How to preserve mentoring in a work-from-home world

To say the COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruption to society would be like saying Godzilla disrupted Tokyo. One of the biggest disruptions has been to our jobs and the way we work.

For many of us non-essential-worker office-dwelling types, the biggest change was working remotely, usually from home. First off: No commute! How nice to just wake up and start your workday? Another benefit? More time for family.

But WFH isn’t all positive. According to a survey from the World Economic Forum, one in three workers feel disengaged when working remotely. One of the biggest losses is in-person collaboration—which can’t easily be replaced online. We lose out on emotional connections, sharing, camaraderie and bonding. Collaboration, particularly in the creative fields, has taken a hit.

But there’s another major consequence I haven’t heard many people talk about, and that’s a lack of mentorship. Almost every successful C-suite executive was once a junior-level employee. Most of us graduated from college, started our careers at the bottom and worked our way up with the help and guidance of senior employees. In college, I became more knowledgeable, a better writer and a more critical thinker. But not much of what I learned in college prepared me for the very specific experience of my chosen profession in the advertising world. So much of what I do in advertising, I learned by doing. And for the most part, I learned that from others.

While mentorship focuses on what to do, sometimes it’s just as much about learning what not to do. Having a difficult boss, for instance, can be as valuable an experience as any. The professional world isn’t all roses and chocolates, and dealing with difficult people is a skill. I’m not saying younger employees should tolerate abusive bosses. But navigating such relationships can have an incredible value, especially when they arise in the future.

Dealing in person with a range of people, particularly different people, is critical to developing emotional intelligence, or EQ. This is the ability to understand, use and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. Often, it’s our mentors who help us navigate these professional situations that develop our EQ. In other words, mentors may teach us not only what to, but how to feel, at our jobs.

Missing out on mentorship, in all contexts, will affect the development of younger employees. As an agency owner, I want my younger employees to be in the office, learning and growing with guidance from our senior team. There’s even a reverse effect where senior employees learn from younger workers, particularly as it relates to new technologies and platforms.

The problem is that most of today’s younger employees are attracted by remote work, with many seeing it as the new normal. Any employer mandating office attendance will almost certainly put them at a disadvantage in the recruitment race.

So, how do you hire great employees and get them into the office? It’s a tricky business but it can be done. Here are four strategies:

Create a culture

People like being part of a team—and creating authentic bonds goes a long way in terms of accountability and responsibility. However, those bonds don’t happen overnight. Today’s agency owners need to find ways to create and foster an office culture where people feel part of a team and they want to be involved. Baseball games, nature walks, comedy shows, lunches and dinners—there are endless ways to build a culture. You only need to decide what makes sense for your organization.

Reward attendance

If you want people in the office more frequently, reward them. Offer bonuses or other perks for office attendance. There are so many ways to reward employees, and it’s a great way to get them involved.

Spice up your workplace

Free lunches and casual Fridays are nice but consider these the baseline. Maybe your office can be dog-friendly, with a massage therapist Fridays or morning yoga classes. In the post-COVID world, offices need to evolve. And maybe that’s a good thing, long-term.

Be flexible

A YouGov survey found that 75% of employees would like a hybrid model of office and WFH. But no two employees are the same, and while you may have a desire to have people in the office Monday through Friday, that’s probably not going to happen. Meet people where they are. Be willing to make concessions for childcare, long-distance commuters and special situations. Keep your employees accountable—but work with them, too.

Even as the worst of the pandemic seems to be behind us, we’re still contending with new variants and it’s hard to get comfortable knowing how things can turn on a dime. It may be a long time before we get back to normal, so we need to create a new normal. Helping our young employees develop in this new world is essential. But in marrying the best of what we once had with some creative new ideas, we may help mentor our younger employees into a better future than we imagined.