fbpx

Why back to the office is bad news for Introverts

6.30am.

That’s an alarm you haven’t set in a while.

It’s back to staring at baby on board stickers and spotting the odd Tesla as you fester in traffic, strewn coffee cups already piling up on the passenger’s seat.

It’s a return to office politics, small talk in the kitchen and 2019 ‘presentee-ism’, when the Boss shouted, ‘are you on a half day?’, as you hightailed it out the door at 5.20pm, even though you’re so ridiculously efficient, you’d finished all your work at noon.

While Covid-19 lockdowns seemed very HG Wells at first, we gradually eased into our jogging bottoms and continued to be entertained by our Krusty the Clown hair, angry birds’ brows and the feeling that for the first time in our lives, we could professionally and privately let it all hang out.

INTROVERTS V EXTROVERTS

Lockdowns have been great for introverts; a ‘get even’ for all the years of being shamed by extroverts; a kind of “let’s see how you like having the world our way” attitude. Extroverts, however, will remember how difficult they had it, having their social norms turned upside down for the first time ever.

However you fit on this introvert/extrovert scale, there’s a general consensus that going back to work feels so 2019 and there’s huge anxiety around going back and a feeling of ‘haven’t we moved on?’

Forbes writes:

“Chances are you know a few people (likely hard core extroverts) who are counting the days until they can return to the office and ‘days of ol’’; when colleagues would gather around coffee machines and have a ‘banter’. In fact research shows that seeing work colleagues in person is a stronger motivating force for returning to the physical workplace than securing face time with the boss.

A survey by CHG Healthcare found that only 9% of the workforce wanted to return to the office a full five days a week. And while the majority (54%) are more interested in a hybrid work week, as many as one in three would happily spend the rest of their working lives working remotely.”

With mass booster vaccinations taking place, what if you’re an anxious introvert totally stressed out at this return to ‘normal life?

(And by the way, being an introvert doesn’t mean you’re shy. Extroverts can be shy too. Being an introvert means you choose where and who to give your energy to; making small talk can drain you and being alone can recharge you).

Tyler Cowen, a USA economist reckons introverts have always been undervalued whereas the stuff extroverts love, like boardroom presentations, breakfast meetings and racking up those business airmiles have been unfairly appraised and universally adopted.

“Having the highest-productivity individuals in a company be free to do what they want, to have a Zoom call with the people they want; that’s going to drive a lot of innovation and productivity growth.”

But then that would mess with 2019’s boss’s presenteeism.

GENDER DIFFERENCES

Also, with many companies offering a full time or hybrid return, women and men may find themselves making very different decisions about how they negotiate resuming office life.

With more women wanting more flexibility and more men wanting a full on return could this lead to male dominated offices in the future, asks BBC Worklife?

“A UK-based poll of 2,300 leaders, managers and employees showed that 69% of mothers want to work from home at least once a week after the pandemic, versus just 56% of fathers.

These figures suggest women would occupy relatively fewer desks, intensifying gender inequality, reinforcing domestic roles and stalling women’s earning potential and prospects for career advancement.

While there are certainly benefits to giving flexible options to workers who can do their jobs from home, there’s also a risk of widening the long-standing gender gap in housework and caring responsibilities that’s already been exacerbated by Covid-19.”

Wherever you stand on the workplace divide because it really is a divide, hopefully company culture, going forward, will no longer be dictated by everyone in at 9 and out at 5, with an occasional break out in the kiddult room, with the obligatory pool table, which might be ok for the Gen Z’ers but could be seen as infantilizing older employees, (although Google offers ‘cool’ offices, they’ve actually thought beyond the push scooters and millennial deco and tackled childcare).

COVID-19 KILLED OFFICE CULTURE

Employers have really got to listen to their employees and support them in their decision about going back to work fulltime, hybrid or remote.  If they do this, employees will move walls for them.

Something Tim Cooke, CEO of Apple should have considered before telling all employees that they have to return to the office September 2021. His announcement spectacularly misfired when his employees reacted by crafting an open letter, addressed to Cooke, (reported by The Verge) and signed by over 80 Apple employees.

Their tempered anger went something like this:

“We feel like the current policy is not sufficient in addressing many of our needs.” The Apple letter pointed out that workers delivered “the same quality of products and services that Apple is known for, all while working almost completely remotely.”

Some Apple employees have already quit, citing:

It forces people “to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple.”

Was the fact that Apple spent $1billion on their new offices have anything to do with Tim Cooke’s presenteeism stance?

In 2019 BC, we would have bitten an employer’s arm off for a Friday, working from home.

With the government’s attention being drawn towards drafting the ‘right to ask’ bill for employees, it’s time employers big and small are instrumental in creating a new work culture which reduces anxiety and stress by letting the introverted and the extroverted, the Gen X’ers, Millennials and Z’ers, work out what works best for them.

If you create a workplace that listens to the individual needs of its workers, you will have a workplace working in perfect harmony.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article, we’re here to help at hello@2getheronline.org

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share anonymous information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. View more
Cookies settings
Accept
Decline
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings