How COVID- 19 is changing company culture and the way we work.

COVID- 19 has ripped through the world in the last few months causing consumers to panic buy, stock markets to fall, schools to be closed and precautionary measures to be put in place which has led to the cancellations of many large events. With all these changes, working from home has become a reality as companies have been prompted to act quickly to prevent any further spread of the virus. This decision has not been taken likely as news trickles down from presidents to leaders of major industries and companies. Many companies are not prepared for this drastic change in working culture. We are currently in a problem state working towards an opportunity for a new way of thinking, a new way of connecting and a new way of working.

Before we can get into how this pandemic is changing our working culture, we need to look at the technologies available to us that will aid the change of company mindsets.

What type of technology will assist employees in working remotely?

Video conferencing tools

As we begin the isolation process and companies encourage working from home as a solution to prevent a further spread of the virus, video conferencing becomes a key tool in a corporate toolbox to connect employees. The ability to display ones desktop is imperative in this journey as we attempt to keep the visual element of meetings prevalent so to quickly get everyone on the same page in every meeting. Some video conferencing software available for free/limited trial use include: Zoom, Avaya spaces, Cisco Webex, Starleaf, Ringcentral Meetings, Dialpad uber conference, 8x8, Lifesize, DTEN, LogMeIn GoToMeeting, Monday.com and Meetupcall.  

Project management tools

As we need to continue business as seamlessly as possible, we need a task management tool to track where a task is in the project management life cycle, without having to pick up the phone and call each project member individually. Here are some free software tools that can be utilized to help your business achieve this: Project.co, Toggl plan, Feedcamp, Asana Teamwork, Wrike, Paymo, ClickUp, Trello and Todoist.

If you work on projects often, chances are you will have a paid version of a project tool that suits your business and project needs, but if you are a smaller business without this in place right now, these tools could assist you in quickly setting up a project management tracking tool for your remote employees.

Reliable internet connection

Companies will need to quickly determine the internet connectivity and speeds of every employee’s household. Those that are without internet connection at home will need to be provided with such. The quickest way to get an employee setup and connected is via portable Wifi devices with a Sim card with a decent data plan.

VPN

As people move onto their home network with company laptops, we expect many opportunist hackers to be searching for a way to get access to your personal information. So what is a VPN and how can it help? A VPN redirects your internet traffic, disguising where your computer, phone or other device is when it makes contact with websites. It also encrypts information you send across the internet, making it unreadable to anyone who intercepts your traffic. That includes your internet service provider. This is a protection mechanism while you are in transit, but does not specifically protect you while you are on the destination site. This is where company internet policies need to be stringent in terms of what sites are allowed, especially when working off site. The 10 best VPN services are as follows: Express VPN, Cyber Ghost, Nord VPN, Surfshark, ZenMate, UltraVPN, PrivateVPN, Norton secure VPN, Panda and Pure VPN.

Document management tools

What any business wants from a document management tool is security, version control, an audit trail and ease of collaboration. The free solutions are a “get what you pay for” kind of deal and won’t necessarily secure your sensitive information. Robbie Sinclair, Chief Security Officer at Telstra health says “Security is always excessive until it’s not enough” and the same rings true for protecting your company IP. Luckily, there are affordable solutions in the market such as eFileCabinet, M-Files, Templafy, Hightail, MasterControl, PaperTracer and Docuware.

Now that we have a way for employees to work and a way for employers to manage, we look toward company culture and what needs to stop, start and continue for remote working to be productive and successful.

What must companies stop doing for remote working to be successful?

Stop the Information overload

The average worker spends 28% of their working week on emails, that’s more than 11 hours wasted in a single week. If we continue on this path of email overload, we risk losing our audience via this medium. The last type of environment you want to create is one where employees are too busy working, reading and managing admin. Why? When you are too busy working inside the box, you miss all the opportunities outside of the box. We need to continue on a path of supporting free thinkers.

A new environment is a chance to create a new way for employees to interact with one another. Think of the way most of your twenty something colleagues interact with the world outside of work? They plop on the couch, whip out their phone or laptop and start scrolling through the vast social media channels. This is how they interact with their friends, celebs and interests, right up until they come back to work, where they are strapped back into email culture. Social media tools offered in the work place offer employees a way to stay up to date with company happenings as well as offer a way for employees to interact with one another in a way that is familiar to them.

What must companies start doing for remote working to be successful?

Start setting a clear vision and mission statement

Employees need to be engaged with a company’s mission statement in order to strive to align to the companies goals in their daily tasks and thinking while working from home. What a company wants to achieve, should always be communicated with the people trying to make it happen. If they don’t know where they are going, how do you expect them to get there?

Start celebrating wins

A culture of winners is only achieved when the little and the big wins are acknowledged. It creates a culture of individuals wanting to become winners and makes for a healthy environment of motivated employees who feel valued. This type of culture creates employees that are willing to carry out their daily tasks from any location.

Drop the clock and start an output driven cosmos

We have all seen the employee that sits at work for 45 hours a week and we wonder “What does John do all day?” In a new working environment, time online shouldn’t be a measurement of productivity. Output should be the metric and that metric should be measured against your employees skills, experience and your employees knowledge on a particular subject matter. The clock watching society is so 1960’s, it's time to move to what really matters, output.

 What must employees start doing in a remote working environment?

Start a routine

Many people will not be used to working from home and may struggle with the distractions that home has to offer. It is imperative to start a work from home routine. For instance, if you wake up at 6am, get showered and drive to work by 7am to start your morning with a hot cup of coffee. Keep that routine (Minus the driving). Your commute will be replaced by a walk to the couch to switch on your laptop. Once you get the hang of managing your new environment, you will can start to adjust your routine according to your day.

Start checking in with your co-workers

Remote working is at the best of times a lonely experience, our interactions are limited to meetings about work and we lack that community interaction. Make sure you touch base with co-workers you work with and those who you are close to via call or message. We are still human and require that human interaction from time to time. After all, 20% of friendships made, are in the work place.

How will remote working benefit companies and employees?

First and foremost, remote working will prevent large gatherings in the office and hopefully slow the spread of the Corona Virus. But, before the Corona virus, in a company far far away. A company seen the benefit of people working from home and made it a reality. So, what are these benefits?

Increased productivity

A recent study conducted by Cisco showed that 53 percent of remote workers are willing to work overtime, compared to 28 percent of onsite workers. The survey also found that 45% of home workers could get things done quicker from home as there were less distractions. 90% of managers stated that employees are more productive when given flexibility to when and how they should work.

Reduced turnover

According to a US national survey, 82% of employees say that they would be more loyal to employers that offer flexible work options.

Increased savings

Imagine a world without offices. A remote working connected world where everyone works from the comfort of their home? Employees would save massive amounts of money on transportation, clothes, food, petrol, car maintenance, wardrobe costs, food costs and childcare.

This saving would be felt on the employer’s side as well with no real estate cost, electricity cost and absenteeism cost. Employers would also lessen the on-boarding cost as employees would be happier and stay at companies longer.

Increased wellness

According to https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/, 75% of workers that had the ability to work remotely reported that they could continue to work in the event of flu, terrorism, roadway problems and weather related disasters as opposed to office bound workers. Companies with remote work options report 63% fewer unscheduled absences.

 Conclusion

As we await news of normality and some form of solid plan on how to handle COVID- 19, we know that the next few months are going to be difficult for businesses everywhere. Luckily, technology will aid companies in this journey and let employees work from home. Technology will help us achieve this but company culture will let us breathe it (Albeit with a mask). After we beat this virus, (and we will) it is up to companies to measure the successes of remote working to see if this type of working will be sustainable in their industries after the pandemic is over. The opportunity for employees to change a companies outlook on remote working is firmly in their hands, the way we work in the coming years could very well be shaped by how productive and responsible employees are right now. Everyone has a responsibility to work smarter, to engage using technology, to remove the old way of business and move forward into a new culture of doers and move away from the old culture of butts in seats.