Changes ahead for work, workers

For the American worker, this has been a year and a half of massive upheaval.

Many are working harder than ever. Nurses and doctors, restaurant workers and small-business owners, construction workers and train conductors, teachers and first responders — all have seen the pressure increase, the hours lengthen, the time away from home become seemingly interminable. The rest of us have gained new appreciation for the work those essential employees do.

Other workers have lost their jobs, as the pandemic wreaked havoc. Finding new employees has been difficult, leaving small-business owners and those who are left to work around the clock.

For others, the world of the five-day workweek, hour-plus commute and tiny cubicles seems so far away yet almost ready to resume. For them, the scene has morphed into a home office — a challenge, but one that also provides a flexibility we never knew was possible.

No matter how the pandemic affected your job, many of us are questioning the very notion of the 20th-century concept of work. The calculus has changed. The pandemic has employees across the region considering whether their priorities should change as our definition of what matters most has been altered.

Now, employers must rethink how they manage the workers responsible for their success. For hospitals, nursing homes and other essential employers, managers should consider how to encourage existing employees to stay and entice new ones to join. Employers in more traditional office settings must find ways to retain the best parts of a flexible schedule, while making a return to the workplace smarter and more accommodating.

For many workers and employers, Labor Day 2021 was the moment they had hoped to come back to the office, to return to "normal." The Metropolitan Transportation Authority saw it as the time when trains might start to fill again.

The delta variant has shifted those expectations, causing some companies to delay return-to-work plans as they rethink what that return looks like. Companies large and small know that some of the changes in how we work inevitably will become permanent. Finding ways to retain some of the flexibility they've exhibited since March 2020 while still training new employees and maintaining the culture and values of an organization is key.

In luring new workers, businesses also have to consider the ongoing labor shortage. Recent analyses showed extended unemployment benefits were not responsible for job growth slowdowns, so other, more personal issues could be at work.

Long Island should not miss this opportunity to retain and attract a skilled workforce and further establish our region as a forward-thinking place to operate or open a business. As for workers across the state, this Labor Day marks a chance to discover a new work-life balance that will carry us into a post-pandemic world.