Happy Thursday, everyone. I'm Frank Richardson, an organisational psychologist observing the workplace with curiosity and care. Each week, I share insights to help HR leaders better understand the people behind the processes and build cultures where both individuals and organisations can thrive.
This week in workplace whiplash 🌀
As everyone scrambles to catch up after the holidays, the workplace news cycle has already slipped back into full speed. While many people are still mentally re-entering, work has clearly decided it’s business as usual:
📊 Workforce Trends Everyone Is Watching
HR Morning’s 2026 forecast predicts “hybrid creep” (more office days), plus a rise in “workslop”, the generic AI content that looks busy but says nothing. It also flags a bigger shift: managers will be valued less for admin oversight and more for human judgement, reskilling, and real leadership as AI use becomes normal.
👉HR Morning🔄 HR Leaders Are Quietly on the Move
A noticeable number of senior HR professionals took on new roles in December, with organisations across healthcare, tech and finance announcing fresh appointments. The steady churn suggests that, even in a cautious market, companies continue to invest in people leadership as they head into the new year.
👉HR Dive⚠️ Layoff Rumours Are Back Already
Speculation is circulating about whether Microsoft is preparing for large-scale layoffs in 2026, despite ongoing profitability. Whether the rumours prove accurate or not, their early return highlights how fragile confidence still feels.
👉The HR Digest
Which brings us neatly to the question many people are sitting with this week: when you go back to work after time away, are you really just picking up where you left off, or are you switching back into an entirely different version of yourself?
🤝 Supported by Gallup
Gallup’s latest research shows AI adoption is increasing across the workforce, yet a large share of employees don’t know whether their organisation even has an AI strategy. The gap between usage and understanding is becoming a leadership problem, not a technology one.
If you’ve ever watched Severance, you’ll remember the unsettling idea at its core: one version of you exists at work, another exists everywhere else, and the two never quite meet.
Over the holidays, many of us live a softer version of that divide.
You might have been the relaxed dad who let all routines slide.
The fun aunt who travelled to Europe and forgot what day it was.
The friend who ate cheese for dinner every night for a week.
Or the person who forgot to turn on the washing machine and wore dirty clothes for a week.
Then work starts again.
Suddenly, you are expected to be the decisive, organised executive who remembers context, manages impressions, responds quickly and most importantly, wears clean clothes every day.
You're the same person, but in a completely different operating mode.
So when returning to work feels oddly uncomfortable, it is easy to assume you have lost momentum or motivation. But what you are feeling is far more predictable.
It’s the mental cost of switching identities.
🧠The behavioural science lens
The return to work often feels heavier than expected because several psychological forces land at once:
Switching roles uses more energy than we think: Moving between identities takes cognitive effort, especially when those roles demand different behaviours. Research on work–family boundary dynamics shows that crossing psychological role boundaries creates strain before any real work has begun.
Your environment activates a different version of you: Offices, inboxes and meetings cue different norms and mental states automatically. That is why returning can feel like a personality shift rather than a gentle adjustment, a dynamic explained through research on context-dependent memory.
Self-discrepancy quietly fuels anxiety: Discomfort shows up when there is a gap between who you feel you are and who you think you should be at work. After time off, that gap can widen fast. A clear explanation of this tension sits within self-discrepancy theory.
Habits do not resume on command: Focus and prioritisation rely on stable cues, which disappear during leave. When those cues drop out, routines weaken. James Clear’s breakdown of how habits work explains why restarting feels harder than stopping.
Fresh starts lose power without support: New beginnings can lift motivation briefly, but that lift fades without structural reinforcement. Research on the fresh start effect explains why January momentum often collapses by February.
🚀What this means for leaders
Most organisations treat the return to work as a logistics exercise.
Clear the calendar. Set goals. Get moving.
But the harder part is psychological.
When leaders interpret early-January slowness as disengagement, they respond with urgency and pressure. That makes the identity shift heavier, not faster.
What actually helps:
Name the transition so people stop internalising it as personal failure
Lower role load in week one, with fewer meetings and fewer decisions
Prioritise re-orientation before acceleration, especially after long breaks
Model gradual ramp-up, because behaviour spreads faster than policy
The aim is not to slow teams down. It is to stop them wasting energy pretending the switch never happened.
💬 Final thoughts
Severance resonates because it exaggerates something familiar: we divide ourselves to meet systems that expect constant competence.
Over the holidays, many people drop performance mode. Returning to work demands its return, and that shift takes effort.
So if the first week back feels heavier than expected, nothing has gone wrong. You have simply switched identities quickly. The workplaces that handle this best notice the switch and give people space to find their footing again.
How's the depth of today's edition?
If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.
Until next week,
Frank
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