There are 3 types of personas in reboarding.

Meet the team and their wants.

One thing that immediately caught our eye while going over the reboarding survey results was that though everyone experienced the period of working from home in a different way there were a lot of similarities as well. We surveyed our staff of over 200 employees and were able to clearly and identify traits and emotions to 3 different personality types based on those results. When we reviewed the results, we identified 3 different personas. These personas were based on the overall characteristics, desires and motivations to go back to the office. By reading the introductions and descriptions of the personas below, you will get an overview of the complete team. You'll probably notice that these personas resemble a lot of your own teams and employees in your organisation.

The Optimist.

The optimists can’t wait to ditch their home desk and return to the office completely. They are super exited to get back to the office and don’t need any motivation or nudge to get them there. As soon as the doors open, they will be there. These people prefer to spend at least 4 days in the office, but when they have the opportunity, they probably won't mind being there the complete work week. The optimists missed the social interaction with their coworkers and can’t wait to have face-to-face meetings again. Going back to the office really feels like a relief to them, not only because they are (much) more productive in the office but also because of the team-feeling they have when being surrounded by their coworkers. Optimists feel that the management did everything that was in their power to manage the situation and they don’t question the fact they will do the same in the reboarding process.

The Positivist.

Positivists clearly see benefits in their return to the workplace but the same goes for their home offices. In an ideal situation, the positivist would like to have best of both worlds. Their motivation to return to the office is about staying in touch with colleagues through face-to-face meetings and brainstorms, to feel part of the team and to be creative through a change of scenery. These are features of the office that they may have been missing while working from home. To balance this, the office will become more of a social space rather than a working place since the concentrated and focused work will be happening in their home offices. Here they feel more productive since they have the peace and quiet to challenge their minds. The positivist would love to go back to the office for 2 or 3 times a week. Positivists feel that management did a good job in managing the situation to their best ability and would like to hear more about the vision for the future. Next to that they would benefit from weekly catchups with their manager or team lead to reboard.

The Criticist.

The criticist isn’t opposed to going back to the office. However, criticists found that working from home has a lot of perks for them and they’re afraid they’ll lose some of these when returning to the office. Criticists are challenging the ‘old’ ways of working, since they now found that working from home means they feel more productive and efficient in their workhours. The ability to work from home allowed for more personal and family time at the same time, something that wasn't easily accessible or available prior. They’re hesitant to return to the workplace since they feel it’s going to affect their ‘free time’ and will decrease their productivity. However, the criticist do want to be part of a positive environment. Their ideal scenario would be to go to the office 1 day a week for social interactions with colleague’s and to still feel part of the organisation. They are satisfied with the way the management handled things and feel that weekly catchups with their manager plus a clear vision from the organisation on reboarding strategy would help. Next to that they’d like additional onboarding recourses to help smoothen up the process.

And here’s how you can reboard all of them.

These different kind of views on reboarding ask for different kinds of interactions from HR and your organisation. The optimist, the positivist and the criticist all have their own reasons and motivations for going back to the office. Most important is to make sure all three feel heard, understood and helped in their return to the workplace. To help you do this, we created a compact infographic that shows you not only the characteristics of each persona, but also tells you which of our online courses will help them in their process. Our reboarding infographic will become a walk in the park (during lunch because everyone, no matter which persona reflects them best, loved that from working from home 😉).