Working from Home - From "perk" to requirement
Within the span of two weeks, working from home has gone from being considered a perk to a business requirement. For businesses that want to thrive and in some cases, simply survive, it is no longer an option to ignore working from home. That was true with or without the “shelter in place” dictated by COVID 19. The heretofore low unemployment rates meant that to be competitive in the marketplace, employees, millennials in particular, are looking for the flexibility afforded by working at home.
If we frame this as a question of adoption and reference the technology adoption model, the early innovators and early adopters embraced the concept. Those employers understood that working from home and other flex time options such as job sharing, modified schedules and longer days but shorter weeks afforded provided competitive benefits. Many startups formed their companies with flex time policies so there wasn’t anything that needed to change; it was just a smart way to attract talent and lower their costs.
The good news is that the “early adopters” have paved the way for successfully working from home. Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economics professor and graduate student James Liang conducted an experiment with a travel agency that employed 20,000 people. The results of the two year study showed that the employees who worked from home were more productive and that turnover decreased by 50%. Interestingly, at the end of the experiment many of the staff wanted to return to the office for two important reasons. They missed the social engagement and they felt their opportunities for promotion were less than those who were physically present in the office.
From those lessons, we recommend the following for anyone faced with implementing effective work from home practices
Check in with staff daily. Use video conferencing to connect for a daily check in.
If video conferencing is new, give staff time prior to the start of a meeting to check in and test their equipment. Zoom has terrific guides in their help center to get folks up and running.
Identify and communicate when staff need to be available. During this “shelter at home” time, people are not only figuring out how to work from home, but may also be dealing with many people occupying their same space, and some of those people may be children who also need support, so the more flexibility the better.
While many people are more productive working from home, as mentioned in the above bullet point, these are unusual times. People have a lot of competing demands. Productivity may look a little different for while.
Ask and answer these questions:
What are the activities that people must do? Are there any tasks or activities that should be deleted or put on hold during this time?
Do people have the information they need to do their jobs outside of the office?
Do people have the tools they need to do their jobs outside of the office?
How are decisions being made during this time? Does the decision making process need to be modified in any way now that people aren’t in the same physical space. You don’t want any delays because one person didn’t get through their inbox.
Ask your staff “What is working well” and “what makes this difficult ”?. Work through the issues as a group because you can be pretty sure that everyone is encountering some of the same.
As Plato said “Our need will be the real creator”. During this time of “shelter in home” we will learn many things about ourselves and our work. With communication and curiosity, we can move our businesses forward even in challenging times.
Concurrence Consulting offers consulting services to develop highly effective work teams, which includes individual and team strengths, performance coaching and flextime policies.
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