Do we bet on digital jobs?
Technology has changed the world and revolutionized the way people and companies work. Last year many organizations put out the fires on the run, they did what they could, even more than is humanly possible, with the available means; They were all very tactical actions to be able to continue operating. More than a year later we see that there are organizations that have decided to reinvent themselves and redefine their strategy to lead and others that still do not know where to go.
We talk a lot about remote work being here to stay and all its benefits, including the supposed increase in productivity derived from its massive use. I have doubts that we will be able to take advantage of all its benefits, if we do not learn to do things differently and to take into account all the challenges involved in working remotely. Every time I see more studies, more data, which confirm the need to evolve the concept of remote work, not only from the employee's perspective, but also from that of management and leadership styles. We must create organizations where you can work from anywhere.
We hear about the fatigue caused by so many video conferencing marathons, the employee experience - technology binomial (what some call the digital employee experience), asynchronous communication and much more; But it seems that we do not want to see that more and more employees are burned out and that the retention of talent is one of the most important challenges that all organizations have to face.
There is no doubt that if we want to have organizations prepared for the future, it is time to bet on the digital workplace, to understand that working from anywhere is possible (even if it requires us to provide our teams with resources and tools). To redefine the strategy we must listen to the three recurring complaints from the distributed workforce, claims originating from pre-existing problems that grew exponentially with the pandemic,
- Unsatisfactory employee experience.
- Complexity created by having to use disparate tools.
- Increased security risks.
The sum of everything discussed above confirms that employee productivity and collaboration have suffered. It was difficult to adapt to such an abrupt change, but we did it with the effort and goodwill of many people. To get employees to stop being burned out, stop feeling the syndrome of "death by videoconference", the exhaustion derived from digital presence ... we need to improve some things, we have to over-vitamin to break with inertia and use more common sense. We need to move from face-to-face to productivity, stop having ten video conferences a day, almost uninterrupted. I am sure that we can do it, because we have already overcome very difficult situations before and because this is the previous one to prepare for better times.
To the leaders I tell them that it does not matter if they plan to return to work one hundred percent in person, if they plan to subscribe to the total remote or if they will implement hybrid formats; it is imperative to adapt the leadership style. It is no longer just about organizations having purpose, but about seeing how we do it in an accelerated way. We always say that the worker must be responsible to achieve the objectives, but we must also put the people who lead the teams into the equation. The role of the leader is not to micromanage or delegate all tasks, but to be the facilitator.
Employee experience is a priority to retain and attract talent. Betting on digital work means having a remote work strategy. In this context, the hackneyed one size fits all is not enough, you have to continuously improve the employee experience, you have to adapt to the individual needs of employees and that starts with understanding the human being behind the technology.
Do you dare to lead the change? To be part of the success of multimodal work? Shifting from the old mindset of remote work to anywhere organizations requires a strong commitment to the digital workplace, understanding people's needs, and using the best technologies to create the much-needed digital employee experience.
Translation by Google Translate
Originally published at Disruptores e Innovadores