Welcome Back to the Office

Where I currently am, a legislation-provoked deadline looms.

Come the end of September, the government will cease to pay the wages of those furloughed during the pandemic. Overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) featuring white-collar workers not only barred from being in the office, but also prohibited from working from anywhere else, including home.

Overall figures are perhaps exposed to a touch of grey area-ness. Around two in every five UK jobs have floated in taxpayer funded static limbo at one stage or another due to coronavirus. Even now, with the vaunted herd immunity now a scientific fact, at least five percent of the country’s workforce remain in such state of suspended animation. What they compound though, are the numbers that continue to stay solely WFH.

Until the furlough scheme ends, corporate rule setters prove loathed to mandate a Return To Work. Something which astonishingly, the combination of just about all those vulnerable being double-jabbed and the restarting of the academic school year at the beginning of September, failed to see materialise.

Will October see an actual Great Return in the flesh IP?

Even if it does not, quite, then there’ll undoubtedly be a period of staff re-integration going on among the B2B commercial tech space. Such adjustment and acclimatisation to the demands of work-pace 2021 will not be restricted to the inner machinations of the organisation employing you.

This creates a terrific opportunity for out-flanking any competition. Specifically in how we pursue re-engagement of your prospect and customer universe.

And you don’t need to go for gimmicks the media salivates over, like free beer and popcorn.

Have you considered a ‘welcome back’ program not just for your colleagues, but for your clients too?

No-one knows how many a potential customer will open their doors and greet hopeful or continuing vendors into their buildings.

Perhaps it is though, safe to say that when given the option, a significant weight of them will prefer taking the hybrid meeting option up with us.

We must position ourselves to get ahead.

This won’t be straightforward. Effort and tenacity will be required. After all, this is the sector where training has been permitted during furlough, yet hardly any company elected to buy any in. A perplexing dereliction of leadership, ownership and wellbeing.

Create a plan for what a series of such video calls would entail.

Go granular on the running order.

Make them a worthwhile addition to the prospect’s calendar of zoom slots.

Do not settle for the objection that seeks to put you at arms length; ‘everything’s up in the air at the moment’, ‘maybe by christmas things will be clearer’, ‘the spend freeze is still in place’.

These are pats.

Isolate from where urgency springs.

It is always better to shape events than be later moulded by them.

Many a prospect will realise this, once they have their eyes open to it.

Our job is to find the button which shines that light.

Consider how what you power, negate or simply enable uniquely assists in generating, propelling or smoothing forward motion for your clients through their baby steps of ‘re-opening’.

Work out an initial 45-minute video routine that gets it underway for them.