I recently met a woman who quit her job after 11 years working for the same organization. The pandemic was stressful, but it was the hybrid meetings that did her in.
“During the pandemic we were all in the same boat—trying to work with our kids screaming in the background or our partners fighting with us over the one ‘good’ corner of the house to work,” she said. But several months ago, most of her team started coming back to the office. She and a handful of others stayed remote.
Over those months she noticed a growing communications divide between the in-office and remote people. During meetings, the office people would direct their comments to each other instead of to their screens. They would tell inside jokes and forget to call on the remote people. Sometimes they would stand around at the end of the meeting laughing; the remote people were stuck watching.
She felt like a ghost on the wall—watching her team interact but unable to contribute in any meaningful way.
After months of feeling socially excluded and left behind, she quit.
