Supervisor/Manager Guidance for Workforce Reintegration

As staff return to work following the work stoppage, it's important for our people leaders to support a positive reintegration. 

It Starts With You

Consider how you will message to your team. All members should hear the same message as you move forward to ensure you strengthen and re-build trust from day one.

• Take time to consider your feelings and level of readiness and prepare yourself.
  • How are you feeling?
  • How will you manage your emotions (fatigue, sadness, frustration, defensiveness, activated, etc.)
• Acknowledge that your emotions and reactions to the situation are normal and okay. Before team meetings and conversations, take a few minutes to check in with yourself about how you're feeling (anger, sadness, relief, guilt, pride, etc). 
• Revisit the expectations of supervisors and managers.
• Keep in mind any negative interactions that have taken place between employees on the team – consider how you might create assignments to ease the transition without singling out anyone and with fair treatment for all.

Prepare The Team With You Now

Remind the team that our striking workers are fully and equally a part of our Cornell community, and that they are within their rights to engage in the current labor action and those rights must be respected as we strive for a viable resolution.

• Express gratitude and appreciation to employees who have made the choice to take on additional work or fill operational gaps during the strike. Consider doing this separately from the returning staff.
• Encourage the team to consider their feelings and acknowledge that it is normal and okay.
• Recognize that individuals on both sides of the strike may have a range of emotions, some quite strong and raw, that they may be coming from very different perspectives, and that all should be valued and respected. 

Reconnecting And Rebuilding Relationships With The Entire Team

• Schedule individual check-in meetings with all team members to reconnect personally.
  • Ask on a scale of 1-10 how the person is doing.
  • Provide resources and support for employees based on individual needs.
  • Redirect any strike-specific questions to the appropriate HR or Union leadership.
  • Plan to regularly check in with team members to assess how things are going.
• Welcome individuals who have been away from work and begin to re-establish relationships through a team meeting.
  • Create space for simple interactions before the meeting starts – consider light snacks to allow folks to reconnect in a friendly environment if possible. 
  • Recognize that people are emotionally and physically tired regardless of whether they participated in the strike or were at work — express appreciation and excitement for having the team back together and how we will move forward, even if initially challenging. 
  • Identify/discuss a common goal for the day or your overarching mission:
    • What are we working together to accomplish?
    • Whatever differences divide us, we share a common mission of serving the Cornell Community.
• Set expectations for how the team will behave with each other, i.e., respect, communication, collaboration, etc.
  • People will be treated with respect in the workplace, and, once all have returned to work, no one should be subject to hostility for exercising their legal right to strike or their legal right to come to work.  
  • Remind people of Policy 6.4, which prohibits bias, discrimination and harassment. 
  • Affirm a commitment to all members of the team feeling safe.
  • Acknowledge that people are going to have different feelings about the strike, but discourage the airing of frustrations and criticisms of individuals’ choices during the strike. Debates are not likely to lead to healing. Focus on common ground, shared vision, and needs.
• Be prepared to intervene and respond if debates begin. Conversations don’t have to be stifled, but you must not weigh in or let them escalate into heated arguments.
  • Remind the individuals that each employee had their own personal reasons for their decision and we must respect their choice to strike or to work.
  • Encourage one of the employees to take a brief break, ‘Why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and let me or (colleague) take over.'
• Build time into your day for unexpected individual needs that might arise as employees begin working together again.
  • Be patient with yourself and others. The transition requires people to readjust and refocus their energy. It may take time to recover from the stress and emotions that each individual may have experienced. 

Leading Through Challenging Situations

• In the wake of a challenging situation, it’s the responsibility of people leaders to: 
  • Expect the event to have an impact on some of your direct reports.
  • Understand and accept the many ways your direct reports may be impacted.
  • Foster an inclusive environment where direct reports can practice self-care, ask for, and receive support to heal.
• Below are recommendations for leading and managing during challenging events. 
• Remind individuals of the group expectations around behaviors you established around how we treat one another and the culture we want to experience.
• Be guided by our commitment to the Cornell Community 

Protect And Repair The Culture

Teams look to their people leader to understand what is within and outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Especially during challenging situations, it is important to reinforce that it is unacceptable to minimize, joke about, or otherwise make light of events that are potentially hurtful to members of your team.

Acknowledge And Normalize

During times of challenge, individuals and teams can be thrown into ambiguity: individuals may not know how the organization or their teammates will behave; they may not know personally how to behave, or how others will react to them; and team members can become deskilled in navigating through the event as a group. Leaders can reduce ambiguity and give their direct reports permission to respond authentically by acknowledging the event, and normalizing a wide range of responses to it. Leaders can choose to deliver this message by email, in person, or both.

Resources

If you or your team need additional support: