‘It takes 30 days to change a habit’ is a proven sales truism, after more than 80 days what are your staff saying – or, more importantly, thinking.
There’s little doubt that spending Spring/Summer in the sun on 80% has been attractive for many, but voicing that isn’t – staff trying to extend furlough voluntarily could be signing their own P45.
The Working from Home (WFH) discussion has, at last, had time to mature.
It’s the way my business has run for four years so I thought it might help to articulate what’s been positive, negative and whether a business and individuals within it, can thrive and advance.
One thing is for sure, it’s been a learning curve and we were very lucky to employ the wonderful Kate who had many years of experience running ‘distributed service’ businesses where staff all WFH.
An oft voiced criticism of WFH is that it’s more difficult to advance within an organisation.
At Viewer we get together as a team regularly, there are now 26 of us, and many are still with us and now manage departments.
Perhaps one difference, as an example, is that often good sales negs become bad managers – worst of both worlds – but in a WFH environment a hands-on approach is vital and so you never lose that ‘from the floor’ feedback, which is an advantage.
Aptitude and value aren’t defined by being political – we all know the person who’s always at the boss’s beck and call or first in last out – so if it’s those types that might miss out by WFH it’s OK with me.
The other pros have been well aired over the last few weeks and apart from going a bit squinty looking at screens so much the main con is hive learning – or potential lack of it.
In an office if someone learns a better work around everyone else will know immediately and can be shown – doing that with everyone in different places can be challenging, but with increasing bandwidth and always on communication channels, there’s little excuse for not all benefiting quickly.
We have recognised over time that there’s a subtle difference between those who actually want to WFH and those that can’t.
Being able to ‘escape’ to the office is overstating how some feel, but WFH requires discipline and appropriate company oversight.
Just being seen to be online is not the same as working and being watched all day is not cool, any more than it is in an office.
Strict guidelines about taking time out, differentiating workspaces and even having a small office that’s visited once a week or so if needed are now much better understood.
Most industry bosses, likely to be male and middle aged, still struggle with the whole WFH experience – one positive to come from Covid is that they’ve been forced to experience it and hopefully something more appealing to a wider base of workers will emerge.
Our experience at Viewber is that it can work well – maybe get in touch and I’ll pass on the lessons we’ve learned.
WFH – not for me. I like to work in a different place to where I live.
Zoom just doesn’t have the same energy as a proper face to face meeting.
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Lockdown and particularly Zoom means that being miles from Oxford Circus suddenly isn’t a problem any more.
The one thing that handicapped me and many others, not being able to meet up at short notice in central London is now cast aside like Forrest’s calipers! That opens some very serious opportunities for companies who couldn’t get the best candidate for a job. because of where they lived.
The benefits for companies and generation rent are huge, the clamour to be in London has evaporated.
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I am certainly not missing the drive to Milton Keynes at the moment -one junction up the M1 taking on average 1 hour in morning commute with numerous serious accidents !
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WFH? – would I rather keep my job or my marriage? Two adults in one house 24/7. Office, office, office.
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I wonder what the office workers think about the ‘home alone’ being a team member, camaraderie and having go over things time and again that they missed out on by not being in the working environment?
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good teams sell houses and the collective knowledge earned can’t be replicated as islands.
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Perfect point!
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Perhaps we had a very forward thinking board but well equipped with Tech we have successfully WFH as a tight team albeit with some on furlough. Yes its been strange but with regular scheduled ‘Teams’ meetings and updates communication has been open and supportive. Learning new skills around talking to clients whilst running the virtual tours and guiding them was interesting and well supported. Have to admit having outside space at home really helped given the abruptly returned Uni student. Phased returns in progress but pretty much back to the new ‘normal’ – those with strong skills will come through. Interesting to observe the younger supposedly more tech savy staff struggled more without the office environment.
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