It’s no surprise that today’s business office looks very different. The proverbial water cooler is now your phone, the conference room is your bedroom, living room, bathroom or whatever room you can have a quiet conversation in. Break time is ubiquitous and chances are you are no longer worrying about someone taking your lunch from the fridge in the break room.
The question that employers and employees alike need to ask themselves is; Am I more productive, less productive or equally as productive as I was Pre-COVID? Is the work getting done? Are the customers happy? Is production on schedule? Many times most companies will find that they are in fact as productive, if not more productive and they employees are far happier that they were when they had to deal with office politics, traffic and a general sense of stress or dislike. Today, people are continuing to do what they like to do, what they were hired to do and without any of the outside influences that commonly attach themselves to the office environment.
It is, however, very important that the company has some sort of accountability policy or efficiency statement. There needs to be a system in place that creates a sense of responsibility and accountibility. People still need to answer to management and sometimes that’s not an easy thing to do when we are working from home. Creating some sort of “check-in” or workflow process statement is critical and must be done now before there is too much latitude generated to pull things back in.
Creating a method for process development will help in determining where the potential holes are and where the improvements need to be made. A manager can walk through a department and get a sense for the productivity in the room and be able to ask questions on the fly and make changes or modifications almost instantly. With a remote workforce, this is virtually impossible.
Make sure that everyone is on the same page and that there is a means for instant correction and also oversight. Creating a solidarity from a remote standpoint doers not have to be daunting but is absolutely must be done.