With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have to rapidly adjust their way of working. It’s forcing a digitalization that many companies had spoken about, and perhaps mentioned in their marketing, but are now having to implement at breakneck speed.
Fortunately today, the technical aspects of remote work are much easier. Everything from Google docs, Hangouts, Zoom, and Skype for communication, as well as cloud-based process management tools such as Jira, make life significantly easier. However, there is a difference between being technically ready, and being culturally and emotionally ready for this new world.
Maintaining the company culture during the tremendous change
During times of change, and when almost from one day to the next, your workforce needs to shift how it works, your culture will come under strain. You may have individuals and teams working for the first time both at home, and physically separated.
While the initial focus will, of course, be on maintaining your customer relationships and ensuring your business can successfully navigate this new world, it’s also critically important to consider the impact on your employees and on your culture.
Meanwhile, we all have to understand that the current situation is like a tunnel and we don’t know how long this tunnel is, so better we should respect the time & liberty given by the organization and stay connected with each other through technology.
Work from home is “New Normal “
All the organizations worldwide have ordered their employees to work from home. Work from home has become an unprecedented event or a shift in the working culture but is it working the way the employer is expecting.
The responsibility of bringing movement on in the work is on the shoulders of both Employer and employee. Company culture, leadership, employee experience, and digital workplace experiences are now being put to the test. The way many companies work changed overnight. Massive numbers of workforces have gone remotely. Travel restrictions have gutted the ability to accomplish certain tasks. Team collaboration, moral support and the ability of executive teams to pivot, and quickly, have seemingly never been more paramount.
Dawn of the new era of digital workplace : Whatever the future of digital workplaces may one day look like, it is already true to say that people working from home face some specific challenges:
Those who work from home or remotely from elsewhere inevitably accept that the clear boundaries between their professional and private lives will blur. And while teleworking can provide more freedom and flexibility, it is also associated with the need for greater personal responsibility. Managers and affected employees must therefore jointly examine how the balance between private and professional needs can be maintained – not least from the point of view of protecting health.
THE PANDEMIC HAS FORCED THE ADOPTION OF NEW WAYS OF WORKING. ORGANISATION MUST REIMAGINE THEIR WORK AND THE ROLE OF OFFICES IN CREATING SAFE, PRODUCTIVE AND ENJOYABLE JOBS AND LIVES FOR EMPLOYEES.
Covid-19 has brought human and humanitarian challenges. Many companies around the world have risen to the occasion, acting swiftly to safeguard employees and migrate to a new way of working that even the most extreme business-continuity plans hadn’t envisioned. Across industries, leaders will use the lessons from this large-scale work-from-home experiment to reimagine how work is done—and what role offices should play—in creative and bold ways.
Changing attitudes on the role of the office
Before the pandemic, the conventional wisdom had been that offices were critical to productivity, culture, and winning the war for talent. Companies competed intensely for prime office space in major urban centers around the world, and many focused on solutions that were seen to promote collaboration. Densification, open-office designs, hoteling, and co-working were the battle cries.
organizations are looking ahead to the reopening and its challenges. Before a vaccine is available, the office experience probably won’t remain as it was before the pandemic. Many companies will require employees to wear masks at all times, redesign spaces to ensure physical distancing, and restrict movement in congested areas (for instance, elevator banks and pantries). As a result, even after the reopening, attitudes toward offices will probably continue to evolve.
These steps reimagine work and workplace :We recommend that organizations take the following steps to reimagine how work is done and what the future role of the office will be.
- Reconstruct how work is done
During the lockdowns, organizations have necessarily adapted to go on collaborating and to ensure that the most important processes could be carried on remotely. Most have simply transplanted existing processes to remote work contexts, imitating what had been done before the pandemic. This has worked well for some organizations and processes, but not for others.
For both processes and cultural practices, it is all too tempting to revert to what was in place before the pandemic. To resist this temptation, organizations could start by assuming that processes will be reconstructed digitally and put the burden of proof on those who argue for a return to purely physical pre–COVID-19 legacy processes. Reimagining and reconstructing processes and practices will serve as a foundation of an improved operating model that leverages the best of both in-person and remote work.
2. Decide people to work or work to people
Roles can be reclassified into employee segments by considering the value that remote working could deliver:
- fully remote (net positive value-creating outcome)
- hybrid remote (net neutral outcome)
- hybrid remote by exception (net negative outcome but can be done remotely if needed)
- on site (not eligible for remote work)
3. Redesign the workplace to support organisational priorities
We all have ideas about what a typical office looks and feels like: a mixture of private offices and cubicles, with meeting rooms, pantries, and shared amenities. Few offices have been intentionally designed to support specific organizational priorities. Although offices have changed in some ways during the past decade, they may need to be entirely rethought and transformed for a post–COVID-19 world.
To maintain productivity, collaboration, and learning and to preserve the corporate culture, the boundaries between being physically in the office and out of the office must collapse. In-office videoconferencing can no longer involve a group of people staring at one another around a table while others watch from a screen on the side, without being able to participate effectively.
4. Resize the footprint creatively
The pandemic has forced the adoption of new ways of working. Organizations must reimagine their work and the role of offices in creating safe, productive, and enjoyable jobs and lives for employees.
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