Goals – Page 11 – mardihumphreys.com

Making Waves

The pandemic made us take a hard look at our priorities. What is now most important to you? In terms of your job, if you were able to pivot (e.g., a restaurant moving from fine-dining in person to at home delivery) or to transition to WFH (e.g., software developing), you’re grateful to have found a way to continue making a living. But now that we’ve moved into COVID-19’s phase of vaccines and variants, do you want to keep this up?

What Do You Want?

It’s time to decide what aspects of the working-under-quarantine conditions you want to maintain. Has the way you had to work made you want a different job, maybe even a different career path? If so, you have loads of company. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs in May 2021. But before you start searching for a new situation, get clear on why you want to leave your current one. If you’re running away from this job instead of running to another one, your discontent is likely to follow you. Ask yourself:

Am I burned out?
Did the pandemic reveal a side of my company’s culture that I can’t support?
Were my manager’s expectations unreasonable?
Did I discover a remote position would be best for work-life integration?

During the work day, when you feel frustrated or stressed, write down what you’re working on or what’s happening. Is it a project, person, and/or PTO? The answers will help you define your non-starters when considering your next role.

Defining what you don’t want narrows your choices down to what you do want. Compensation (salary, PTO, insurance, retirement benefits), location, culture, and leadership development are all obvious details you need to consider. But also ask yourself:

What does your perfect job look like?
Where are you doing it?
When are you doing it?
Who are you doing it with?
Why are you doing it?
How are you doing it?

What values do the answers to these questions reveal (e.g., freedom, culture, growth)? Rank them in order of importance. For one work week, notice what you are doing when you lose track of time as well as what you are doing when time seems to drag. Write these down and analyze them. While looking for a new position, search for one that allows you to do more of the work you enjoy.

How Do You Get It?

Once you figure out what you want, make a list of companies whose mission, vision, and values match yours. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Business Journals regularly identify great companies to work for. Target people in these companies you can reach out to for informational interviews. Notify your network that you are looking for a new role. Ask them not only for introductions to hiring managers you want to meet, but also ask how you can help connect them to the decision makers they want to meet. It’s tempting to apply for every job that looks like fun, thinking that eventually one will take, but that’s actually a time waster. It’s more effective to invest your time building relationships with your network. Insiders know a position is available before it gets publicly posted. A good rule of thumb is to network with five people for every one job application you submit.

Are you thinking about a new position? What are you looking for in a company? Please share in the comments.

Travel Team

It’s vacation season and if you have a spouse, you want to travel together. But there are things you want to do that they don’t, such as spend five hours at one art museum, spend three hours at a coffee shop, or spend an hour reading a book at a botanical garden. Luckily, you have friends who think these pastimes sound heavenly. In addition to traveling with your partner, take a trip with a friend. These adventures are ripe with lessons you can take back to work.

Getting to Know You

Constant togetherness reveals hidden talents as well as idiosyncrasies. For example, you discover that your friend has an uncanny ability to quickly spot your Uber while they notice that you can easily navigate large airports. On the other hand, maybe you are irritated by your friend’s obsession with the weather forecast and they are annoyed by your insistence to walk everywhere. We learn to be more considerate of each other because our time together is finite. The same is true at work. Projects have lifecycles. Acknowledge an interpersonal conflict when it starts. Be quick to define both your and your teammate’s boundary. Additionally, recognize that taking the time to unravel and resolve miscommunication is time well spent.

Plan B (or C or…)

When traveling, sometimes Plan A won’t work. Issues like flight delays, a car rental company losing your reservation, and a broken air conditioner in your hotel room provide multiple opportunities to not only find out how good a business is at customer service, but also work with your friend to figure out how to overcome the obstacle. Which one of you will: Take the lead in patiently communicating the unacceptable situation to customer service? Motivate the other to remain calm? Influence the service you receive by confirming that everyone is working toward the same goal? After recovering from the setback, you can take the lessons you learned (e.g., active listening, empathizing, aligning expectations) back to work and apply them to your team’s next project. When unpredictable obstacles occur, you can confidently take the lead to solve them because you’ve experienced the emotional intelligence required to get through a frustrating process.

Teamwork

The first time you travel with a friend to a destination that’s new to both of you, logic dictates that you set the parameters of the trip and start negotiating. Who is booking the transportation? Who is booking the hotel? Who is booking reservations at the restaurants, museums, sites, etc. that you want to visit? You divide up the task list according to talent. They are good at determining how much time you need between connecting flights. You can detect if a hotel is as good as its marketing says it is. You must trust each other to complete these tasks. During the trip, you both are gracious when unforeseen challenges happen. You patiently support one another when mistakes in judgement cause setbacks. You encourage each other to stretch outside of your comfort zones. You remain flexible so both of you can reach the individual objectives you have for the getaway. See what I did there? These activities are examples of collaborative teamwork. The same skills and mindset you use traveling with your friend apply to the project you’re tackling with your coworkers.

Do you plan to travel with friends this summer? Where are you going? Please share in the comments.

Never and Always

The timing never seems right for investing in long-term financial goals. There is always an immediate expense: post-pandemic vacations, post-pandemic work clothes, post-pandemic baby supplies. It’s hard to think about the future when today’s competing priorities are so loud, but when you give money to financial instruments, properties, or shares with the expectation of making a profit, not only can you withdraw these profits if you lose your job (be aware of the penalties), you can also save faster for big expenses like a house or college. It pays to get started.

Strategize

Define your targets, timeline, and tolerance. Investing has two extremes: aggressive (high risk and high return) and conservative (stable and lower return). You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can stay in the middle and adjust your strategy as you age, change jobs, or your lifestyle evolves (e.g., you marry or have a child).
Use a fiduciary (an organization legally bound to act in your best interest). Talk to them about their strategy. For example, Do they automate investing using retirement date algorithms or do they create a portfolio according to your specific needs?
Decide. Will you actively invest: research, build your portfolio, purchase investment vehicles? If you choose this option, invest in more than one company. Spread your money over a few market sectors; diversifying reduces the risk of loss. Don’t fluctuate your investments with the rising and falling of the stock market or your emotions. Or will you passively invest: hire a wealth manager to do those things for you? If this is your choice, check their fees. Investing is a service, even for roboadvisors. Be aware of what you’re paying for. Know how your investments are taxed. Watch your statements monthly or quarterly. Ask questions about charges that don’t make sense to you.
401(k) Plan. If your employer offers one, participate; especially if they match the percentage you invest. If you don’t, you’re leaving free money on the table! Your contribution comes out of your check before you receive it, making it relatively painless to save that money for later and it has tax benefits.

Budget

Manage your money in this order:

Pay off high-interest debt, like credit cards
Save $1000 in an interest-bearing account for an emergency fund
Save another $1000 and invest it

That’s the sweet spot for beginning investors. It’s a relatively small sum to risk and $1000 is often the amount at which lower service fees and a decent return on your investment intersect. Here is an article that speaks plainly about different options for investing $1000.

Interest

The US stock market has historically provided a 6%-7% return on investment (that’s with inflation factored in). Initially that doesn’t seem like much, but your goal is to create wealth over time. When you let investments like CDs, treasury securities, or REITS compound for years, the interest they earn snowballs. This is especially useful if you start investing when you’re young because you have longer to ride out market fluctuations. On the other hand, when choosing a loan, look for one that offers simple interest. You usually find it on loans for large amounts like car, home, or student loans. Simple interest calculates payments based on the principal instead of both the principal and interest.

What holds you back from long-term financial investments? Please share in the comments.

Satisfied ≠ Engaged

When I hear the term employee engagement, in my head I see a scene like the photo above; engaged people satisfied with their work. I thought engagement was synonymous with satisfaction, but no. An engaged employee is probably also a satisfied one, but a satisfied employee is not necessarily engaged.

What’s the Difference?

Satisfied employees do their job, but don’t look for ways to contribute to the mission or vision of the company. They’re satisfied with short term incentives like a raise, and dissatisfied when the work gets stressful. Satisfaction is how happy employees are, which may include things like getting paid for doing as little work as possible. Satisfied employees avoid accountability, try to maintain the status quo, and resist change.

Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their positions, dedicated to the company, and work beyond their job descriptions. They believe in the company’s mission and actively promote it. They’re both mentally and emotionally dialed in to their work, teams, and organizations and expect a long-term relationship with all three. They embrace change; taking the initiative to seek out processes that can be improved and improving them.

Why is it Important?

Eighty-one percent of business leaders said engaged employees perform better than satisfied ones. They’re more productive, less absent, attract new talent, and stay with the company longer than satisfied employees. This results in growth and innovation in a thriving economy and the ability to bounce back after a recession. Engaged employees know their role in the company’s objectives. When an employee knows their purpose, they filter their work through it. The company can then harness and channel this energy to reach its goals.

How Do You Do It?

Communication: Employee engagement starts at the top. Senior leadership should authentically view employees as their most valuable asset and prove it by:

Casting a vision for the company, clearly and repetitively stating it, and lead accomplishing the company’s mission by example
Giving organization-wide updates on the health of the company including changes. Disclose what leadership is doing to improve the current conditions
Focusing constructive feedback on employees’ performance (not the person) and following up
Offering a process for anonymous company-wide feedback and implementing employees’ responses
Publicly recognizing engaged employees and giving them a system to publicly recognize each other

Cultivation: Business moves at the speed of trust. Senior leadership can build trust with employees by:

Defining what success looks like to the company and how to reach it with honesty and integrity
Providing clear expectations, holding people accountable, and focusing on delivering results
Making enriching employees’ lives a company value and acting like it (e.g., supporting employees’ career development with both money and time)
Developing cross-functional teams to complete projects. Pro-tip: When coworkers do projects together, they organically bond and create positive team memories because they achieve communal success

Contribution: Engaged employees want to feel like they’re instrumental to the success of something bigger than themselves. Senior leadership can tap into that desire by:

Matching roles to employees’ strengths
Giving employees tasks they find both interesting and challenging
Sharing ownership of the company’s mission
Reiterating how the work employees do contributes to the company’s success

A company with engaged employees experiences less turnover, higher sales, and more customer satisfaction. When an employee quits their job in America, it costs the employer about $5000 to replace them. It was hard enough to find good employees pre-COVID-19. It’s so challenging now that it’s simply a wise business decision to invest in keeping the ones you have.

Does your company have an employee engagement strategy? How does it work? Please share in the comments below.

You’re Not the Boss of Me

Here in the mid-digital age you may find yourself working as a member of a team more often than completing deliverables on your own. I’m a big fan of the-more-heads-the-better for problem solving, but when your supervisor tasks you with exerting influence over coworkers who aren’t your direct reports, you have responsibility without any authority. What do you do?

This scenario usually employs a version of the Matrix Model of Management. It’s a popular construct because it allows departments to share resources according to their functions. A company can take employees who report to various supervisors and assign them to project teams based on the talent required to complete the work. This not only saves the company money, but also fosters creative problem solving. The tricky part is: Who’s in charge? This ambiguity creates multiple challenges, especially if the team is large and/or there is competition to lead the project. Best practice: when forming the team, the supervisors assign the leader and communicate that information to the entire team.

When you’re the one in charge, you can’t offer the incentives (raises, promotions, getting fired) the supervisors can, yet you have to find a way to both engage and motivate the team because if they miss the deadline, you’re the one who gets in trouble. Leading through influence requires strong interpersonal skills. You have to take initiative early in the process to build relationships and persuade with diplomacy. Some things to consider:

Clarify

Defining roles and responsibilities at the outset helps eliminate frustration and duplication of efforts. At the first team meeting, decide together who does what and when:

What is the goal? What does success look like?
Who will shepherd which task and what are the deadlines? Pro Tip: The person who sets the deadline is in control no matter what their title is.
What are the project’s KPI’s? How will you know you’ve met them?
How will you meet? In person? Videoconference? How often? Daily? Weekly? What hours is everyone available for questions or huddles?
What information will you need from them? What information will they need from you?

Communicate

Each of your team members has multiple demands on their time from multiple supervisors and multiple projects. Every week team members should either submit an email report or meet with you for a brief update on both the progress of your project and the status of their other projects. This alerts you to competing deadlines and prompts you to notify your team’s supervisors. Ask the supervisors to prevent a crisis by prioritizing projects. Pro Tip: A written status report (on both successes and challenges) can double as documentation for annual performance reviews.
From the beginning and throughout the project, remind the team that you support their individual brands. Email their supervisors when they produce good work. Give the team visibility to the rest of the company.
Observe what motivates your team. Who works because it’s intrinsically rewarding? Who works for recognition? What are their career goals? Connect working on this project to reaching them.

Cultivate

Teams working on short projects together don’t have much time to connect on a personal level, yet business moves at the speed of trust. It’ll make your life easier if you can accelerate team bonding.
If a teammate is uncooperative, schedule a 1:1 and find out why as soon as they miss a KPI. Are there barriers you can remove (e.g., other projects)? Do they need resources you can obtain (training, equipment)? If the teammate still refuses to produce in a timely manner, send them an email reiterating your conversation and copy their supervisor. If you still can’t convince them to contribute, schedule a meeting with their supervisor and ask how they motivate the employee. Pro Tip: the emails should be enough evidence to keep this employee off of future teams you lead.

If you have to manage projects without authority over people, then you must build commitment and engagement. Find common ground and use it to align goal setting. Get your team the resources they need to do good work. Explain the logical (not emotional) reasons for taking an action and the consequences of not taking it.

Have you had responsibility without authority? How did that work out? Please share in the comments.

FOMO on Steroids

With 391 million people fully vaccinated for COVID-19 worldwide (as of May 24, 2021), the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is no longer attached to an oncoming train. People are emerging and testing their environment as herd immunity progresses. Americans lucky enough to remain employed have collectively saved about $1.7 trillion from the beginning of the pandemic through January 2021. The savings are mostly by default because they couldn’t spend it on travel, in-restaurant dining, and concert/sports/show tickets.

You not only saved up your money, but also your desire to spend it. The flood gates on both are about to open as COVID restrictions lift. Scarcity created FOMO and with freedom returning, you’re tempted to spend those savings on extravagances. For example, a year ago you didn’t realize how badly you wanted Crisp Morning Air scented hand sanitizer until it was sold out. Now, when you’re thumbing through Instagram and up pop photos of a friend posing in the middle of Times Square, you want to fly first class to New York and stay at The Ritz-Carlton. The phenomenon of spending money with abandon in an attempt to make up for lost opportunities during the lock down has a name: Revenge Spending.

All the money you would’ve spent in 2020 and couldn’t (thanks, COVID) is now burning a hole in your pocket. All the activities you wanted to do but couldn’t (thanks, COVID) now make you feel you have a lot of catching up to do. You want to take the trips you missed, replace the sofa you inherited from your parents’ downsizing six years ago, buy new work clothes to wear back to the office because your old work clothes no longer fit (thanks, COVID). You feel like you’ve been robbed of a year’s worth of experiences and are in a frenzy to make up for lost time. If you have a job, very little debt, and a stimulus check, you’re very tempted to spend. A little splurge is understandable, but letting “treat yo self” get out of control can quickly empty your bank account.

The point of Revenge Spending is to make yourself feel better mentally and emotionally; a little retail therapy for all the isolation you had to endure last year. But if you blow all the money 2020 saved you, you defeat the purpose of Revenge Spending by mortgaging your future. Haven’t you suffered enough? To keep yourself in check:

Control the Splurge – Set a limit (maybe a stimulus check or two) and try to spend it locally. Use a local travel agent, go to local restaurants, jewelry stores, concert venues, etc.

Use Your Points – If you have a credit card that accumulates points and you’ve racked them up buying gas, groceries, and take-out during the pandemic, use them where possible to pay for upgrades. For example, fly business class instead of economy, book a 5-star hotel instead of a 3-star, fine-dining instead of casual. Using the points gives you the experience you want while making your fun fund last longer.

Tap the Brakes – It’s easy to go online and immediately start booking and buying. When you’re about to purchase something you can’t live without, bookmark the site and revisit it in 48 hours. If the feeling is still as strong and you can afford it, go for it.

Walk Away – When you see social media posts of your friends Revenge Spending, put down your device.

Keep Going – Maintain the good savings habits you were forced to adopt in 2020, like retaining an emergency fund.

Party Like It’s 2019 – What did you plan to spend your discretionary income on in 2019? If you stick to that budget, the odds you’ll keep your 2020 savings increase.

Have you done any Revenge Spending yet? What is the first thing you bought? Please share in the comments.

Who Are You?

During the first team meeting after Jane got promoted from individual contributor to manager, she admitted she was nervous about the new role and asked her team for help. Her honesty and vulnerability were counter productive. Instead of regarding her as authentic, Jane’s direct reports perceived her as weak and unable to do her job. They didn’t trust her decisions, making it impossible to lead them. Her leadership style should have evolved as she gained experience, but instead Jane lost the courage necessary to promote her ideas.

What Bringing Your Whole Self to Work Means

Being both courageous and comfortable enough with coworkers to reveal both personal interests and flaws, thus creating space for them to reciprocate
Normalizing what employees experience outside the workplace affects them in the workplace
Includes both the impression we give of ourselves (consciously or unconsciously) and the impression we have of coworkers
Some elements we consider: authenticity (“This is me, warts and all”), humility (“I don’t know everything”), and vulnerability (“I need your help”)

Bringing your whole self to work is a relatively new concept. It presupposes that employees want to find purpose and higher meaning through their jobs. During the industrial revolution, no one looked for engagement with their work. They worked to buy food, clothing and shelter. They looked for purpose and higher meaning at church, in nature, or through art. Even today, some employees will never see their jobs as a source of fulfillment. If employees spend their energy trying to fit in to the culture, then they don’t have a lot left to be innovative, engaged, and productive.

Why You Don’t

Maybe, like Jane, you brought your whole self to work in the past and got judged or were less than your coworkers expected
The culture of your workplace is not conducive to sharing, keeping conversations at surface level
You fear revealing certain parts of your personality will make you appear unprofessional (e.g., you remain silent in a meeting after your feelings were hurt)
You are ashamed of something in your background
You feel pressured to always be right because your work culture does not support learning from failure

Why You Should

The more willing you are to be authentically vulnerable, the more positive an impact you have on both your work and your team. Bringing your whole self to work:

Breaks down silos
Accelerates trust
Creates a culture where honesty is valued
Removes the stress of hiding flaws
Allows genuine connection (critical to successful networking)
Enhances productivity and performance
Boosts creative problem solving
Helps managers resolve conflict in a constructive way

Someone who recognizes when to risk being vulnerable also recognizes a smart business risk when they see it.

How You Can

Start the authenticity ball rolling by:

Both recognizing and appreciating coworkers. There is a difference. Recognizing is feedback on performance. E.g.,“You gave an excellent presentation today.” Appreciating is expressing gratitude for valuable human qualities (e.g., humility, kindness, humor) regardless of whether the deliverable succeeded or failed. E.g., “It’s obvious you care deeply about serving our customers.” Recognizing and appreciating them helps coworkers feel seen. This leads to deepening trust and improving job performance
Having a growth mindset. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn, and we learn more when we do it together
Leading through both modeling and celebrating behaviors like: speaking up, taking smart risks, and owning mistakes. This enables your workforce to feel psychologically safe which leads to creativity which leads to productivity which leads to revenue

How comfortable are you bringing your whole self to work? Please share in the comments.

Balance vs Integration

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I mentioned last week my mom is retired. If you’re envisioning a little old lady sitting in a rocking chair and knitting, you haven’t met my mom. If she’s sitting in a rocking chair, It’s more likely she’s on her laptop in her home office, videoconferencing with a mentee in Turkey rather than knitting. Instead of trying to balance work and life, Mom has integrated them. She’s incorporated elements she loves (The Bible, studying) into her daily routine (counseling, mentoring).

If you have a job that can’t be done remotely, (e.g. factory, hospital) you have a better shot at work life balance because you leave your work at the place you perform it. But those jobs tend to have hours that don’t coincide with the school day. Balance then becomes: Are you going to your eight-year-old’s piano recital on Saturday or are you working your normal shift as a hair stylist? If you have more of a sales role (talent acquisition, productivity consultant) or knowledge worker (software developer, career coach) you have more freedom to integrate all of your responsibilities. For example, instead of working eight hours straight, work-life integration could look like this: you do deep work at 5:00AM while everyone is asleep. You break at 7:00AM for breakfast with the family. You work while the kids are in school. You answer emails after everyone goes to bed. Integration blurs the lines between home and work. Life becomes more fluid and less categorized. For example, developing a marketing proposal for a client and developing a vacation proposal for the family are both duties you may have, and you get paid to do one of them.

When I think of balance, I visualize the Scales of Justice and constantly trying to keep both sides even. But you don’t have work on one side of the scale and everything else on the other. Life is more like a large Marion’s Super Cheese Pizza whose squares are unevenly cut. Some are huge and some are tiny. Your squares include work, family, friends, health, personal development, spirituality, volunteering, leisure, etc. Some days, those bigger squares are going to be children (e.g., you have to attend parent-teacher conferences). Some days those big squares are going to be work (e.g., attending the all-company videoconference). After you eat a couple of big squares, you fill up on smaller ones: checking email while awaiting your turn at the parent-teacher conferences, light weight lifting while attending the all-company videoconference. (I recommend both video and microphone muted for this one.) Only you can decide which squares and how many to eat everyday. Make decisions based on your values, goals, and priorities. When you feel overwhelmed, write down where your T.E.A.M. is going (i.e., how many squares you’re eating). If you discover you’re spending your T.E.A.M. out of sync with your values, goals, and priorities, consider reassigning the squares. Maybe today the biggest square is the slide deck that’s due at noon and the smaller square is the social media post you told your church you’d do for them this week. You can even share your pizza, giving a square (like the social media post) to someone else.

Switching your mindset to integration can help you achieve the balance you want. How have you changed your routine to bring more harmony to your life? Please share in the comments.

How You Doin’?

My dad’s birthday is this week (HBD Pop!). Both he and Mom are retired. When I think about preparing for retirement, I study how they did it. Speaking of saving money, how are your savings goals for 2021 coming? Given the state of the economy, we should revisit our money habits. You have a budget, debt payoff plan, good credit score, and savings goals, right? RIGHT?

Budget

If you don’t have a budget, create one. It’s free to manually track your money using a spreadsheet, or there are plenty of budgeting apps available. Whether simple or complex, choose a system you’ll stick with. If you don’t evaluate your budget monthly, at least glance at it once a quarter, especially while the economy is still reeling from COVID-19. Are you driving a lot less thanks to the pandemic? If so, you may be able to save 5-10% on your vehicle insurance if you’re willing to allow the insurance company to track your driving activity using telematics. Do you have a mortgage? If you can lower your rate by at least 0.5 percentage points, consider refinancing it; especially if it would eliminate mortgage insurance premiums.

Debt

Debt-to-income ratio is one of the things lenders look at when you apply for credit or a loan. Here’s a worksheet you can use to figure yours out. If it’s too high, don’t borrow any more money right now, revise your budget, and consider consolidating multiple debts. After calculating how much debt you have, prioritize what to pay off first. Do you have more credit card debt than you’re comfortable with? The average interest rate on a new credit card is 17.87%. If you make minimum monthly payments, you could spend years just paying off the interest. Do you have multiple credit cards? Consider paying off the one with the highest interest rate first. Or, you could pay off the one with the lowest outstanding balance first, then add the amount you used to pay that lender to the monthly payment of the credit card with the higher interest rate.

Credit

If you didn’t check your credit report at the end of 2020, do it now and make sure it’s accurate. Most lenders use the FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) credit score, which is based on your payment history on loans and credit cards, total debt and amounts owed, length of credit history, new credit accounts, and credit mix. Three companies publish credit reports: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Experian offers a free tool called Boost. It recognizes timely payments to utilities providers and streaming services (e.g. Netflix) to increase your credit score.

Savings

Saving money is not supposed to be painful, it’s supposed to make you feel accomplished and free. Consider paying yourself first every month by direct depositing a percentage of your paycheck to a designated savings account. Budget spending around your savings instead of spending all your money every month and then putting what’s left into savings. You can also schedule automatic recurring transfers into your savings account so you can painlessly build your emergency fund. If you didn’t think an emergency fund was important pre-pandemic, I hope COVID-19 has changed your mind. Does your employer have a matching retirement plan? Are you contributing as much as they are in order to receive the most benefit? Best practice is saving 12-15% (including employer match) of your paycheck for retirement.

How are your 2021 financial goals coming along? Please share in the comments.

We Can Work it Out

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American employees have worked in office buildings since 1906, even though emerging technology enables us to work from anywhere, any time, and with anyone. Companies buy buildings, so we must use the tools that work in them. Besides, if you can’t see your employees, they aren’t working, right? Let’s face it: If they’re watching Netflix at home, they’re probably watching it at the office too. In 2016, 43% of employees spent at least a few hours working remotely. During COVID, the exponential increase revealed outdated assumptions about it. The top three are: productivity, communication, and culture.

Productivity

This study shows employees are actually 35-40% more productive working remotely than in an office. Managers can boost productivity by:

clearly communicating goals (deadlines, KPIs)
giving individual contributors necessary equipment (laptop, industry specific software)
encouraging calendar sharing and ad-hoc communication (IM, video chats)

Time and activity tracking apps are available to keep an eye on the workforce (e.g., Teramind) or managers can insist on hourly activity reports. But, going overboard backfires. Productivity slows when employees have to interrupt their work to report on it; not to mention the distrust it cultivates. Working remotely not only increases productivity, but also reduces costs from real estate, employee absenteeism, and turnover. Research suggests a hybrid-remote work model could collectively save American employers over $500 billion a year.

Communication

Technology allows teams to communicate who is doing what, how close to the target they are, and what the result should look like. Data privacy is an issue; mostly a people one. For example, do all employees know they shouldn’t use free coffee shop Wi-Fi? Most data privacy issues can be addressed through company-wide training, secure VPNs, and well-communicated best practice policies. Implementing a hybrid-remote work policy helps employees understand business expectations, and advances both transparency and accountability for everyone. What should a best practice policy include?

COVID protocol: What are the rules for masks and social distancing? Must employees be vaccinated to work in the office?
Logistics: Who decides if an employee can work remotely; the employee or the employer? When in the office, does the employee have a dedicated workspace?
Equity: Is the remote employee reimbursed for office supplies, internet, and electricity? Will in-office employees receive better performance reviews due to unconscious bias? Is there a central company information hub that’s accessible to all employees?

Culture

A pleasantly surprising result of pandemic-induced remote work is that it has made some underrepresented groups feel more seen. Helping teams bond takes employers’ creativity, as well as time, and technology can facilitate initiatives.

Use employee recognition software to issue company-wide wellness challenges. By broadly defining wellness, (e.g., drinking water and meditation count as well as physical exercise) employers get more buy-in.
Schedule a recurring weekly thirty-minute coworker coffee, or happy hour (or both) via video chat.
Onboard new employees by pairing them with existing employees via instant messaging for one shift.
Engage employees with brief company-wide surveys (e.g., “What do you need most right now to be successful at your job: training or tools?”)

There’s no going back to the office-centric model. If an employer’s attitude is, “My employees have to work where I want them to, and I want them in the office,” then 54% of workers are willing to leave that employer when they find a position that supports remote work. If management and individual contributors come together to communicate what is working and identify where waste can be eliminated, we can create a sustainable hybrid-remote solution.

Do you want to go back to the office full time? Please share your preference in the comments.