HBR Guide to Remote Work by Harvard Business Review. The ‘HBR Guide’ series offers articles addressed in multiple sections. This is not a single author’s interpretation.
This title was published during the pandemic when employees were already remote. This guide is addressing a very large change in human behavior and the need for organizations to respond.
More importantly, this addresses new, unique challenges when confronting the simple day to day aspects of working outside the office. Perhaps within your family, the new remote office is the kitchen. For managers, your direct reports are certainly confronting new challenges in delivering their workflows.
Enter the Zoom era. New organizational elements were quickly changing. How to ensure employees are staying focused despite all the new distractions from home.
This Guide is indeed providing insightful tips and advice. So, how does an organization shift their operations from 100% face to face to the new remote work? Many employees quickly embraced working remote in casual clothing. In fact, this helped their bottom line saving money on gasoline and lunches.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
Instant access to co-workers via Zoom shifted normal face to face meetings. Many moved from fifty minutes to a full hour. We forgot you would join co-works walking to your next meeting. Then your meeting ended and the next started simply within two clicks. No bio breaks or a chance to stand from your chair just to simply stretch before the next meeting. Add to this meeting culture the need to help children focus on their remote learning while they sit in the living room or upstairs in their bedroom. In many cases this led to faster employee burnout.
Supply Chain challenges
Upon reflection an article challenging organizations that lacked the technology to bring 100% of employees into virtual environments is missing and may infact be a different focus. Clearly organizations did not deliver all the needed technology on day one. Check out Section One: Getting Work Done – Article 2: Things to Buy, Download, or De When Working Remotely by Alexandra Samuel. From a risk management aspect, this will raise eyebrows. This resulted in malware attacks that continue to damage organizations to this day.
In conclusion, this guide not only delivers smart advice, it reveals how a founcational change from working at an orgnaation’ office can be in fact correctly managed to execute workflows remotly.