Due to the encouraging reduction in Covid cases, the Scottish Government is relaxing it’s ‘work from home’ guidelines from Monday and is encouraging workers to start returning to ‘the office’ (BBC Article).
How much influence the government will have on this is questionable I guess. If businesses and employees feel that working from home has been a benefit (albeit enforced), they won’t be returning.
However, many bosses will still be looking to return to ‘normal’ now that they can.
But what if you don’t want to? What if you have thrived working from home? What if you have completely lost the desire to be sociable face-to-face?
Just like your physical fitness diminishing due to a lack of exercise, your social skills might have gone the same way due to underuse.
“We create a powerful neurotransmitter called oxytocin – a behavioural hormone [when we socialize],” explains therapist Dee Johnson. Oxytocin is important for social bonding, “driving us to want to hug and cuddle, and re-engage with people”.’
The good news is that, again, like your physical fitness improving when you get back out running, your social skills will also begin to return with practice. “As we start to see and engage with others and activities again, this will improve our moods and give us better emotions,” Johnson explains.
“The key to this is, the more we produce happy hormones such as serotonin and dopamine from the rush of the non-essential shop or first football match, it motivates our brain to want more. Therefore, the stale, heavy, wading-through-mud feeling will lift the more we slowly and carefully re-enter a world that we feel was so long ago we had started to lose hope.”
So, if your employer is insisting that you return to the workplace, take advice from your inner athlete and imagine training for a marathon. Your first day back in the busy office might be a bit overwhelming and knock your confidence a little, much the same as you can feel when you are out of puff after 5 minutes of your first run of the year. But things get easier the more you do it and before you know it, you will be organising the office’s first post-pandemic social event!
Now, where are my trainers…….
I Don’t Want To Go Back To The Office!
