Remote working - what's next?

How are you adapting for flexible working? As we move out of the coronavirus and we start to understand what the new world of working looks like, what changes are you making? What are you leaving as they were before? What are you changing? That's some of the questions that I want to answer in today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DeCoster. Now we're coming out of the pandemic and we are getting a sense of what the new world looks like. We've got used to working from home, but what does the new world of flexible working look like? This is what I wanted to pose in today's podcast and in my group coaching program, the self Running Agency Implementation Group. We had a question today which was all about how do you motivate and communicate with your staff staff and reward your staff when they're working remotely? And I thought that we had some really insightful answers to that. So I wanted to share some of those with you today on the podcast and I want to thank the members of the group for sharing those ideas. I think it's worth starting off by saying that some people would have really thrived during this pandemic and working from home and others will have really struggled. And that's for two core reasons. First of all, if you're an introvert, then you would have found working from home great and you would have really enjoyed it. However, if you're an extrovert and you really thrive by being around people and bouncing ideas off other people, you would have really struggled. Second of all, if you're lucky enough to have a dedicated workspace at home, then that's great. You can get a sense of going to work and closing the door at the end of the day. However, a lot of people would have been working from the dining room table or working from their bedroom or would have had kids interrupting them and they would have found that environment much less conducive to being able to be super productive. So we need to acknowledge all of those things and we need to find out what this new world looks like and the balance of working remotely and being more efficient and removing that travel, commuting time, and of course saving money in the process versus having a central place where we can get together and create a sense of community. I want to start by sharing some stats with you which I found interesting and some of them quite surprising and they give a bit of context this conversation. So recently there's A global survey that's taken place that found that many remote workers really struggle to unplug from their work. In fact, 22% said that they found it much harder working remotely and to switch off than when they worked in an office. 19%, not surprisingly, said that they find it really lonely working from home. And as I said, those are often the extroverts who have been used to being surrounded by people and energy in that buzz that they. They don't have when they're working remotely. And 17% said they found it much harder to communicate, which again, isn't really surprising. Now, in another study, 41% of remote workers reported higher stress levels compared to just 25% when they are working in the office. So again, that is not really a surprising stat, but a rather worrying stat. And it just goes to show that we really need to be mindful of this and doing what we can to alleviate stress and help our teams get good boundaries when they're working remotely. One of the mistakes a lot of organizations make is assuming that people will work well or adapt easily to them when they're working from home. But that, of course, isn't always the case. And I think people have put lots of tools in place to help create that working virtual environment. But there's more than tools that are needed if you want to be successful. So let's just think about a few things that you need to do. As I say, the first thing really is don't just rely on tools. We've all got video communications with zoom and so on. We've got instant messaging platforms and discussion forums, and they are all fantastic. But we also have to look at the way we're implementing them, the attitudes that everybody has to those tools and creating a place where we can have banter and conversations, which we would naturally do when we're working in the office. So what we're really doing is we're creating a third space. We've got the office, we've got the home, and then there's this virtual third space. And you need to agree with your team how you're going to behave and how you're going to use that virtual collaboration. So is it okay for team members to put themselves on unavailable. Is it okay for your team members to say, look, I'm busy right now, I'll call you back. You just need to agree with all of that up upfront so that we're all on the same page about it. Now, another thing to consider is that when we're working remotely, our communication tends to become more formal and tends to become more task focused. So we need to be really conscious of picking up the phone or sending a quick message and just asking someone how they're doing, how their day's going. And one of the ways of doing this is having virtual check ins at the start and the end of every day to kind of replicate that. So social greeting and that social time when people just catch up with their colleagues. Another thing to be mindful of is that what worked in the office doesn't work remotely. So for example, you might have had a two to three hour meeting in the office and it's going to be really hard to hold someone's attention for that length of time. So having much shorter virtual huddles with someone who's a really strong chair and a facilitator to make sure that everybody's contributing to that conversation and that people aren't talking over each other. Which can definitely be a challenge when you get, you know, more than sort of five people in a group meeting. When we're working remotely, we have to be much more mindful about checking in with our teams, keeping in tune with how they're feeling and having that five minutes at the start of every day or every virtual meeting to say hello properly to people and actually asking them, how are you doing, what's going on? And this really should be supplemented with some direct one to one calls where you're just touching base with people with no other agenda besides saying how's it going? What are you struggling with, what's going on? And so on. Just being interested in them. Now. One of the reasons why people say it's stressful working from home and one of the reasons why people struggle working remotely is because of all the distractions that they have. Often, like I say, have kids or they don't have a dedicated space. So I think it's worth having those conversations and trying to support your team members to manage those distractions. One of the great ideas that came out of today's self running agency implementation group coaching call was one of the members has bought all of their staff some of those over the head headphones with a built in microphone so everybody can block out some of the noise. They've just not got their earbuds in, but they've got proper noise cancelling headphones in with the, the physical microphone that reaches around to their mouth like you see in a call centre. So everybody's got the opportunity to have the same kind of quality conversations and that everybody can hear. And that's definitely going to help eradicate some of those distractions in environments where people are working, quite a noisy environment. I think it's really important that we make a conscious effort to give feedback and a conscious effort to say thank you to people. I think in the past in the office, we might have walk past the desk and say, thanks Rob, that was a great piece of work. We're not going to be doing that now. So we have to be much more conscious actually saying thank you to somebody and giving them that positive feedback. Ultimately, we need to be human and empathetic. One of the good things about flexible working is that it gives people the flexibility to do other things that impact their working lives, like sorting the kids out or going to a doctor's appointment or whatever it might be. And we need to recognize that we should offer that flexibility now because at the end of the day we need to trust our team. We need to assume that we're employing adults and they take responsibility and be accountable for the work they're doing. And if we can trust them to do all of that, then we can also offer them the flexibility that a 100% office based job would not give them. So those are just some of the thoughts I've had and I just, I wanted to share with you some of the feedback that we had in the group today, which I really liked. And so I want to thank the group members for sharing those today. One thing that one of the members has done is bought everybody a cheap Nespresso machine and he said cost 20, 30 pounds per person so that everybody can make themselves a good cup of coffee at the start of the day. And then when they do their daily huddle, everybody's gone to their little Nespresso machine, made a cup of coffee and then they're all on the call with their, with their mugs of coffee. And there's some kind of virtual kind of camaraderie that's happened because we've gone through that process. So that, and the idea of the headphones are some really kind of low cost wins that you can have that create that sense of community still with your team. Someone else mentioned that they have run a picnic in London, obviously socially distanced, where they provided all of the food and the plates and so on. But they made a good point that they've had a number of staff join them during the pandemic. So these new starters actually haven't physically met any of their colleagues yet. They've only met them virtually. So doing something like a picnic was a big success and gave the new starters a chance to bond with the rest of their team members. Whatever the new world looks for you, it's going to be important that you still have some office space where team members can go and work from, and some office space where you can meet as a team physically, periodically to make everyone feel part of the company and do that face to face bonding that just is not possible in a virtual environment. So there you go. A short podcast today I wanted to record this while it was fresh in my mind because I felt there were some good ideas that came out of the group this morning and I think this is an issue that everybody is addressing to some form or another as they start to move out of the working from home and looking at what's next for them and working out what they need, whether they need an office space or whether they can go to a complete remote working environment. I think the upshot from my group was that no, we can't do that. And in fact some people said that the best morale boost they've had has been since they've opened the office again and people have had the option to going into the office two or three days a week. So I'd love to know what's going on for you and what ideas you've got. So please do consider if you getting in touch and letting me know. I hope you found this episode useful and a few little tidbits as ever. If you've enjoyed it, please make sure you hit the subscribe button. Please consider leaving a review and make sure you share the podcast with your colleagues as well. Other than that, have a great Thursday and Friday, a brilliant weekend and I will see you next week for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast where it will be another interview episode.