No one is an island, notes to new normal

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main"

With those words John Donne is starting his poem in the winter of 1625, which words are starting to resonate more and more to each one of us. As the Digitization took over, as the Rise of the remote work made the life of every one of us much more focused over what we want to achieve and what are our beliefs.

The remote work till very recent was, a good perk which some companies where providing their employees with. However, with the pandemic isolation it become a standard way of working, which was unfortunately enforced in pretty small period of time.

This enforcement had a massive affect over both the business and the personal life of each one of us.

 Most business were not ready for their employees to start working remotely, this made quite a mess in the way how they communicate, delegate ownership and even how they split the daily tasks.

Which leaded to a time where the business is not only uncertain because of the state of the economy, but also of the way how it is operating.

I was fortunate enough to see some success stories over this transition, happened around me, and I would like to share with you what where their main points, around which they focus the transition. 

Forget about Culture Enforcement 

The big difference between in office employee and one which is remote is the focus, the office person Is one that is feeling the company in different ways, he can see on every wall hanging pictures of the company branding, big client logos, slogans, there are play rooms (in most of the offices) where he can chill out, with different toys provided from the company.

In his day to day work he is meeting most of the senior management team and he can feel the company’s heartbeat he can see how it is progressing and he can easily align to it.

For the remote worker however all of those things are other way around, he is working from places of his choice (sometimes from home, coworking spaces, beach and etc.), chilling out in playgrounds that he likes and the people that he meets are not only colleagues but people who he things is worth spending time.

The remote worker is much more focused over his personal beliefs and ideas, which means that the company can no longer enforce its cultural values and beliefs, the company cannot say to the remote worker “This is the way how we should operate”.

Instead of that the company should take a bit more time to understand the person and to give him personalized experience on company’s culture, processes and position.

Only in this way employee can feel the company presence, culture and how he could make a positive impact over it.

Leave them to lead

One of the biggest benefits of remote working is that most of the employees are able to see them in much different way, as in order to be successful remote worker you should have good time management, good way of prioritizing tasks and pretty good knowledge over the big picture.

That’s why only thing that the micromanaging could do Is to harm the relationship with the remote worker. We should give them more power, more control over the situation, a chance to see the vision of the product in his own way. He should be part of the planning, not only for the specific milestones but for overall picture. In this way he will be able to adjust, focus and create some common ground.

With this common ground he will be able to create micro list of tasks and priorities in order to decide which is best to work on.

Micro teams are the way

When all of the employees were gathered in the same office, it was easy to manage a team, you have your team leads, you have the structure properly set, anyone could see who and where are the managers, leaders and owners.

This is giving the feeling of safeness, that if something messes up, it will be easy to get out of the situation by contacting the proper persons. On other hand this same safeness is stopping a lot of employee from doing innovations. Because in order an employee to be innovative he should stop worries about company rules, strategies and chain of responsibility.

That’s why most of the innovative employees are the ones which are working remotely, those type of employees are having their own custom work enviorment arranged and customized by them, which is giving them an enough confidence to not apply company rules but to align to them,

Such employees are not only the most innovative but also are most likely to contact their leaders if something goes wrong and because of the distance, they are more likely to contact others when they need additional assistance.

However, such employees are not working well in big teams, because in big teams the focus and the communications are always an issue, which are the building blocks for each remote work.

That’s why if company wants to be successful with their remote workers the company should split such teams into smaller more focused ones.

Each of those micro teams should have their micro goals, micro milestones and tasks. In this way the leader of the micro team can much easily have visibility of the workflow and to be much more personally involved and flexible when challenge arises.

The Freedom is the best perk

There is no office in the earth which can, make the employee feel like home, or to feel like he is in charge.

As the office culture grows, we can easily see that with the all of the perks, all of the extra stuffs in the office for which companies are investing enormous amount of money, are not having, a lot of effect in the employee culture and how the employee are feeling.

The only thing that each one of them is wanting is freedom, freedom to be able to manage their time as much as possible, give the employees freedom and you will see their how commitments are going to arise.

Make the office a perk

With the Age of digitization, we no longer need for many of the positions to work on specific location or in specific office and with the rise of remote work especially after COVID-19 It is much better for the companies to make the office as a perk, advertise to them what the office is, advertise all of the good stuffs which they could get there. Let them choose it, rather than forcing them to go in it. 

Help them be social

The isolation had a lot of affect over not only day to day life but also over our mental health, depressions are on the rise. Help your employees, not only by arranging social meetups but help them join the local communities. Help them to connect more with the other team mates, let the company pay for membership for the business specific community in which the employee is interested.

The remote work is not something which will come and go, it is going to stay and in future will be one of the most common way for the employees to work. Which is pretty natural, everyone wants their own custom experience, based on their beliefs. The only thing that we can do is to help them get it.