The Snapback: Why Workplaces Are Reverting and What We Can Do About It
By: Tim Cynova // Published: February 10, 2025
For a hot second, it seemed like we were on the cusp of real workplace transformation. The pandemic cracked open long-standing organizational defaults, forcing workplaces to reconsider everything from how and where we work to what we value most in the process. For many values-centered organizations, this was a clarifying moment—a chance to align work with purpose, to prioritize people and care, to reimagine what a workplace could be rather than what it had become. And yet, here we are in 2025, watching countless organizations and systems snap back to the way things were, as if the last few years (heck, even the last 60 years) were merely a detour, not a turning point.
The Snapback: Why Organizations Revert
Snapback is the tendency for systems—especially entrenched ones—to revert to their original state after an initial period of change or adaptation, particularly if the underlying structures and incentives remain unchanged. (See also: adrienne maree brown, Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley, and Donella Meadows.) It’s why, despite the sweeping proclamations of a “new normal,” many companies rolled back flexible work arrangements, nixed shared decision-making, and deprioritized well-being initiatives. Change, it turns out, is fragile. Also turns out, not surprisingly perhaps, that the systems and structures in place are built to keep those systems and structures in place. Without intentional reinforcement, systems default back to what they know, even if those old ways were deeply flawed.
Values-centered workplaces and thriving workplace practitioners know this: lasting transformation doesn’t happen through a single initiative, policy shift, or moment of crisis. It requires ongoing resistance to the gravitational pull of the status quo. If left unchecked, the snapback will drag even the most well-intentioned organizations back into old habits, leaving employees disillusioned and exhausted by yet another cycle of false promises.
Hedonic Adaptation: Why We Normalize Change, Even When It’s Harmful
Just as organizations snap back, people acclimate. Hedonic adaptation is the psychological phenomenon where, after major life changes, we return to a baseline level of happiness. This helps us cope with difficulty, but it also means we adjust to conditions that shouldn’t be acceptable. (Hedonic adaptation also accounts for a research study finding that the positive psychic benefits of a pay raise last about 15 days. Meaning, if people were unhappy with their workplace before the pay raise, in about one pay period they’ll be back there again.)
We’ve seen hedonic adaptation play out in real time recently. People who were once outraged by the amount of time their daily commutes ate up in their day — I commute 2 hours a day that I could be spent doing other things — are now back in rush hour traffic, barely questioning it after the first few commutes. Teams that experienced the support of mental health benefits during the pandemic now are back to accepting burnout as an inevitability (or even a badge of honor). Injustice and inequity—momentarily visible in stark relief—aren’t even considered aspirational values in many organizations as they refocus on "optimizing productivity and performance."
Hedonic adaptation can numb us to harmful conditions, making it easier to settle. And in the workplace, settling means accepting conditions that might grate against our very soul. When people accept the rollback of values-centered changes, they unintentionally reinforce the snapback, allowing organizations to justify backpedaling under the guise of “business as usual.”
The Three Characteristics of Experience & Life: How We Misperceive Work (and Ourselves)
At the heart of all this is a deeper truth about how we experience the world. Organizational systems and human psychology intersect in ways that make lasting change difficult, and three fundamental misperceptions often get in our way:
Change: We mistake the impermanent for the permanent. Organizations behave as if the pandemic-era shifts were temporary disruptions, rather than signals of deeper structural issues. This fuels the snapback. But the reality is, there is no “going back.” The conditions have already changed. The only question is whether organizations will acknowledge it or continue pretending otherwise.
Unreliable Systems: We assume stability where there is none. Companies built on rigid hierarchies, endless productivity demands, and outdated measures of success aren’t stable—they are precarious. Yet, rather than rethinking the foundations, many workplaces cling to them, mistaking familiarity for security.
Control: We misperceive ourselves as having a solid, unchanging core. But just as individuals evolve, so must workplaces. There is no singular, fixed “way things are done here.” There is only the present moment, and the choices made within it. Organizations that resist transformation are not preserving their identity… they are stifling their own potential.
How Values-Centered Workplaces Resist the Snapback
Change isn’t something you did. It’s something you do. Constantly. Intentionally. If your workplace cares about flexibility, equity, and well-being, how can we actively resist the pull toward the past. Otherwise, old habits creep back in, and before we know it, we’re right back where we started—only this time, we’re actually further behind.
How might values-centered workplaces undermine the snapback?
Stop Treating Change Like a One-and-Done Event. If you implemented a policy, initiative, or shift during the pandemic and thought, “Cool, we fixed it,” that’s exactly where things start to unravel. Change isn’t a thing you roll out once and forget about—it’s a practice you commit to, refine, and iterate over time. It’s a realization I had earlier in my career that was accompanied by an, “Oh, so this work will never be done. That’s the work.”
Make your commitments structural. Policies and practices need to be embedded DNA-level deep so when leadership changes and staff turnover, when the budget tightens, when the industry shifts, and when new regulatory forces emerge, our commitments have a better chance to survive.
Keep checking for drift. Are we actually still doing what we said we’d do? Or have old habits crept back in?
Reaffirm your values, loudly and often. The moment we stop saying them out loud, people assume they don’t matter anymore. For values-based organizations, this one is being especially tested at the moment with large forces trying to snap the systems back from diversity, equity, and inclusion work.
Let’s Not Confuse Predictability for Stability. Workplaces love to talk about “getting back to normal.” But here’s the thing—normal was always an illusion, right? The pre-pandemic workplace wasn’t stable; it was just predictable. Now that the illusion has been shattered, values-centered organizations need to embrace reality:
Flexibility isn’t a perk—it’s a necessity. All of us are navigating an ever-changing world. If your workplace isn’t adapting, it’s forcing employees to bear the burden of that instability alone.
The way we work will keep evolving. Hybrid, remote, asynchronous, four-day workweeks—the companies that thrive will be the ones willing to keep experimenting, not the ones clinging to the way Henry Ford forced his workers to work in 1926.
If you’re not actively shaping your culture, it’s shaping itself. If you don’t design, you default in the words of Christina Wodtke. And defaulting usually means sliding back into old patterns. Be intentional.
Leadership Alone Doesn’t Have the Answers. Snapback can happen when a small group of decision-makers assumes they know what’s best without including other voices and perspectives in those conversations. That’s how we get disastrous return-to-office policies, budget cuts that undermine values, and culture shifts that no one actually wanted.
If you’re serious about resisting the snapback, here are a few things that can help:
Build structures that prevent backsliding. When things get tough, and they always do at some point, what are usually the first things to go? The “nice to haves”: flexibility and well-being, inclusion and care. How might we design these so they’re non-negotiable?
Design in decision-making power. Not just in staff surveys. Not just in feedback forms. In actual, structural ways that shape the future of the organization.
Practice holding multiple completing ideas at the same time. This work isn’t happening in the abstract, it’s occurring in the context of a workplace. And usually that means the workplace needs to make enough money to stay in business. That’s a lever organizations commonly pull to get “back to business;” however, when doing so that often fails to acknowledge that multiple things can be true at the same time. And therein lies a significant challenge of this work, and why we must get skilled at holding multiple ideas that might be in conflict with each other and still figure out how to move forward.
Treat trust like your most valuable asset—because it is. Once people see organizations revert on their commitments, good luck getting them to believe in your next big initiative.
Carb Load for the Long Game. The workplace didn’t transform overnight, and it won’t sustain change without effort. Snapback is what happens when organizations get comfortable, complacent, or assume things are now “solved.” The ones that keep evolving and iterating are the ones that treat values not as a slogan, but as a discipline, designed into policies, practices, initiatives, and their language.
Check in on your commitments, not just in crises, but regularly.
Think generationally. Invest in the future, even when the present is messy. Admittedly, this is particularly challenging for workplaces that think in fiscal quarters. (See above holding multiple competing truths and still figuring out what to do with them.)
The workplace of the future is being built right now. A big question is whether we’ll be part of shaping it or just waiting for someone else to do it. A colleague once remarked that she didn’t get what the big hurdle was when it came to updating the employee handbook. She said, “it’s just a Google Doc. Those can be easily edited.” I’m not belittling the effort required for some of these changes. But sometimes, it just requires an edit in a Google Doc.
What Now? Choosing a Different Path
The snapback is real—but it’s not inevitable. For values-centered workplaces, the challenge is clear: resist the snapback, disrupt hedonic adaptation, and recognize the impermanence, instability, and fluidity of work itself. This moment in history is a test of whether organizations can truly embody their values or if those values were simply pandemic-era aspirational marketing. We have a choice: slide back or double down on what we know is possible.
If your company is serious about the future of work, here’s the test: What are you actively doing to stop it from snapping back? If workplaces truly believe in equity, justice, and inclusion, they must do more than talk about it in moments of crisis. They must build practices, policies, and cultures that make progress the default—not just a fleeting experiment.
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