Thriving in the 2020 Workplace: Is It Possible While Working Remotely?

As we continue to explore the impact of 2020 on our work life, we cannot discuss thriving in the current work landscape without examining the impact of remote working as part of a dispersed workforce.

After about a decade of working remotely, my initial reaction to the shift to almost everyone working remotely was one of excitement and optimism. I must admit though, while I thought I was a pro at this workstyle, I discovered that working remotely during COVID kicked my ass (initially). ?? Thankfully, by leaning into my positive psychology training, I was able to work through it and I am excited to share some of my strategies in hope that they will help you as well.

First, I would like to turn to a couple of true experts in this matter so you can benefit from their knowledge.

“A remote work environment, like any, comes with both benefits and drawbacks. Envision2bWell is, and always has been, an entirely virtual company. I know first-hand how very possible it is to thrive in this type of environment as long as you attend to certain fundamentals.”

Margye Solomon, VP Business & MWBE Solutions at Envision2bWell

Envision2bWell’s technology, integration, and engagement deliver a best-in-class wellness solution to improve the overall health of individuals and companies. I love their mission to empower, enable, and inspire health and wellness for human-kind. Therefore, I was incredibly grateful when Margye so kindly shared three of those fundamentals:

Care - both self-care and care for others. This can take many different forms but includes things like mindfulness, nature walks, and respect for your co-worker’s self-care needs.

Communication - I cannot stress enough how vital this is. The communication I’m referring to here goes far beyond agenda-related communication like scheduled meetings and quick follow-up emails and chats. It’s about open, creative ‘water-cooler’ discussions and friendly talks with colleagues and neighbors. Without these, innovation is stifled, collaboration becomes non-existent, and isolation begins to overwhelm.

Consistency - Virtual work has a tendency to take over unless you set up a consistent schedule. Every day I begin and end my workday at the same time. Of course, there are exceptions, but most of the time I maintain that consistency. When I’m ‘at work’, I treat it as if I was in an office and I limit distractions. When work is done, I shut everything off and don’t plug in again until the next workday.”

The second expert I turned to also mentioned the importance of a strong foundation.

"The beauty of a fully remote workforce is that you get to fill your roles with extremely high-performing people in the top percentile of talent from anywhere in the world. And even more, they have the freedom to design the lives that fulfil them. Your team may be dispersed, but they’re truly an A team, as long as they employ a few crucial elements.”

Anna Williams, Founder & CEO of CULTURE

CULTURE helps distributed teams improve retention, engagement, and diversity with their proven, human-led solution. I am proud to serve on CULTURE’s advisory board and find their mission inspiring. Here are the profound, yet often overlooked, leadership-focused foundational elements that Anna shared:

Accountability - The flat, non-hierarchical organization has had its day. As a leader in a remote workforce, you need everyone to be accountable and crystal clear where the buck stops for every task, every project, every deliverable. But you also need to serve your team. Give them facetime often to unblock and facilitate their work, measure their output through mutually agreed, achievable-but-ambitious OKRs (objectives and key results), and then get out of their way. That measurement is key for assertive communication around how people are performing. Combine that with a servant leadership approach, and you create a culture where the team is accountable for their output, and the leader is accountable to the team. This limits uncertainty, motivates performance, and drives loyalty and development. 

Diversity of Thought - Linking financial out-performance to diversity is not new. McKinsey & Co has updated their iconic 2015 study for 2020 and found that diverse teams are between 25% - 36% more likely to make above-average profits. Combined with a lower real estate spend due to increased remote working, this can have a real impact on a company’s balance sheet -- at a time when competitors are struggling. When your team is remote, there is no good reason not to take advantage of that profit bump. And top talent expects it. When you can hire from everywhere, our CULTURE Executive Search & Alignment team makes finding talented, diverse, senior candidates easy. The key to success is keeping them together and productive, as diversity means inevitable debate and disagreement. When managed skillfully with high Emotional Quotient approaches, this means more innovation (no groupthink), a great culture and more money for everyone. Managed poorly, you have conflict and a high turnover of staff. This is a huge part of why I founded CULTURE. Our EQ Engineers? show teams how to achieve that diversity profit-and-innovation uplift. The innovative ideas from your diverse team will allow you to better compete in the current environment.

High EQ Scores - However, for accountability and diversity of thought to work, you need leaders and a team with high individual Emotional Quotient. Neuroscience shows that like IQ, emotional intelligence is fluid and can be trained. What has often been referred to as "soft skills", sometimes only helps executives appear to care about the motivations of others. Improving EQ actually changes the way we think about relating to others and increases empathy. CULTURE EQ Engineers? train managers to have difficult conversations, hold people accountable, and manage diverse teams for outperformance. CULTURE Architects? can use Cognitive Linguistics & Behavioral Intelligence algorithms to test employees (when we're EQ Engineering) and Senior candidates (for our Exec Search teams). Emotional Quotient is the glue that holds diverse, remote, and accountable teams together and creates an environment where they can outperform in the new business world.

Now that we have heard from the experts, allow me to share my perspective. As companies are examining the basics needed to allow their remote workers to be successful, they sometimes over-focus on the side of technical enablement (online collaboration tools and home office equipment/set up). While these are undoubtedly important, when I leaned on positive psychology to thrive while working remotely, I stopped to consider the whole person perspective. Engaging aspects that relate to our mind, body, and spirit allow us to better thrive in today’s remote work environment.

Mind - consider what you need to be productive and motivated. Yes, having a proper set up does help, however, we need to remember to include empowering mental triggers in our work environment. This is especially important if you do not have a designated home office. Whether you have a small desk in your bedroom or are using your kitchen counter as your designated workspace, make sure to include items in your line of sight that motivate you. Items like an award you received for exceptional performance or a photo of your family serve as powerful mental triggers to subconsciously remind you of your abilities, successes, and your personal “WHY” for working as hard as you do. There are many other ways we can focus our mind to improve our productivity as well. Although written pre-COVID, this Entrepreneur article by Deep Patel provides 18 proven (and still valid) ways to stay focused.  

Body - consider what you need to be comfortable and make room for self-care. Many companies provide ergonomic assessment to make sure their employees are not physically harming themselves while working. Even OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) provides an Ergonomic Assessment Checklist. While these assessments are a great place to start, as individuals we have our own physical sense of comfort that sets us up to do our best work. Experiment with different locations to discover which are most comfortable for you. Also, and more importantly, remember to engage your body in self-care activities. If you are not taking care of yourself, you cannot do your best work. Whether it is taking a morning hike, spending a few minutes doing basic yoga poses, or getting a monthly massage, exploring different self-care rituals can certainly help you thrive.

Spirit - consider what you need to be connected and enable collaboration. Both experts touched on the importance of “connection” as part of their recommendations and I could not agree more. As human beings we need a sense of connection to thrive and this is no less effective in our work life. During my decade of working remotely, online collaboration tools’ availability has increased (check out this ZDNet article on some of the latest), much to my delight. I would argue that seeing a coworkers status “go green” because they are available on TEAMS (or other collaboration tool), is almost as exciting as seeing a friendly co-worker by the water cooler or in the break room -- and just as efficient for real-time collaboration. Additionally, despite Zoom fatigue, I always find virtual individual coffee breaks or team happy hours to be a great way to stay authentically connected with co-workers.

So, to sum up, while it is important to consider the practical side of working remotely, I’d argue that it’s just as important, if not more important, to consider the human thriving side of the equation. One last thought, please remember to be generous with praise. Whether as a leader to your team members or as an individual to your co-workers, appreciation goes a long way in recharging our batteries and helping us thrive, especially in a disconnected remote workplace. But do not take my word for it…

“I have always believed tha the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praised.”

Thank you, Sir Richard Branson for these wise words.

And thank YOU for taking the time today to learn more about thriving in a remote work environment. I hope you have found the information in this article useful. Let us continue the conversation…please leave a comment below and share: How do you thrive in your current remote work environment?

Until next week’s article in the Thriving in the 2020 Workplace series…be well and thrive!

Previous article in this series: How Do You Show Up Before Showing Up?