also feel trusted to work from home for part of the week, I think that sounds like an amazing thing for us both to be doing.
CHRISTINE: Wow. So that is how an expert does it. I am truly inspired by Karen. And I’m very appreciative of the advice and the tips that she gave.
And it seems to me at the end of the day, success in a negotiation about your flexible working arrangement, it really hinges on the core relationships and trust that you have with your manager and your company.
Christine vs. Work: How to Negotiate a Flexible Return to the Office
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