Dear scale-up CEO,

Remember all that effort you put into culture, team, belonging… getting your organisation to think and act differently.  You built an organisation that when asked would rate itself as a 10. 

It was a happy place to be.

Yes it was tough sometimes but you all worked hard and you felt part of something bigger, that your contribution and the contribution of your team was meaningful, you had purpose.  That was pre-covid.

Now put yourself in the shoes of one of your employees.  

They remember how that job they did for you  and your business was a 10 out of 10..  They loved the office, the coffee, the drinks trolley, the team around them.   They loved the yoga on the roof, the retreats and the endless opportunities to bond as a team and talk about your culture.

They loved that job because it was more than a job, more than a series of tasks, to coin a Sinek phrase it had ‘purpose’.  To most anyway.  

But now they are sitting looking at a screen that looks like every other screen, on a zoom call that looks like every other zoom call and slack messages that look like all the others.  You peaked at the start of lockdown with virtual drinks, virtual coffee, quizzes and forced interaction that now feels a bit stale.  

Sat in their bedroom office, house share, whatever, without work colleagues, the drinks trolley, the yoga, the job they do for you now is a 5.  They know it was a 10 but this job that’s a 5 is like the other jobs at a 5 and even in this pre/post pandemic there are plenty of 5 jobs out there.

If they haven’t left you already then chances are they will as they are burnt out and spent and worth more than a 5 job.  

Now don’t shoot the messenger, but the bad news for you as the CEO is that those companies that were a mediocre 5 or 6 pre-covid probably haven’t lost very much.  They were crap before covid and in some cases now look more appealing if only because they are what they have always been.  Some have even improved, that toxic office culture that made them mediocre got better by going to work from home and not having to deal with their manager in the flesh.

You have made culture such a big thing, attitude over skill, culture over skill and now we are at a crossroads.  Some of you will head back to your offices, like nothing ever happened.  Some of the CEO’s I’ve spoken to ahead of writing this cannot imagine a world where they are not in the office together because they have lost that collaborative, creative essence that they thought they had.  Only, along the way you will have lost something, in some cases you will have lost people, in many you will have lost your purpose, your why and if you want to hire again, you really need to get that back again.  

Other organisations have shut their offices, cancelled the lease and will never go back to an office, some for financial reasons, some because they feel this new remote only world is the way to go.  Awkwardly it may be the way for some of their employees but like so many organisations they are made up of very different people with different expectations. 

If you have gone remote only, how do you know that all of your people actually want that? It could well be that you too will experience some additional attrition because the employer up the road is literally up the road.  Sounding like a broken record (remember those) if you have change a core part of how you now operate you will have to rethink how you attract, rethink the “What’s in it for me factor” for candidates and potentially accept that the people you were hiring back in 2019 will not be the same as the people you hire in 2021 and it’s never too early to start thinking about that.

This year is still full of unknowns, immersive. works across Europe and each country as a different survival plan, some, like Italy, going back into major lockdown again with a lack of vaccine progress and a fear of a surge in Covid related deaths.

Your people and how they do their jobs is critical to your survival and growth.  You may well have a bunch of lonely, unaffiliated, disconnected employees who where there for you in the good times, which means now you owe it to them in the bad.

I’m always willing to talk about hiring, employee engagement and what you can do to make things better.  Get in touch with any questions, comments or to get call.  And yes, it will be zoom call and look like all those other zoom calls but the outcome will be more positive.

M.