Future of Work: 2020
The future of work; isn’t it now?
In times of difficulty, stress or constraints we look to innovate.
The “Future of work” topic has popped up in a lot of technology and innovation discussions over the past couple of years. “How will we work more efficiently, how will it be designed for productivity and deep diving into an idea of what our future of work could look like”
Due to Covid-19 we have had to push the fast-forward button and adapt to a different kind of working environment. Running your business or managing your team from home can be a very new thing. If you already work from home, it might be an interesting time to see how those you work with are adapting too.
Businesses have had to look at how they innovate to make sure that their teams can work effectively from home.
I think this can be an important opportunity for businesses to re-establish their processes, how they communicate with their teams and maybe find ways to improve productivity.
I think something that might come to a surprise for some businesses is that working from home or remote working can work for businesses who might not have seen it as an option in the past. I believe that it can even provide an opportunity for many to hire a variety of people especially those who see remote working as essential. Since we started our business, we have always had remote workers. It’s a great way to be able to bring in talent from across the UK. We have people in Brighton, Bournemouth and Birmingham.
Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking more about what we have been doing internally thinking about the best ways to work in the current environment and below are a couple of things I have been thinking about.
Wellbeing
Looking after your own wellbeing and your team’s wellbeing is going to be on people’s radar much more than normal. I think this might allow for those leading teams to think about how they approach mental health in the workplace and how they now take care of people without being able to see them. Being available to talk is going to be super important in the coming weeks — might sound odd but making that clear to your teams might make a massive difference to them as they adjust. What can be put into place now while working from home can be implemented after the pandemic.
What about VR?
I have been keeping an eye on the immersive industry and how many businesses are putting on their headsets to conduct client meetings, team meetings and collaboration. It’s happening amongst those who use VR on a daily basis, but I am interested if it’s used by those outside the immersive industry.
I also think that using social spaces in VR is something that still needs some experimentation with and that there is a lot more than can be offered.
Communication:
More than ever communication is going to be key going forward in the next couple of weeks. It’s also key to the future of work. A lack of communication can cause problems quicker than you think, leading to stress and frustration. As our world is being flipped upside down more stress is not what we need. If you are a leader and have been used to seeing your team day to day in the office, communication now might seem harder than ever. Daily chats, check ins and de-briefing of days will help to make sure that everyone knows what is going on. Maintaining an open channel or Friday game afternoons will be more important than ever.
Productivity:
A big fear of remote working is going to be productivity. I know that being at home it can be easy to go and do the washing or put the dishwasher on — so the concerns around how everyone will get on with working from home is a constant. But this can be easily managed through the right processes.
You might already have had processes for the office, but they might need to change — this is one of the things that lots of people are having to work out.
Refreshing or restructuring how a business runs or looks after day to day tasks can be an important exercise. (Even if we were not prepared for it). Changing the way, you manage teams and daily tasks might end up being more successful in the long run.
We do need the right tools for this to work. Over the last couple of weeks, we have been going through all the software we use, most likely paid too much for and discovered that not a lot of them we need. We stripped back using multiple platforms and have stuck with two for the time being.
These platforms are easy and accessible to use from home and have already been used by our staff so there is already an understanding. We have also found that by stripping back and re-assessing everything we use; we are saving a lot more money.
Monday.com is our main way of monitoring tasks for our teams and a platform that we also share with our clients who can watch our processes. It can be used on laptops and phones — it also has several integrations such as zoom and we can pop in our time spent, accounts and more.
Remember that productivity links back to communication. If you are bringing in new processes for remote working, make sure that everyone understands how they are used and the purpose.
…
As a lot of businesses push to innovate for the current working environment it will be interesting to see how many businesses will stick to what they have discovered over the past couple of weeks — will some stay remote working or will some be racing back to what they knew before. I think it will be interesting to re-address what the future of work looks like in a year’s time, if remote working has changed the way we work for the better.
