Just One year into the 2020s, And we’ve witnessed future history books being edited by the moment, While it may seem easy to use an asterisk to explain any irregularities in your bcompany's measurables; revenues, Employee turnover, expenses new customers/clients through sales, Payroll, or PTO usage, and overall performance. Despite all of the asterisks, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/15/remote-work-omicron/
believe there are lessons to be learned to carry forward into the Roaring 2020s and curb any loss of performance and productivity in the event of future major interruptions to the status quo
Assumptions: These principles advice will not apply to all companies; It assumes you are in leadership with a mature company with a central HQ Office or satellite branches with various departments and an established leadership structure to oversee various roles to manage or direct departments to meet standards set by Leadership from the top down. I am not seeking any formal opportunity to advise consult or join a team. That said, I do read emails and respond as I have the time.
1 Hold meetings in a format that allows remote attendees to participate equally to those At an HQ. periodic events that bring all employees, remote and centralized to mingle and cultivate relationships beyond phone calls and emails. Zoom has become rather ubiquitous for group video conferencing through the pandemic and can be a valuable
Consider organizing gatherings of employees at a neutral location.
or regularly scheduled periods, Any work-from home tasks will expose systems or tools that need to be virtualized or mad accessible from outside of a centralized workspace
Let me preface this post with a few caveats: I don’t claim to be an expert at any of these principles nor their execution, nor am I seeking any formal opportunity to consult or advise. But, if were to toot my own horn, it’d be thI’ve had success with formulating lasting solutions to complex challenges. I have been out of the workforce since 2015 due to an abrupt health emergency, but in my most recent role involved managing corporate growth as the company grew from ~50 employees to ~150 employees over just a few years. While the company was headquartered in Austin, Texas, over 50% of the workforce lived and worked remotely. In my role I championed ePut some eoutreach the remote employees into the company culture and tools & systems to which HQ workers have access. And providing t
Especially for the HQ’d worker whose roles require close proximity, encourage the use of paid sick leave to avoid spreading illness amongst the workforce. A good practice could be to shape your company’s paid time off policies in a way that an employee isn’t challenged between going to work ill or taking leisure time off for family or for leisure. Many managers/supervisors bristle at the idea of their subordinates working outside of the office. The pandemic of the 2020s should force business leaders to reset their mindset on college courses and degrees through non-traditional institutions. Many adult learner used their altered work patterns to brush-up on pertinent subject matter. With a new acceptance of working remotely, there may be no better indicator of an employee’s ability to perform remotely than to have successfully navigated the world of remote learning.
s. it, but there are plenty of possibilities that a remote workforce may be necessary.
Extending the base from which to recruit talent regardless of geography
The ability to work effectively remotely may make a position more attractive to candidates
In his book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, Scott Berkun describes his experience with working for Wordpress amongst a mostly remote team and how the leadership treats onboarding and off-site meet-ups on neutral territory to foster teamwork despite distance.
Challenge your IT staff to be virtualizing mission-critical services.
The low-hanging fruit are email, ip phones, Office 365, and plenty of over-the-top services like Zoom or Skype Amazon has several great options to move services
Be creative Consider a quarterly company holiday for employees to stay home and stay connected to their day-to-day tasks to expose deficiencies in available tools.
Embrace employees working from home, or outside of the standard workplace environment . Challenge your IT team to have adequate disaster recovery plans, including a specific scenario i in which the entire HQ workforce is prevented from their normal HQ tasks including documentation on connecting to necessary tools written documented procedures in layman’s tterms, especially if there are necessary IT tasks needed for restoration or connectivity but security boundaries to prevent nefarious outside users, that might be sniffing for critical company systems to interrupt systems or access sensitive company confidential data.
Challenge leadership and supervising staff to establish measures for productivity including readiness and availability and workflow & output, and professionalism outside of a workspace including limiting distractions in phone or video communications like family pets and excessive background noise. (Believe it or not, I once had a vendor rep whose child’s garage band often held band practice during their scheduled teleconferences. This may also include assisting employees with technology requisites like an adequate home internet package, adequate cell phone plan and device based on employees’ role, and even equipment like a computer and/or web camera and microphone. or VOIP phone tied to a central hub to allow a remote worker to function as if in a common workplace as a co-worker would function in a primary workplace.
Even without a pandemic, assign some employees to work from home some fraction of their time. This is a good way to trial your systems designed to enable remote work without a full-blown scatter. For an example, select a veteran employee and offer them the opportunity to work from home one day a week. Establish it with the rest of the staff, so meetings and tasks that require that remote employee not be scheduled on that day. Also track what effect on productivity the arrangement, if any.
Try identifying a team or department that could perform their work outside of their normal workspace; also tracking productivity of that team. You may observe functions of a team or individual roles. Sometimes it’s the individual role that’s the factor for remote work, and sometimes it’s the individual that determines remote work ability Cases can be made for work-from-home based on the individual.
Work with leadership to enable middle management and supervisors to establish measures of productivity to be evaluated between in-office or work-from-home.
Working-from home has had a number of misconceptions as long as technology has made it a re. Some studies suggest that, when done well,working from home can result in increased productivity. There is some extra effort by an organization to establish accurate, detailed job
Consider creating standards for working from home, like volume, or other interruptions.Believe it or not, I once had a call with a prospective vendor when his kid’s garage band was rehearsing in the other room. They weren’t good and that first impression followed me through the process of selecting a partner. Working from home should not be a substitute for child care
Cultivate a culture of staying home when ill Clearly create job descriptions and duties descriptions toidentify whether a role requires a centralized workplace, and if not, to establish measures for productivity, and strong leadership to ensure desired quality and quantity of work is achieved by a remote employee working at home or elsewhere. It requires collaboration amongst leaders to craft a detailed and complete job description so that expectations are set for remote work standards. Every so often the company leadership should check-in with performance measures and the effect of remote work on the rest of the company.
ust One year into the 2020s, And we’ve witnessed future history books being edited by the moment, While it may seem easy to use an asterisk to explain any irregularities in your bcompany's measurables; revenues, Employee turnover, expenses new customers/clients through sales, Payroll, or PTO usage, and overall performance. Despite all of the asterisks, I
believe there are lessons to be learned to carry forward into the Roaring 2020s and curb any loss of performance and productivity in the event of future major interruptions to the status quo
Assumptions: These principles advice will not apply to all companies; It assumes you are in leadership with a mature company with a central HQ Office or satellite branches with various departments and an established leadership structure to oversee various roles to manage or direct departments to meet standards set by Leadership from the top down.
1 Hold meetings in a format that allows remote attendees to participate equally to those At anHQ. periodic events that bring all employees, remote and centralized to mingle and cultivate relationships beyond phone calls and emails. Zoom has become rather ubiquitous for group video conferencing through the pandemic and can be a valuable
Consider organizing gatherings of employees at a neutral location.
or regularly scheduled periods, Any work-from home tasks will expose systems or tools that need to be virtualized or mad accessible from outside of a centralized workspace
Let me preface this post with a few caveats: I don’t claim to be an expert at any of these principles nor their execution, nor am I seeking any formal opportunity to consult or advise. But, if were to toot my own horn, it’d be thI’ve had success with formulating lasting solutions to complex challenges. I have been out of the workforce since 2015 due to an abrupt health emergency, but in my most recent role involved managing corporate growth as the company grew from ~50 employees to ~150 employees over just a few years. While the company was headquartered in Austin, Texas, over 50% of the workforce lived and worked remotely. In my role I championed ePut some eoutreach the remote employees into the company culture and tools & systems to which HQ workers have access. And providing t
Especially for the HQ’d worker whose roles require close proximity, encourage the use of paid sick leave to avoid spreading illness amongst the workforce. A good practice could be to shape your company’s paid time off policies in a way that an employee isn’t challenged between going to work ill or taking leisure time off for family or for leisure. Many managers/supervisors bristle at the idea of their subordinates working outside of the office
s. it, but there are plenty of possibilities that a remote workforce may be necessary.
Extending the base from which to recruit talent regardless of geography
The ability to work effectively remotely may make a position more attractive to candidates
In his book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, Scott Berkun describes his experience with working for Wordpress amongst a mostly remote team and how the leadership treats onboarding and off-site meet-ups on neutral territory to foster teamwork despite distance.
Challenge your IT staff to be virtualizing mission-critical services.
The low-hanging fruit ais email, ip phones and VPN tunnel(s)
zrrange the office flooorplan, space employees to a safe distance apart and assign work stations to a specific employee to avoid usind the keyboard, mouse and desk surface that could involve someone else’s germs
Use an office layou
EIncluding Remote work
Having the option of working from home will increase the pool of talent from which to hire
Identify roles and tasks that can be performed remotely
Challenge Leadership
Virtualize tools and systems