This summer has brought a persistent sense of déjà vu.  In July of last year, my former employer began planning for a mandatory return to office policy for after Labor Day.  Labor Day 2020 feels like a lifetime ago.  But we all remember how it played out.  The date was delayed again and again following spikes and surges in COVID-19 infections across the country. 

Right around the one-year mark, in March of 2021, vaccines started to become available to the general public in many states.  In the ensuing months, many people, myself included, began to see a light at the end of the long pandemic tunnel.  We started doing things we hadn’t done in over a year: traveling, eating out, or seeing friends and family unmasked. 

It was in this hopeful climate in late June and early July 2021 that many employers started to announce what they likely expected to be hard and fast return to workplace plans.  While a handful of progressive employers were planning fully flexible work from home or in-office arrangements, most employers were announcing some kind of hybrid or mandatory return to office policy.  Pretty quickly, employers demanding in-office work started to feel the impact of their inflexibility, with workers quitting or finding other positions.   

Still, some stubborn employers held tightly to their return to office plans, likely expecting that as the virus continued to subside and people started to re-enter the world, they would eventually embrace the old normal.

But by August, the Delta variant was ravaging the country, especially the South.  In Louisiana, where I live,  COVID hospitalizations increased 580% in a period of four weeks.  Researchers believe the Delta variant is two to three times as infectious as than the original virus.  Employers started to again announce delays of their return to office policy—giving everyone summer 2020 déjà vu. 

Delta is forcing employers to reverse their post-Labor Day return to office deadline.  While some employers are announcing a “wait and see” approach, hoping to bring people back in October or November, others have pushed plans back until at least January 2022, while still others are waiting to announce any plans until more is known about Delta and other concerning new variants. 

Workers are wiser now than they were in 2020.  They have an additional year of experience successfully working from home.  And, most importantly, workers now have choice.  There are currently one million more jobs than there are people looking for employment.  Moreover, despite life feeling more or less static, people still have gotten married, become parents or expanded their families, bought homes, and even relocated during the pandemic.  In short, a year and a half of life has happened, making it more and more difficult for employees to contort themselves to comply with employer’s preferred policies.  

In light of Delta, I predict it will be at least another four months of work from home for the vast majority of office workers before employers can safely implement their return to office plans.  After nearly two years of “the new normal” and lives lived, it will be impossible to bring people back. 

Employers: ignore this prediction at the peril of your businesses, companies, and organizations.  The writing is on the wall, your workers are never coming back.