‘Tis the season for end-of-year wrapups. Last year, many wrote about the difficulties of 2020 but expressed hope and levity as we entered 2021. With a vaccine on the horizon, we all thought we’d reached the proverbial end of the tunnel.

Delta reset our expectations, and so here we are again: the end of another year with yet more hard-earned pandemic wisdom to unpack. This time, no one will be foolish enough to make proclamations about a “return to normal.” We’ve realized that the way we live and work is forever altered.

Some of those changes have been devastating. But, as with most bad things in life, with reflection and distance, there’s an opportunity to learn and grow from what we’ve been fortunate enough to survive.

Here are some of the positive changes I’ve observed in the working world—ones I hope will stick around in 2022 and beyond.

Before the pandemic, innovation and flexibility had their limits. Every business has those policies that are “just the way we’ve always done things.” When COVID changed all facets of life overnight, it invited us to question everything.

The end of exclusionary practices

Following my New York State-mandated harassment and bias training, I have been thinking about the death of certain exclusionary practices in the workplace. For all the angst about losing office culture, remote work has aspects that can make it inherently easier to treat people more equitably..

For one – people have the time, flexibility, and privacy to care for any kind of physical or mental illness. It can be as simple as taking a 20 minute breather during a stressful time when no one can notice or judge. It is also just harder to be cliquey or create some types of preferential treatment, e.g., the boss can’t go to lunch with one direct report and leave out others.

There’s even less bias around how people dress and do their hair. There have been dozens of articles about how Black employees have faced fewer microaggressions and felt more valued in a WFH environment.

There’s a whole separate conversation to be had around how those of us with power and privilege can and should work to make in-person environments more inclusive and safe. But it’s worth noting our remote work arrangements may hold some clues to what equitable work looks like.

The willingness to look for talent anywhere

When FATFREE had an office, there was an inherent assumption that our freelancers would interview in person—even if the plan all along was for them to work remotely.

Now we don’t worry about in-person screenings at all. We don’t even think about time zones or geographical locations.

We have a network that reaches from New York to Venezuela to Australia. We’re able to work with the best in the business and find highly-specialized collaborators to suit each client’s needs by looking outside our tri-state area bubble.

The redefinition of flexibility

Before the pandemic, innovation and flexibility had their limits. Every business has those policies that are “just the way we’ve always done things.” When COVID changed all facets of life overnight, it invited us to question everything.

We found that our rigidity around certain things was not necessary (or even helpful). Why couldn’t people start work at different times? Why do we have those strict clauses in our e-commerce return policy?

The businesses that reconsidered everything at the start of the pandemic were the ones to survive. We saw high-end fashion brands pivot to producing PPE using their existing infrastructure. My local distilleries started making alcohol based hand sanitizer.

One of my favorite examples of flexibility during the pandemic comes from Canlis, a fine dining institution in Seattle. In the nearly 500 days they were shuttered during COVID, they tested out 18 different business models. Some worked, some didn’t. But it took real courage to look at the state of the world, say “fine dining isn’t what the world needs right now,” and tirelessly test concept after concept.

The embrace of empathy

Oxford Languages defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” There’s a lot of complex emotional work happening in that compact little definition.

Empathy has not always been humanity’s strong suit. People have historically held onto an “us versus them” mentality. But COVID shoved us all into the same boat. No matter where we were on the planet, we were at risk of contracting the same virus.

Suddenly, our similarities felt greater than our differences, and with that, we saw a shift toward empathy. Bosses who were previously rigid about working arrangements had to juggle homeschooling and meetings. They suddenly had empathy for the mom on their team who had asked for flex hours years ago.

Advertisers created empathetic messaging, putting safety ahead of profit, showing appreciation for essential workers, and highlighting the beauty of building connections with others.

Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes is a vital skill. It’s how you become a more compassionate leader. It’s how you build a brand that truly serves your customers.

The caveat here is that the empathy must be real, not manufactured. Many brands and leaders were called out for disingenuous public displays of empathy, and consumers showed they could-and would-live without them.

I’m optimistic we’ll have a brighter 2022—goodness knows we’ve all earned it. The great thing about a new year is that it puts some of the power back in our hands. It’s a chance to wipe the slate clean and set a new direction. While we can’t control COVID (or many other things), we can control our intentions and actions. If leaders set out to dismantle the bad and keep the good, we stand a chance at building this brighter workplace we’re looking for.

And if you want to talk about revamping your marketing plans, we’ve got some bright ideas to share. Feel free to reach out.