Working from home: Take two
The current fuel and subsequent economic crisis is forcing us to think again about how we work. Faced with the potential for another period of stagflation (low growth, high inflation) we have little hope of using wage and salary increases to get our organisations and people through this challenge.
Instead we look for alternative and creative ways to find financial relief, one of which is to reduce commuting costs. An obvious option is to offer compressed work weeks for everyone and increase working from home, at least for those with desk-based elements in their work.
Working from home with mixed results
Last time we had an abrupt shift to working from home was during the pandemic. Many organisations were scrambling at speed to make sure people were safe, set up with laptops and ready to connect online. Since those crisis times, we’ve evolved working from home into hybrid work with some mixed results.
Most desk-based workers use an element of working from home, but many leaders and teams find it still isn’t delivering on its promise of higher levels of wellbeing and its potential for higher productivity.
As we find ourselves back in crisis mode with a drive to have more work done from home, let’s have a reset and see if we can use this opportunity to reap those benefits.
Entitlement culture: corrosive to high-trust
Work from home is at its best when there is clarity about delivery of the work. Not just what work needs to be done by when, but also making sure everyone is on the same page. So often, a misunderstanding about delivery is what leads to resentment between colleagues and a perception of entitlement. A culture of entitlement around working from home is incredibly corrosive to creating high-trust. You simply won’t achieve the high-trust you need for success in a work-from-home team if an entitlement culture is creeping in.
Top tip: Set your team up now to make sure those delivery conversations are happening. You want them to happen regularly, not as a one off, so everyone’s regularly recalibrating with the people that matter.
Beware of burnout: boundaries are essential
Once delivery is assured and mutually understood, you are safely out of the risk of entitlement. This means the high-trust culture you want to create is possible, but not yet guaranteed. The next risk to mitigate is the team that is ‘always on’. We know that working from home puts enormous pressure on our boundaries between work and home. We also know that each of us has different preferences about how we manage those boundaries; what works for one won’t necessarily work for the next. Having conversations about your preferences to manage those work-home boundaries help create understanding, empathy and support across the team.
Top tip: Have these boundary conversations as a team at least every six months. We know that as people’s life demands evolve, their boundary preferences also change. Without realising, you can find that the way you used to manage work-home boundaries is no longer effective. Regularly checking in with yourself and then sharing that as a team helps you stay clear of that boundary burnout risk.
High-trust: Flexpert teams
With these two elements of work delivery and work-home boundaries in place, your team is finally set up to succeed, as they increase their time working from home. The more time spent working from home, the higher the risk of isolation, so make sure you have ways of checking in with each other beyond the immediate task-focused conversations. Carving out time to connect just for the sake of connection, becomes part of being a high-trust flexpert team. The risk of intensification of work during a crisis is high, as Nick Petrie has found in his work on burnout. We need to make sure we’re being realistic about what needs to get done, switching off and taking time to connect.
As we see an uptick in working from home through this oil crisis, we can learn from our recent history and use it to drive healthier, more productive ways of working. The second verse doesn’t have to be the same as the first.
If you want some tried and tested tools that hundreds of teams have used check out my free download to start the conversation with your team: Me & We Flexpert Tool
If you want plenty more tools like that, including those for delivery assurance and boundary preferences, check out my Flexpert Kickstarter Pack: https://www.gillianbrookes.co.nz/shop