The relocation of a company is often a source of anxiety for its employees, who have appropriated the premises and their uses. To avoid the stress associated with this major change, the work psychologist Christophe Nguyen recommends putting dialogue at the heart of the process.
Why is it often scary to change offices?
CHRISTOPHE NGUYEN. It’s one of the stressful events in life. Changing workplaces makes you lose your bearings and generates questions to which you don’t necessarily have immediate answers. Many concerns emerge: Will I have my manager next to me? Will we have the right with some amenities ? Will my office be suitable for what I need to work efficiently? We automatically have in mind what we lose, not always what we gain. The risk for the employee is to oppose resistance to change, to develop psychosocial disorders, or to disengage…
What can the employer do?
For a move to be effective, a lot of dialogue is needed. The challenge is to take employees’ concerns into account, know how to listen to them and provide answers. It is important to reflect with them on the design of the workspaces and to arrange the premises, for example by installing meeting rooms or tools for videoconferencing. The company must ensure that its employees feel useful and recognized. Rethinking ways of working is not just about moving walls.
How do I appropriate a new place?
Personally, I have to ask myself what my leeway is. I can focus on the five meters around me: choose my place, my storage spaces, my equipment… Knowing that I can isolate myself when I need it, have time to concentrate and take a break can help me ‘to help. You have to look where you can be an actor and mourn where you can’t. You can’t control everything.
Company strategies or major budgetary choices, for example, are decisions that have already been made. The important thing is not to have the impression of undergoing everything. The question arises in the same terms for the flex office, which is very fashionable today. This office philosophy, where employees do not have a fixed workstation, can give a feeling of disrepute, the impression that one is interchangeable, without space for oneself. Here too, the dialogue with his manager is the key.