Remote work is here to stay, at least for the mid-term. We all thought it was easy to work from home; open your laptop and…
An effective working environment requires the interaction of everyone at the office in one way or the other. We took for granted many things, from working hours (ours and everyone else’s), immediate access to people or resources, and a clear separation from home and work environments.
Here are 6 things we can leverage to improve our effectiveness in this new remote work environment.
1.- My time is not your time
Do not assume that because your employees are working from home, they have more time. Yes, there is no commuting time, but they have more things to take care of. Balancing schedules from roommates, partners, kids’ school, pet needs might be a little more tricky than you thought. Also, consider that providing for lunch might take more than the usual lunch break.
Define a “compassionate work schedule” to allow your collaborators to have time for their daily chores while ensuring their availability to achieve the required business interactions.
2.- Communicate but not zoom-much
You now need to communicate more than ever. With your team working remotely, you miss the walk by the cubicle talk, the pre-meeting chat, the elevator pitch, and the water cooler gossip. All form part of informal communication that helped your business to continue working.
You now have to rely on technology to fill up the communication gap, but don’t see every communication need as a nail because you have a hammer on hand.
Think outside the video-conferencing. Not every interaction has to be with the camera, and not all communication requires an immediate interactive response. Diversify your communication vehicle, use IM for informal requests, email for the communication paper-trail, phone calls for that brief 1-on-1 meeting, video conferences for meetings, and blogs for announcements. And don’t worry, for sure, there is already an IM group for the water cooler gossip.
3.- Not every meeting is about the business
Remember the “birthdays of the month” gathering or the “let’s celebrate the new deal” announcement. There is time for one more video conference where good news is communicated or where we just hang out. But this time, you need to plan for activities, make it fun to participate, and sparse.
4.- It is always time to learn
There is still something new to learn, skills to improve to thrive in this new work environment, or not to fall prey to a cyberattack. Help your team improve productivity, manage stress, collaborate effectively, embrace new technologies, deal with change, and deal with trauma (physical, emotional, and psychological).
5.- Seize this opportunity to improve your processes
Not all processes can withstand changing to a remote work environment. Changing a process may require new tools and technologies; this is as good as any time for starting that digital transformation you have been postponing for too long. Now it is not a matter of surviving during the pandemic or to attract different customers; it is time to rethink our processes for a flexible working scenario.
6.- Security cannot be an afterthought
With ransomware, intrusions, and hacks flourishing everywhere, you cannot wait for an attacker to appear in your network to start thinking about security. Your employee’s home network cannot be considered a secure zone and must be treated as an open wifi network in the corner coffee shop. Also, consider that the company laptops are going back and forth between secure and insecure environments.
It is time for IT, HR, and all the department heads must work together to understand the access needs for every individual to perform their work and establish strict access control, network segmentation, phishing training, and easy to follow procedures for a secure-ish remote work environment.
A successful remote work environment is not a matter of IT or HR; every department must be involved to ensure the new normal can become normal.
