I started working at home in 2003. It was a temporary change because I wanted to be home with my baby. The internet was dial-up. I was the only person in my department working remotely. There was no plan other than I would do work.
You may think you know how to do remote work but –
Many companies switched to remote work in 2020 in basically the same way–on the fly. Now that you’ve had a year, are you still operating this way? “Go home! Do work!”
In December, a group of remote work experts presented a webinar for BeeBole: Make Remote Work a Part of Your Team’s DNA and said, this is not the way to do remote work. You need a plan and a purpose and guess what? You may think you know how to do remote work–because you’ve been sitting on Zoom meetings for the last 12 months, but that’s different than making a plan.
To keep reading, click here: Remote Work in the Eyes of an ‘Evil’ Human Resources Expert
I worked on a remote team in 2000 where people put a lot of thought into making it work. The biggest obstacle was people saying, “It can’t work because people need to be together!” not just because that’s knee-jerk dismissive but because it’s too general. We had to think through “What made work work in the office? How can we replicate that experience with people working from home?” We were down to details like “In a meeting I can follow the chat better if I hear people in stereo and can sense their direction from me.” With technical tools and new behaviors (which take practice, it’s true) nearly any problem can be solved. The only roadblock we couldn’t overcome is the arcane theory that some office relationships are based on pheromones and I don’t even want to think too much about that one. Almost anything else that you can do at the office you can replicate at home if you can get past in-office work habits so deeply ingrained that people insist “there is no other way.”
I just had a discussion with an associate about setting the boundaries of doing remote work at home, especially giving oneself the permission to take breaks. The only thing missing from in the workplace job and remote from home is the time structure which is enforced by physically being at the job, hence you are not clocking into a time clock, but clocking on to your computer, by the action of opening the program. If you are the type of worker who doesn’t need to see others, to perform your job duties, then you already have the motivation to control the amount of time spent doing WFH activities because you will do it. If anything and everything distracts you, you will need to find a method to create the atmosphere that works or plan to go back to the office environment where a supervisor will motivate you to perform. In the meantime take some vacation days now and don’t wait until you are called back to the workplace to take them.
I mean… I’ve got ADHD and anything and everything distracts me. In my home office, I control my environment completely and can choose what distractions to permit. No such luck in an on-site office.
One of the main things WFH has taught me is that for many people the old model was lousy and doesn’t need to be replicated or returned to.
Remote work has been magic for giving me BETTER boundaries.
If I’m concentrating, colleagues can’t interrupt me. If I need to work late, I’m at home the second I log off and not after a tiring commute. I have more time with my friends, family and hobbies.
Before remote work, I had to give my employer time and energy for my commute and lunch. Now I can give my employer the time I work and not a second more.
As for missing work friends and colleagues? No. All that extra time every single day that my friends and I have means we now have energy and time to interact with each other (in a socially distanced way) every single day.
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I’d want to note here that if you are going to require work from home full time, you should make sure you pay your employees enough for them to provide an office type area in their home. For entry level positions, working from home should be a salary increase, not a salary decrease.