The era of the remote worker is winding down. Before a mandate for federal workers to return to the office made national headlines, dozens of major private sector companies across the U.S., like Amazon, Starbucks, even Zoom, asked their workers to return to the office at least half of the week. It's a big shift for millions across the country, many of whom have come to prefer the flexibility of working from home.

I recently sat down with Pamela Irring, president of the Protocol School of Washington, to learn why back to the office may not immediately mean back to normal.

Pamela, thank you so much for joining us. Private sector leaders have said that it's important to go back to work in the office because it increases productivity. What do you make of that?

Well, Allie, I believe that there are some merits of going back to work in person. I mean, think about the benefits of collaborating with your teammates and colleagues for the leaders and your supervisor to see you working, actually working,

and being able to go to that supervisor to say, hey, I have this great idea,

or brainstorming with colleagues.

What's your advice to employers?

It's been almost five years since we started dealing with remote work,

and now workers are, in some cases, going back to

an entirely unfamiliar working environment. How do you advise employers to navigate this phase?

Well, I think they need to be encouraging, you know, and be not so firm and hardcore about it.

Get them excited. Use the psychology of, you know, understanding what they've been through.

So psychologically, how do we make it easier for them? And I think one way is to have a good

working environment. Make sure that they have their desk or a desk or somewhere to work that's

theirs. Make sure all the computers are updated and they have their monitors and they have a

setup. So it's just like when you're onboarding a new employee, but that you're ready for them.

You're welcoming them. Maybe even have some fun, you know, maybe some luncheon learns or even

having some team time to make it more fun to be back. What are some of the challenges that employers are telling you

that they're having when welcoming employees back? Well, the first one that I've been getting a lot of

because we've had an increase of need for training is business attire because they've been behind the

screen for, we're going now five years, and they don't really know how to dress appropriately in that

workspace and we want to showcase our professionalism whether we're on a

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