CHARLOTTE, N.C. — At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, people went from going to the office every day to working from home -- and many people chose to stay home.
Hiede Bray is vice president of national delivery at TalentBridge, an employment agency in South Park.
After a three-year pause on the agency's in-person job fair, the company held one last week to try and fill hundreds of jobs.
"Do you still have wardrobe that still fits?" Bray recalled the agency asking others. "Do we need to go shopping again? How do you feel about commuting back and forth? Do you have childcare?"
The agency had to ask people those questions, Bray said, as more and more companies are looking to get employees back under the same roof.
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"I think we were shortsighted," Bray said. "I don't think we thought long term. How long is this thing going to last and what's on the other side of this?"
She said the transition back is not easy.
"You may not want to come back into the office, but your organization wants you to come back into the office," Bray said. "So, you've got a decision to make, right?"
She said many of their clients were seeing a decline in productivity but admits, not everyone is going to be on board. That's the challenge.
"How do you incentivize? How do you really take a stance and show that this is really important for us and here's why," Bray said. "It's the productivity. It's the culture. It's the energy in the office. It's something that you don't get from home."
She added it depends on the industry and the role of the job.
"It's not a one size fits all -- it really depends on the organization," she said. "You got to figure out as an organization what your priorities are. What are you trying to accomplish? Are we better together or are we better apart?"
She said the pandemic showed that employers have the ability to be flexible, but she believes working from home is not the right solution in the long term.
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