EngagementCOVID-19: Making working from home work

COVID-19: Making working from home work

How can business and HR leaders manage challenges and find opportunities in the new realities of working at home? Dave Ulrich and Julio Zelaya, The RBL Group, give their top tips for turning challenges into new opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The global coronavirus has jolted the entire world.  At a personal level, we are most concerned about health and safety, and we mourn with those who mourn for lost or isolated loved ones.

From this pandemic, new realities shape work:  social distancing, online work, self- isolation, lockdowns, shutdowns, quarantine, shelter-in-place, essential businesses, etc.  These concepts reinvent where and how work is done by requiring remote working (called working at home, working virtually, telecommuting, etc.).  A few years ago, the SOHO (single office, home office) was emerging as a novel place to work.  Now, it is a dominant reality for nearly every organization.

So, how can business and HR leaders manage this new work reality of working at home?

Many have offered helpful administrative and logistical tips for working at home (e.g., using technology, finding a space for work, and managing distractions). We have examined the telecommuting literature, interviewed business and HR executives, and adapted insights from future of work literature. We supplement tips on administrative logistics to offer guidance on how to overcome four challenges and to pay attention to three key success factors for working at home. By so doing, we demonstrate that working at home can strengthen talent, leadership, and organization responses to today’s crisis.

Four challenges and solutions to working at home

Drawing on work by thoughtful colleagues  and through recent interviews, we heard work at home challenges such as: How do I manage my time at work vs. time with family?  How do I connect with others? How do I build trust and relationships? How do I make sure my work gets noticed? From this work, leaders should pay attention to four challenges with remote workers.

  1. Finding the right work/life balance. Working at home removes traditional boundaries of going to and from work, creates pressures of doing work while managing children (especially when children face school closings), and requires discipline to avoid other distractions (e.g., television, internet, food, and family matters). Leaders encourage employees working at home to set work norms and routines (e.g., respond to calls within a time frame, find private space to work) and to prioritize tasks that have to be done.
  2. Overcoming workplace isolation. Social isolation is a leading cause of mortality and working at home often distances employees from each other.  Leaders can promote interactions among team members with frequent contacts (email, video calls), provide coaching and mentoring by personal “check-ins” on how employees are doing, and encourage employees to connect with each other.
  3. Compensating for the lack of face-to-face communication. Cognitive and emotional trust often come from face to face interactions which are more difficult when working at home. To compensate, leaders can do video contacts where employees can show their personalities by wearing hats, setting backgrounds, or sharing personal moments.
  4. Compensating for lack of visibility. Employees want to know how they are doing and to have their contributions recognized.  These celebration moments often occur though simple and casual comments in the office.  Leaders can be conscious of celebrating success in remote settings by sharing stories of success, offering personal comments to remote employees, sharing best practices, and giving credit to employees who deliver results. Positive performance conversations can occur remotely and frequently to help employees feel visible.

When leaders recognize and deal with these four challenges, remote workers feel less isolated, experience more connection, and increase productivity and well being.

Three key success factors for finding opportunity in working at home

Colleagues have studied companies who have managed telecommuting  (e.g., Best Buy, the US Government, Yahoo!, Automattic), and found three common key success factors to ensure that employees are receiving what they most value from work, what we have called believe (meaning), become (learning and growing), and belong (feeling part of a community).

  1. Coordination focuses on specific tasks. By breaking down an overall project into specific tasks, a remote worker can focus on a unique task, then combine that task into the overall project to feel more connected.  We have called this worktask planning that evolves workforce planning.  Coordination also comes when sub-teams are assigned a task and work together to report out to a larger group.  Leaders can consistently probe, “how are we doing at making sure we work together as a team?”

 

  1. Without doubt, leaders need to communicate even more.  This means developing protocols to stay in touch with remote employees, to have virtual meetings at times that work for remote employees, to share even more information, and to engage in both formal and informal communications. Leaders can continually ask remote employees, “How well do you know what is happening to the organization and how you fit in to it?”

 

  1. Culture. We have defined the “right” culture as the identity of the organisation in the mind of key customers. This means that culture starts by defining an organisation’s brand, identity, or reputation with key customers. For remote workers, this means making sure that customer promises (e.g., for innovation, service, relationships) are showing up in how remote workers are treated. Leaders can monitor how the external promises show up in internal working relationships by asking “How well are we modeling what we promise our customers?”

Companies that thrive have a holistic approach to working at home.  Through attending to coordination, communication, and culture, employees find more belief (meaning and purpose), becoming (learning and growing), and belonging (feeling part of community).

Implications of remote work for talent, leadership, and the organisation

We believe that the challenges of remote working can turned into opportunities to improve talent, leadership, and the organisation. At RBL (www.rbl.net), we have recently  done HR and leadership academies for employees working at home to improve personal skills and create organization capabilities that help organizations succeed in these perilous times. We have also done consulting projects where we can collect data and solve problems virtually. Finally, our state of the art pulse checks with information collected via remote methods prove valuable to navigate these complex times. We hope we can share how we can improve talent, leadership, and organization for those working remotely.

What's Hot

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World 5 May 2022

10m

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for...

Attracting new talent is shooting up the priority list, but also proving more difficult than ever. A...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments 26 May 2022

10m

HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture ...

The process of redefining a company culture is a complex one. Culture contributes directly to the da...

View event
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

Whitepaper | Talent Development Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

11m

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. I...

View resource
HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce 5 May 2022

11m

HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging ...

We know hybrid working is here to stay, forcing many organisations to experiment with innovative and...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain 3 March 2022

11m

HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What...

We know the pandemic has caused many people to revaluate their careers and relationships with work a...

View event
Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

Leadership Development Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

1y Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simpl...

HR thought leader Dave Ulrich outlines ways leaders can deal with complexity in an increasingly busy...

View article
HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making 5 May 2022

11m

HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Org...

Historically, HR hasn’t been as effective as it could be in sharing and communicating data with wide...

View event
Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

Digital HR Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

1y Leah Belsky

Digital transformation investment grows but critic...

Covid-19 has accelerated the rate of digital learning on a global scale. Coursera's latest report pr...

View article
Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successfully drive engagement

Employee Engagement Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successfully drive engagement

1y Alara Basul | Sponsored

Wellbeing in the hybrid workplace: how to successf...

Remote working has impacted the way we communicate as a workforce, but striking the right balance be...

View article
How to create a company culture capable of empowering the modern workforce

Culture How to create a company culture capable of empowering the modern workforce

1y Alara Basul | Sponsored

How to create a company culture capable of empower...

While new working patterns that emerged from the pandemic have earned a permanent spot in the w...

View article
WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid workplace

Leadership Learnings WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid workplace

1y Amy Kirkham

WATCH: Connection and collaboration in a hybrid wo...

Alison Noon-Jones, VP of People & Culture at Leidos UK & Europe, shares how crucial employee engagem...

View article
Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your leadership

Leadership Development Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your leadership

1y Terence Mauri

Turbulence ahead: Why it’s time to be bold in your...

HRD thought leader and Hack Future Lab founder Terence Mauri sets out why the biggest risk to leader...

View article

The Corona pandemic will eventually abate, but the insights about working at home will endure. By facing the challenges and recognizing the opportunities, we envision a new normal for where and how work is done.

Comments are closed.

What's Hot

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for the Hybrid World 5 May 2022

10m

HRD Roundtable Report: Levelling Up Onboarding for...

Attracting new talent is shooting up the priority list, but also proving more difficult than ever. A...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture in Hybrid Work Environments 26 May 2022

10m

HRD Roundtable Report: Redefining Company Culture ...

The process of redefining a company culture is a complex one. Culture contributes directly to the da...

View event
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

Whitepaper | Talent Development Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people

11m

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. I...

View resource
HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging The Hybrid Workforce 5 May 2022

11m

HRD Roundtable Report: Strategies For Re-Engaging ...

We know hybrid working is here to stay, forcing many organisations to experiment with innovative and...

View event
HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What We Need to Reward, Engage and Retain 3 March 2022

11m

HRD Roundtable Report: Making it ‘Worth It’ – What...

We know the pandemic has caused many people to revaluate their careers and relationships with work a...

View event
Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

Leadership Development Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simplify complexity?

1y Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich: How can business and HR leaders simpl...

HR thought leader Dave Ulrich outlines ways leaders can deal with complexity in an increasingly busy...

View article
HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making

Roundtable Report HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Organisational Decision Making 5 May 2022

11m

HRD Roundtable Report: Using HR Data to Inform Org...

Historically, HR hasn’t been as effective as it could be in sharing and communicating data with wide...

View event
Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

Digital HR Digital transformation investment grows but critical skills gaps remain - Coursera report

1y Leah Belsky

Digital transformation investment grows but critic...

Covid-19 has accelerated the rate of digital learning on a global scale. Coursera's latest report pr...

View article