When large parts of the world were closing in March, we didn't really know how we were going to move huge numbers of employees used to working in the office to working from home.
In early March, I wrote a piece on how to prepare for such an eventuality, speaking with several experts who had a background in software and other tools that would be involved. But the shift involved much more than the mechanics of working at home. We were making this transition during a pandemic that forced us to face a much wider range of problems in our lives.
Yet here we are seven months later, and surely we must have learned a few lessons along the way about working from home effectively, but what are these lessons like and how can we make the most of this working approach for how long this pandemic lasts?
I spoke to Karen Mangia, vice president of customer and market insights at Salesforce and author of the book Working from Home, Making the New Normal Work for You, to get her perspective on how to work from home as we enter our eighth month. and what we learned along the way.
Stay productive
When employees moved home in March, managers had to wonder how productive employees would have been without being in the office. Although many companies had a flexible approach to work, this usually involved a small percentage of employees working from home, not the entire workforce, and this presented challenges for management accustomed to judging employee performance by the most. part to the presence in the building during the day work.
One of the things we looked at in March was putting in place the correct tools to enable communication even when we weren't together. Mangia says these tools can help bridge what she calls the trust gap.
"Leaders want to know that their employees are working on what they expect and are delivering results. Employees want to make sure their managers know how hard they are working and that they are doing things. And I think the technology and the tools help us solve that trust gap in between, "he explained.
He believes the most important thing people can do right now is to simply reevaluate and look for small ways to improve your working life because we probably won't be back in the office anytime soon. "I think what we are discovering are the things we can put in place to improve the quality of our experiences as employees, as learners and as leaders can be very simple adaptations. This doesn't have to be some five-year, five-step, $ 5 million kind of roadmap. Simple adjustments are important, "he said, adding that they could be as basic measures as buying a comfortable chair because the one you used at the dining room table hurts your back.
