‘Do I have to sit with people?’ — Covid graduates on the challenge of working in offices for the first time

For Lucy Holden, entering an office for the first time after Covid-19 restrictions presented challenges.

Lockdowns forced her studies for her master’s degree and her first year in the workplace away from the bricks and mortar of real life and into an exclusively online existence.

She had already obtained a degree in psychology from the University of Galway and was halfway through the Master’s in health psychology when the pandemic struck in February 2020. It changed everything.

She finished her studies in front of a computer screen. After graduating, she landed a job with social media giant Twitter, but, again, would spend her first year on the job isolated from co-workers.

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As pandemic restrictions lifted last year, the Dublin woman, now 26, found herself in uncharted territory: working in an office for the first time.

“Your first job is always scary anyway. Graduating and then going out into the big, bad world. You get used to working online and it is somehow less scary because you have that distance. You have time to think through everything,” she says.

“Dealing with people on a face-to-face basis is completely different. If you haven’t had an office job before, you don’t really know what work interactions are like. You have only experienced them over a computer.”

[ Covid ‘emergency is over’: 20 key moments of pandemic that changed the world ]

Indeed, many of Ireland’s top companies are now providing new training for young recruits whose education was disrupted by lockdowns, as well as upskilling their managers and spending more money on social events to help them bed in after the pandemic.

The move comes as Deloitte and PwC have started providing extra coaching to their youngest UK staff after noticing that these recruits have weaker teamwork and communication skills than previous cohorts.

A manager at one of Ireland’s top engineering companies, who did not want to be named, is adamant there are major issues facing young recruits and their managers in the post-lockdown world.

“I do a lot of work with graduates and you can definitely see a difference in those who completed the last two years in college remotely as opposed to those who were on-site, particularly in relation to presentation skills and confidence,” he says.

Many recruits have problems communicating with colleagues and find it difficult to express themselves. Other problems have surfaced around basic interpersonal skills such as “looking people in the eye”.

“People not having the confidence, and just the awareness as well — soft handshakes too — to do things you would expect to get from someone meeting them for the first time,” he says.

Holden can relate to some of these issues.

“The office is just a completely different environment, even in terms of what do I do for lunch?” she says. “Do I have to sit with people? Is it rude not to sit with people? How much interaction should there be? Do I wait to be invited or do I follow people down?

“Then meeting people in person, you are like, do I shake hands? But we have already met before? It’s little things like that. Those who had been working in the office before the lockdowns, they already know everyone and where everything is.”

Confidence was “definitely an issue” for her after two years of lockdowns and isolation, she says.

“You are considering things like: how do I make friends? What are the work boundaries? How do I talk to people at work? Where is the line with professional communication, but also you are trying to build relationships and that is totally different from online.”

That being said, she argues that some of these issues are not confined to young recruits.

“It was across the board because it was a long time to be isolated and you do lose social skills,” she says.

“It caused a lot of issues with a lot of people. You are always going to have people who aren’t great with eye contact or don’t have good handshakes, and it’s not necessarily something you would have picked up because of lockdowns.”

[ Covid graduates struggle with teamwork - Deloitte and PwC ]

Sigmar Recruitment chief executive Frank Farrelly says “it is no wonder” many graduates are struggling.

“A lot of them have lost their college experience so they are not as used to the in-person collaboration that is demanded of them in new roles,” he says.

“Until you are shown things, you don’t know. In-person presentation skills are weaker, but the newer cohort are better and more comfortable with online presentations.”

I didn’t hear much from any of my friends saying it was really good because companies did X or Y and there was an onboarding and an introduction

Again, Holden can relate. Having done countless in-person presentations at university pre-Covid, she found herself “so nervous” returning to them in the office, “because you just get out of the habit of it”.

Much of the problem, Farrelly says, stems from a lack of social contact among new recruits. Office budgets are being devoted to gathering teams for dinner, training or team building, he says.

“No longer are these ‘nice to haves’. They are essential both for remote teams and to help newer staff settle in,” he says.

He also finds that many companies “need to reskill and upskill their managers” to enable them to coach new recruits and help staff with stress. This is something Holden says companies need to do more of.

“I didn’t hear much from any of my friends saying it was really good because companies did X or Y and there was an onboarding and an introduction. It was a case of ‘oh don’t worry, you’ll get used to it’, rather than ‘here’s what you can do’.”

Feargal O’Rourke, managing partner of professional services firm PwC Ireland, says it is “aware of the challenges” remote and hybrid working creates, including “learning opportunities” for graduate recruits.

“It is something we are conscious of and we have asked our people to be thoughtful when deciding where they will work on any particular day — not to think about it solely in the context of tasks, but in terms of teamwork, learning and connection,” he says.

Instinctively we know — and our people have told us — that building a sense of belonging among new joiners and helping them meet their colleagues is really important

—  Colm Gorman of KPMG

Many of these lessons are being taken on board by some of Ireland’s biggest companies, with management consultancy firms Deloitte and KMPG among those laying on new training methods for staff to cope with the changed world of work.

Deloitte’s chief human resources officer Sinead Gogan says the group is more focused on providing time for employees to jell.

“Rather than one big party at Christmas, we are now looking at quarterly events and what we are going to do to actually bring people together so they have those opportunities,” she says.

“We have a big summer event now where everyone goes to Tayto Park.”

Colm Gorman, head of people at KPMG in Ireland, says there is “no doubt” the company’s most recent recruits were affected by Covid and its related impacts on their university experience.

“Instinctively we know — and our people have told us — that building a sense of belonging among new joiners and helping them meet their colleagues is really important,” he says.

Holden is now working in the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland and is in an office five days a week. She has become used to office life, she says.

“It was a big adjustment. I didn’t realise how tired I would be. It’s a lot of social interaction that you are not used to really. When you can choose when you want to go in, you can conserve your energy a bit better,” she says.

“But I have found it quite good, to be honest. I understand why people enjoy it because you get quite a lot done and you have people you can ask questions casually to beside you rather than having to contact a manager on Slack or a group chat.”