"If You Want A Paycheck, We Have a Very Reasonable Expectation...Come Back to Work!" - 05/26/21 Edition
Stephen Says Column

 Dear Stephen,

 
 We’re back!
 
 Our offices have re-opened, and our customers are back to work. And guess where I’m writing you from? New York City! The lockdown capital of the world. I’m a regional manager for an office furniture manufacturer with a giant, expensive, showroom in New York City. We’re not pressuring our employees to come back to work, but we are encouraging them to come back to work and most of them have. That being said, we have some sales assistants, showroom managers, administrative people as well as some of our salespeople that are a little bit reluctant. It seems to change day-to-day; we’re so used to being on lockdown here in Gotham.
 
 Here’s the typical territory for us: the showroom is in New York City, but we have sales reps based in the City, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester County, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. We have lots of people.
 
 Just to be fair, very few of the design firms are welcoming us back into their offices yet. They’re busy on projects and they have Zoom fatigue on presentations and we can no longer close a sale virtually. Who is winning the business? I would say it’s the reps that go in person to see clients and take designers to lunch, dinner or coffee. Or the ones who invite those designers into our showroom. And now, our dealers are almost fully open, letting reps and customers in their doors. But still, some salespeople seem to be having a hard time coming to terms with the new new normal; which is that our customers expect to really see our salespeople and so we are back to work, back in our offices, and not working remotely. You have said it a million times in this space that to sell office furniture you should be comfortable coming into the office – otherwise, how do you have any credibility selling this product to your customers? I don’t need my products on your Instagram account, I need you making sales calls!
 
 So, like I said, we’re encouraging our employees back into the office (if that is where they worked from before) as they become comfortable… I’ve heard a range of dates to be back in the office, from June 1st some places to September 7th from others, but I’m sticking with the June 1st requirement. It seems implicit to me that my salespeople need to be making personal visits to customers in order to keep up with our competition. We give them plenty of T&E to have lunches, and of course, we’re always thrilled to have people in the showroom, which is more the norm now. As a corporation, our decision is that if our employees aren’t comfortable coming back to work yet, they can even themselves in with one or two days per week at home still. But – we will never have remote working in a company that sells office furniture. As manager of the Northeast Region I’ve made it clear that we want their best foot forward & best efforts, and my entire team states that they are vaccinated and I am taking their word for it. If I have some slackers who still want to work remotely and feel more confident doing so, that’s not acceptable to me, personally.
 
 My question is: When is it okay to start terminating people who makes excuses for not returning to work in the offices as usual? I’m not going to tell them that their fear of returning to the is the reason for firing them because the same slackers have plenty of other performance issues that I’ve been tracking. And HR will back me up. I’m going to do it anyway – but what do you think? I guess I’m looking for someone to help me not feel too tough. Bottom line is, it comes down to out of sight, out of mind: you’re gone!
 
 — Compassionate But Feeling Only A Little Guilty
 
 You can send your workplace questions to Stephen at: StephenSays@bellosw.press
 
 Questions selected to be answered, will appear in this column. Please use the subject: Stephen Says for all emails. Stephen Viscusi is a bestselling author, television personality, and CEO of The Viscusi Group, global executive recruiters based in New York. Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenviscusi. Like Stephen on Facebook and follow him on LinkedIn.