Navigating the New Normal

The global workforce is no stranger to evolution. In recent decades, demographics have shifted; entire industries have vanished; manual skill sets have declined while creative and digital capabilities have become commodities. But one thing has been fairly constant through it all: work was mostly done outside the home.

I have always believed in the value of working from an office. In my view, this is where real productivity, collaboration and inspiration have typically taken place. But after joining millions of people in working from home in our new normal environment, my perspective has changed, and I now believe workplace strategies must enable both office and remote scenarios.

After personally witnessing how seamlessly video and virtual desktop technology enabled HP’s global workforce of nearly 55,000 employees to engage, interact and co-create with one another, it became clear that many roles can be just as effective - working virtually from anywhere.

Sustaining Productivity

This aligns with what other organizations are experiencing: More than half of participants in a YouGov, USA Today and LinkedIn survey said they are more productive working from home. And a global survey by Colliers International found four of five employees prefer to work remotely at least once a week after the COVID-19 crisis ends while half of respondents said they don’t feel working from home has affected their productivity.

In a matter of days, not months or years, this pandemic forced us to re-engineer infrastructures, adopt new technologies and change our collective mindset to support new ways of life. The futures we thought were still years away have arrived and continue to evolve.

COVID-19 completely flipped the script. At various stages of this pandemic, up to 71 percent of people were working from home more frequently. While the duration of that work from home mandate might be short in the grand scheme of things, its impact will endure.

Not everyone will return to the office, by policy or by choice. Organizations are already downsizing their corporate real estate. They won’t be alone in their decision. Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced that all employees would have the option to continue working from home permanently. A Gartner survey also found that 74 percent of CFOs will shift at least five percent of their workforce to permanently remote positions.

Budgets will shift away from corporate hubs towards helping employees invest in home office set-ups—from desks to dual-monitors—especially because 50 percent of office workers do not feel properly equipped at home. 

Such change can be complex. It involves changing your culture to accommodate the new normal. It must also consider the psychological, physiological and social factors of transitioning people between physical and remote working environments. 

While most organizations have adapted well to the shift in working from home, they will nevertheless need to identify and eliminate potential obstacles for continued success. Core to this will be a code of conduct or consistent rules of etiquette to guide everything.

Introducing Etiquette

Based on my experience over the past few months, rules of etiquette will need to be addressed in terms of meeting format and length. In physical settings, workers reserve rooms for specific times. They create and share agendas along with supporting materials before meetings begin. Once in the meeting, there are often taboos related to checking email, browsing the web, or multitasking while others are speaking.

In the virtual world, many of those values seem to be disappearing. If remote work is to become a more permanent part of workplace strategies, companies must identify and implement policies for proper etiquette to keep meetings organized and on track.

I have personally found video meetings are far more tiresome than live ones. My theory is “Zoom fatigue” exists because most of us are accustomed to seeing everyone at once in physical rooms. We can take in their facial expressions and read their body language. But on video calls, we split our attention between individual images dozens or even hundreds of times an hour. Add in having to continuously “smile for the camera,” and the whole experience can become quite taxing.

On the other hand, I have also noticed that remote selling is a whole new discipline. For example, one of my recent customer video meetings was greeted with an announcement that all participants from the customer’s side would not be turning on their video. The team and I had to ‘pitch’ to an audience without being able to read facial expressions and other gestures. This makes it even more difficult to steer the conversation and adapt the messaging.

The shift toward working from home is accelerating because of COVID-19, as it should. But we will need to pause sometime soon, catch our breath, and start identifying ways of navigating our rapidly changing business environments. The workplace of the future depends on it.