Is remote working the Secret Sauce for happiness at work?
For years, many people assumed that being able to work remotely would provide that work/life balance that everyone so desperately seeks. However having now been thrust into this virtual world without much preparation, workers and bosses alike are realizing that success in this environment requires much more than an internet connection and video conferencing capabilities. Virtual work environments require a new level of intention that is more than just transferring your face to face skills and knowledge to an online space.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic I was interviewed for the Global Happiness at Work Summit where my discussion with Sarah Metcalfe evolved around how remote work alternatives may provide the opportunity for happiness at work. During our chat we also touch on the many considerations to be addressed in order to make remote work alternatives as positive and productive as the face to face environment.
Finding the Freedom or Balance to Create Happy
Work/life balance is an idea that has been an ongoing topic relating to happiness at work for years. For many though, the idea of balance is difficult because it involves giving up some things and focusing/prioritizing on something else so that you have to let other things be in the background.
A new way people are trying to capture this idea is with the phrase harmonious integration. Perhaps this provides more focus on being able to create focus around all areas of life — work, family, and personal pursuits — in a more integrated approach.
To be successful it really requires a combination of flexibility, discipline and the best methods to make you productive and feel that you are creating value, as the ultimate goal in all we do is to feel successful. Remember it is not all about freedom; rather it’s the ability to make choices around the best work practices and methods to drive your success and integrate it with what you need to feel successful in your life as a whole.
Creating Opportunity
Perhaps one of the most important elements of online work, and often ignored, is the creation of a collaborative environment that is made up of not just video conferencing and online tools but also guidelines as to how the teams interact globally. Too often I see global companies simply use the virtual team to bounce tasks across time zones. Instead it should be about the ongoing work and providing opportunities for the team members to claim a level of co-creation, enable cross-team brainstorming and find new solutions together. In this way the team can find great new ways of doing things and enjoy the collaboration and it keeps the team from taking on the process of a virtual assembly line.
And how is that done? Remember to allow the work to go beyond time and space — and provide ways for the collaboration to happen before and after meetings — establish an asynchronous space. For example you don’t just send an agenda and then get on the call. Instead try to prepare a presentation beforehand — or a video — and share it so that the team can view it before the meeting. Have the team exchange input and discussion on a virtual bulletin board ahead of time.
When you are asynchronous — it honors more types of work styles, and allows individuals to have more time to digest the information and feel more prepared to actively participate. It also provides more opportunities for people in multiple locations — and different teams — to have a stronger voice because they have been able to discuss the ideas with their colleagues. This enables better discussion during the meeting. Most important, it embraces the diversity of a global workspace by utilizing the resources you have available all over the world and it is inclusive by giving everyone a way to capture, process and present their ideas.
Communication Guidelines are Essential
One aspect of remote work is the chance to work at any hour and connect with team mates located all over the world. This can be a negative or a positive. Remember that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You and your team must make conscious choices with regard to what each of you will be included in. Remember you must determine what is relevant for you to tune into so that you can maintain a focus. Think of priorities and benchmarks.
“Need to be tuned into where the focus needs to be — can’t be concerned about missing out on anything. Need to have boundaries.”
Make sure to also be very mindful as to how you are communicating and put structure around it. Use several kinds of tools and learn to think out loud so that everyone in a meeting can hear what you are thinking and provide feedback. Remember how important visualization is. Just as you would in a face to face setting, brainstorm using storm boards or white boards that can be seen over a video conference, use online collaboration tools or remote rooms. Just be sure that the entire team is aware of what methods are being used so that everyone can participate and feel included.
“Have a collaborative agreement — plan the tools, the frequency, how meetings will be run, when do you overlap and co-work — must have virtual awareness and train the team in that plan.”
Great Tools a MUST
One reason that so many people were recently able to quickly transition to remote work in such a short time frame is due to the fact that there is a great value on the knowledge worker and the technologies that are available can bring each of us virtually into the same space. As I have covered in previous articles, there are numerous tools that enable virtual teams. Key to this is the ability to facilitate communication in both synchronous and asynchronous environments.
Synchronous communication is the video conferencing that are being heavily used now. There are many options for this such as Zoom, Teams, Bluejeans or Circles. With the right framework in place, video conferencing can be an excellent tool in virtual collaboration as it allows you to interact with your team in real time and maintain your relationships.
However we also need to realize that this is just one piece of the remote working puzzle. It is also important to utilize tools and processes that enable remote collaboration and also enable asynchronous participation. This is really the beauty of virtual teams — work is able to extend beyond just the now. Trello and Padlet boards are both virtual bulletin boards that allow team members to contribute and comment on ideas prior to and after meetings occur. You can also record and share videos prior to a meeting to allow team members to digest the content and be ready to contribute to the discussion.
“Virtual teams really enable the theory of beyond time and space — collaboration in virtual space can stretch out. Happen before and after — can utilize online tools which gives us asynchronous space to work”
In the end, it’s about being creative and aware of the challenges that your team, or individuals, may face. Most of us are very task oriented so we need to make sure to be mindful of creating an environment to enable the connections needed to fire up creativity through the ability to work in virtual space. This is still at a novice level and everyone needs to find the skills and tools that fit their needs and then fine tune their particular methods.
5 highlighted tips
Key components of making a remote environment work for you must be established intentionally and involve a level of discipline beyond what is done in a face to face work situation.
1. Establish a routine that includes a schedule and boundaries for when you will be available and how communications will occur with your team, boss and clients. This is so important because without these boundaries you may fall to a 24x7 mentality which is unsustainable and does not provide that balance. Also, don’t forget that you can work in different physical places if that brings you more inspiration.
2. Create constraints on your focus. This may sound like common sense, but when you are inundated with messages and project information in many different platforms and formats, finding the focus you need to be thorough can be difficult. Decide where you will place your focus and stick to it for the time you allocate to that particular work.
3. Realize that the definition of success is transitioning from being focused on the time you work to the value and results that you produce. Focus on creating those results rather than worrying about how much time you are logged in and you will create success.
4. Remember to find ways to create the human connection. Utilize the right tools, but also take time at the beginning of meetings to ask about the weather and see how the team is doing. Take advantage of online environments such as Sococo where you can create virtual rooms to work together on projects. Find times that teams can overlap across the different time zones so that the passion for the work you are doing can be shared real-time. This also helps to alleviate the isolation many feel when they work remotely.
5. Find opportunities for collaboration, whether it be with tools or different communication methods. Intentionally establish and discuss these with your team so everyone is on the same page.
“You can’t just use the same face to face skills and knowledge in the online world, you must intentionally create the space.”
In terms of the happiness piece — we are only scratching the surface of our skill level. It is not one size fits all when it comes to finding the happiness, balance or harmonious integration in our work. It is exciting and always evolving.
