3 COVID-19 employee productivity revelations that companies should embrace.
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash
In the spring of 2020, millions of employees who worked for companies, corporations, institutions and schools were sent home to conduct their workday…as an urgent response to the global COVID-19 pandemic spread its influence. Whether senior management and board members liked it or not, the world was now working remotely. I remember feeling unsure, excited, unprepared and concerned (all jumbled together) as COVID-19 protocol mandated that I work from home ‘until further notice’. As I have the breathing room to reflect on the past nine months…I do feel that companies were shown some real positives regarding the behaviour of employees working outside of ‘office space’.
Working From Home is ok
There has always been a sort of corporate mistrust surrounding employees who were working outside of the office…employees that managers and bosses could not ‘keep an eye on’. This mindset of working at home during office hours was seen as taboo: an initiative that only the brave, innovative companies would even consider. In fact, the traditional guidelines attached to administrative management and leadership were almost solely ‘in-person’ directives.
Then the global coronavirus pandemic hit the workplace unexpectedly in the spring of 2020. All of a sudden, the majority of the professional world was sent home…indefinitely. I remember clearly the day we were told to work 100% from home until further notice. I was NOT prepared for this. My online/virtual skill set was not a strength for me. I have always been a ‘face-to-face’ communicator, who could flow off a PowerPoint slide presentation if necessary. I had real difficulties with the (often frustrating) work-from-home learning curve:
Needing to use multiple monitors (screens) to work efficiently
Converting meeting e-invites into functional Meet, Skype, Zoom or Teams sessions.
Using the cyber ‘hand-up’ icon to add to the meeting conversation
Using the chat thread as a form of side conversation and information transmission
Having virtual meetings scheduled back-to-back daily as there was no need for considering physical movement from one meeting to the next
Remaining focused on your present virtual meeting while children were ‘learning from home’, Amazon packages were being dropped off, snack food was always just a kitchen away and a fresh load of wash had to be put in the dryer. Sadly, I could attend to all of these distractions by just turning off my virtual camera and listening to the meeting flow.
The revelation for the corporate world is that working from home (under newly established ‘norms’) was not as painful as they thought prior to the COVID-19 restrictions. Employees eventually got the tech and organizational pieces that they needed to set up their home offices. Employees were attending all scheduled meetings and learning how to navigate and contribute. Employees were completing work tasks at an even higher rate than their in-office productivity level. In short, working from home was not the institutional demon that senior management had imagined for many years. I am presently on a blended work schedule where I work from home two days a week, in the office for three…and I love it!
Employee wellness and corporate compassion
The global focus on self-care, collective mask-wearing/social distancing and general ‘wellness’ has been an unexpected breath of fresh air for the corporate world. Bill collectors, landlords, the court system and internet provider companies were forced to have extended patience and compassion for the public they serve. Even if you had a bill overdue or unpaid rent, there was a politically correct understanding that folks were already in code red. COVID-19 has allowed those who felt the most vulnerable in society, some leeway from the mental tension of everyday life. This sentiment definitely seeped into the relationship companies had with their employees.
The amount of directives and communications sent out to employees in the name of ‘taking care of themselves’ has increased since we were all sent home during the initial coronavirus pandemic scare. Let me say that this compassionate approach felt great! #employeewellness became a regularly used term. The digital giant Telus acknowledged this emerging mindset on their employee health webpage:
“COVID-19 has forced people to change many of their behaviors in a dramatic way. With physical distancing protocols in place, working from home has become the new temporary normal as team collaboration, meetings, and conferences take on virtual form. In moments of uncertainty and concern, Canadian employers have been called upon to navigate business decisions with thoughtful, people-first responses”
Bravo. Making a concerted effort to make employees feel cared for is something that companies should continue as we slowly create a new workplace normal. Happy employees are productive workers.
Digital literacy for all
We often learn lessons from tough times. My greatest learning from the COVID-19 work-from-home experience was how low my digital literacy level was. As I stated earlier, my professional strengths have been built on how well I relate to people face-to-face. I was unaware of how weak my technology game was…and the gaps my limited digital literacy created in the modern-day workplace.
As I got deeper into working from home, virtually, I realized more every day that I needed professional development in areas like:
Working collaboratively on shared documents (clouds, sharing docs, live editing & comments, privacy tools).
Utilizing more of the productivity apps connected to my approved corporate online workspace (ie. G-suite for Google).
Presenting information in a virtual meeting and facilitating feedback and conversation from colleagues.
Ensuring that my audio and video equipment was functioning at a level that allowed all meeting participants to see and hear me.
Scott Clark writes in a cmswire.com piece on the modern virtual work reality, “By now, we can all agree that digital literacy is vital in today’s workplace. The ability to use digital technologies to solve problems, create information, or to locate, access, and communicate that information to other employees, is going to define the productivity and success of employees and businesses. Improving digital literacy in your workplace means that every employee will meet a basic standard of technical knowledge and skills.”
So as we move forward into this overstated ‘new normal’, my hope is that the leaders from the private and public sector take a look back at what happened to our 9-to-5, Monday to Friday work week and extract the most positive aspects from the muck of the unexpected worldwide disruptor called coronavirus. Thousand of people have died, billions of dollars have been lost…but our most important task presently is to reflect and prepare.
Working from home is a legitimate option in today's workplace, caring authentically for your employees is the foundation of productivity, and our collective ability to navigate a digital present and future is essential. The philosophical thinker and writer Eckhart Tolle capture the most productive way through this COVID-19 situation in his book Stillness Speaks, “A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware.” Here’s to a new phoenix-like workplace reality that is less focused on the end product (corporate profit) and more aware of the daily journey (employee support).