COVID19, Work from Home, what this means for organizations

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has officially been categorized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a pandemic, meaning infection is accelerating in multiple countries concurrently. Many countries have introduced complete lockdown & the rest have closed schools, universities, offices & large gatherings.

What does this really translate to the workforce & leaders? With the experts forecasting the situation may continue to be so for the coming months, we are no longer looking at working towards a short term contingency, but a way to prepare ourselves to adapt to this new way of functioning for the coming months & years.

It’s imperative for the leaders to accept & acknowledge that, the new work from home situation, may not be a smooth transition for most of the workforce. And the unpreparedness to handle this will dearly cost the desired outcome.

Let’s see what's so challenging about working from home. 

·       To begin with, majority of the employees as well as their managers are totally new to working from home

·       For many, home has never been office like

·       Insufficient/Uncomfortable work-space

·       Missing the team vibes

·       Inability to maintain continued focus & lack of focus leading to boredom & unproductivity

·       Stress arising from the external uncertainty as well as change in routine

·       Miscommunication/over communication/ineffective communication among teams

·       inefficiency

·       Micromanagement by managers

·       Worries around job security

·       Contrary to the belief of the situation enabling slow down, many employees are working more time to keep up with the changing requirements & challenges.

·       Kids, family members add to distraction

·       Additional responsibility of keeping the family safe, managing essentials

·       The pandemic crisis is taking a toll psychologically

Let’s see how some of these issues can be addressed. 

·       Leaders to ensure technical support in setting up home office

·       Leaders to acknowledge the challenges that work from home can pose for their teams

·       Leaders to come forth & be vulnerable about their own challenges & what they are doing about it

·       Leaders to encourage virtual socialization through team huddles, buddy/mentoring schemes, virtual coffee/tea breaks.

·       Leaders to recognize & proactively support positive wellbeing, as that's the key to performance excellence.

·       Leaders to keep communication open, effective & noninvasive

·       Leaders to not shame the distraction likely to be caused by kids/rest of the family

·       Leaders to actively listen & catch the said & unsaid vibes & keep a close eye on employee motivation.

·       Leaders to proactively identify negativity & invest time in 1:1 or team coaching.

·       Leaders to identify employee engagement opportunities in terms of virtual team building & virtual team learning.

·       Leaders to extend support identify scope to keep the employees focused.

Having said all this, we acknowledge these are stressful times for the entire organization, especially leaders and stress directly impacts the performance, as portrayed by Nixon. P in 1979. While low stress can lead to boredom & lesser engagement, one can also clearly notice performance increasing to the point of eustress with healthy tension. The same however when pushed further, hampers the performance & takes a downward spiral towards exhaustion, ill health & burnout. 

In order to keep the organizational performance optimum, its critical to work with the leaders & teams, now more than ever to ensure, they are neither leaning towards boredom, nor towards burnout.

We invite HR & L&D Leaders to partner with us, to support you through this critical transition phase. We assure, the sooner we collaborate, learn fast & adapt quickly, the greater our chances are to find ourselves on the brighter side, once this pandemic settle.

Here's how we can help you! With our new Virtual Online Workshop (V-O-W) we can work with your leadership teams & employees to facilitate

·       Trust & transparency among the team

·       Employee engagement & motivation

·       Short e-learning modules covering varied topics like -

a.     Stress management,

b.     Managing change,

c.     women leadership,

d.     influencing without authority,

e.     Storytelling to inspire, engage & influence

f.      Self-care

·       Shift from Mindset to Mind-flex

·       1:1 coaching for specific outcomes

·       Systemic/team coaching addressing specific challenges & driving results.

Looking forward for positive collaboration & innovative solutions to sail together through these times of uncertainty & change.