Dissolving Paradigms

In this article, "Telecommuting is not the Future" Helaine Olen offers some pretty solid reasons as to why she thinks employees will return to physical offices once we get the green light: "on line communication can lead to miscommunication, serendipitous benefits to collaboration, employers being able to better monitor and control their employees", to name a few.

While every one of Ms. Olen's points is valid, her evaluation is based on long held paradigms of how we view and treat employees. This time demonstrates that those paradigms are dissolving, and that the marketplace and the workforce demand different ways of working.  This was true before the pandemic. With the pandemic, our collective awareness has been raised and now we can’t ignore it.  We have to learn new ways of approaching how we work, and we have to provide training on how to be a different sort of company, manager and employee.

I’ve identified three key elements companies need to cultivate to successfully shift to more flexible work in all of its forms:

·      A healthy company culture that fosters trust and transparency so that employees can make real time decisions.

·      Personal accountability and engagement from each employee so that managerial time is not wasted "monitoring and controlling".

·      Effective technology that facilitates communication, community, and getting work done efficiently.

These recommendations are not new, but the urgency and necessity are ratcheted up. The companies that embraced the concepts are the companies that were able to more easily shift within our current confinements. We have to step up our game in how we guide our managers and staff to meet those demands.