Part One of a Series
Recently, a senior executive I greatly admire admitted that she is challenged with her company’s Work From Anywhere policy.
“How do I know they’re doing what they’re supposed to and not taking advantage of being away from an office environment?” She was worried. “Plus, what about the team dynamic, and my management meeting cadence?”
Her fears were a mix of rational and emotional, and I’ve heard them echoed across the industry.
Without question, the WFA model offers countless benefits to companies and their staff. However, her concerns persist regarding how WFA affects their roles including: problem-solving; knowledge sharing; socialization; camaraderie; and performance evaluation and compensation.
Communication, brainstorming and problem-solving.
No doubt that workers who are distributed across wide geographic areas & multiple time zones, finding a way to create more business hour overlaps will result in your teams creating more unplanned synchronous calls.
I would also suggest introducing more shared document platforms, whether a Slack channel, an intra company portal or shared Google document.
Questions can be asked. Content edited and responses are easily updated and tracked when the next team member logs into the document.
Don’t be surprised when employees share early-stage ideas, plans, and documents and increase their intercommunication levels by inviting feedback and edits.
The pressure to present finished or ‘polished’ materials decreases as collaboration increases. Increased productivity is also a nice benefit as well.
It’s called ‘blameless problem solving’ and it’s incredibly beneficial.
As younger employees join the workforce, they’re incredibly familiar with communicating via text or written channels so they can adapt to whatever happens to be the company platform.
Watch my next post for PART 2 of this WFA topic.
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