If you’ve been wondering how best to adapt to the hybrid workplaces which certainly seem to be in all our futures, Daniel Freedman has some tips at RealClearMarkets:
- Increase the frequency of employee communications.
- Articulate a clear mission, reinforced through regular storytelling.
- Deliberately create social interactions online.
My own experience is that whether you’re productive working remotely largely depends on you. I’m actually more productive when I don’t go into the office or as now when I can’t go into the office (the office is in London). But I’ve had decades of experience with working from home. The experience of others may be different.
One of the things I wonder about is how managers, particularly top managers, are coping. My intuition is that bad managers don’t find the experience at all rewarding and, sadly, there are a lot of bad managers out there.
I enjoy working from home. I take a shower on my employer’s dime almost every day, and have taken multiple naps while on the clock. Yet I’m as productive as I ever was in the office, perhaps even a bit more. My employer is planning to have us go back, mainly because the top dogs want to see butts in chairs, which apparently equates to productivity.
That’s largely what I alluded to in the post although I think it goes a bit farther than that. What’s the good of having subordinates if they’re not subordinate?