Post Pandemic Workplace
“When the company is not limited to a collocated workspace the idea of who can be part of the workforce expands.“
When we are faced with challenges, we sometimes come up with new ways of working. These new ways also give us excellent results. Problem is that when the challenge goes away, we are quick to go back to how things were before.
This way, we choose the comfort of going back to the known rather than taking advantage of the new learning we have got.
Can we think like a scientist and the last year as an experiment. What worked for us? What didn’t work?
Can we leverage the benefit of remote work and at the same time build new rules which will ensure that we keep the negatives in check ?
Many companies we speak to today have either re started the pre pandemic workplace practices or plan to in the next few months. The pandemic taught us that remote work can be highly effective – to a degree.
Some pros of remote work:
- Employees are more productive when they don’t have to spend time on daily commute
- Meetings tend to be shorter (but more frequent)
- Virtual work allows people to collaborate across physical and organizational boundaries
Cons of remote work
- ‘Chance’ encounters with others almost stopped. These ties are super critical for innovation and knowledge sharing
- Finishing big projects which had already started was fine to manage remotely, but kicking off new projects remotely was more challenging
- Establishing and maintaining organizational culture is difficult in virtual setting. Again lack of strong sense of culture is a problem with respect to new employees
- Younger employees received less coaching and mentoring
Remember, rethinking workspace also opens new opportunities for rethinking the workforce, and ultimately, the work itself.