Lead in the New Era of Work

Advances in Technology and Communication and Experience gained during the Pandemic represent the greatest opportunity to improve Organizational Effectiveness and Employee Engagement in a century!

Redefine your Organization - Remote technology provides opportunities to streamline communication and capture and share organizational learning.

Some of the greatest leadership challenges are documentation, sharing and utilization of organizational knowledge and experience. Formal and informal face-to-face communication can be difficult to document and share. Critical learning is often lost. Remote work processes can often more easily and accurately document communications, actions and results while capturing and preserving lessons learned.

Many organizations depend on intermediate levels of leadership to manage goals, tasks and results. New tools and technologies supporting remote work can document, track and share project information removing layers and allowing leaders to focus on higher level strategic actions. Use this opportunity adjust your structure to increase the effectiveness of your organization.

Capture and integrate lessons learned while working remotely. Bring new ways of working back into the office (don’t revert to old ways). With over a year’s experience working remote, explore with your teams the lessons learned. Eg: what was the most effective collaboration experience you had, what was the least and explore. Team projects, ideation, coaching and mentorship have been some of the most effective remote contact opportunities thus far, but the potential is unlimited.

Communicate - Tell employees your plans

Only a third of companies have detailed back to work plan that are ready to be communicated. Employees don’t like uncertainty and a majority are concerned about work practices going forward. Even if your plans are not fixed, keep employees informed, be open and involve them in the process. Consider the impact of any changes.

Prepare Leaders - Remote and hybrid work require different leadership skills

Establish new methods of leadership training and development and new ways to evaluate leaders. Effective interpersonal and team skills in a remote environment are dramatically different than the face-to-face environment where most leaders’ careers were built. Be prepared to train, develop and coach leaders where much of the communication is remote. Consider doing remote training of leaders themselves to help demonstrate effective approaches. Tie performance metrics to leaders’ ability to engage remote and hybrid teams.

Prepare Employees

Fewer opportunities to interact in person mean those few interactions must be more productive and remote interactions more effective. Remote teamwork requires a new discipline and specific skills. Invest in resources to help employees be productive and comfortable. Remote workers are concerned about promotability vs their in-office counterparts. Provide opportunities for remote employees to interact with leadership and establish processes to ensure remote employees are considered equally for development and promotions

Carefully consider work schedules in hybrid and remote work structures Days and work hours can be flexed to better meet the lifestyles of employees and reduce office footprints to benefit both employees and employers. Consider common in-office work hours for specific teams. Remote work can be scheduled with a common core set of hours for collaboration and flexed hours for personal work.

.....More to come....