People Are Claiming that the Future of Work is Messy: Here’s How to Avoid It
We had no idea that the future of work would get here so quickly until the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated corporate America’s timeline. The future of work remains a puzzling picture to many business leaders, and employees are not ready to give up the comfort of leaving their homes.
With most of the workforce leaning towards remote work and business leaders requesting their staff to head back to the office full-time, hybrid work may be the ultimate solution to ensuring both parties are satisfied.
Here’s how to ensure that you and your team stay ahead, whether that’s working remotely, in the office, or adopting a hybrid solution:
- Envision your team members’ success.
- Develop clear guidelines and expectations while implementing plans.
- Thoroughly assess your team’s performance.
- Promote a mentally healthy work environment.
Envision your team members’ success.
According to Mercer, employers must enable a strong foundation for flexible working through policy and governance and leader and manager effectiveness. They also need to rethink people programs like talent acquisition and onboarding, which were not designed around a remote workforce in most organizations.
Additionally, their senior consultant, Lauren Mason, stated, “They should consider how their flexible work strategy will impact where they source talent, or [how they manage] compensation, as people move to lower-cost labor markets. Another category is infrastructure, with key considerations around the workplace—the office, hubs, remote setup, and technology and security considerations. There are many implications as companies seek to execute more permanent flexibility, and organizations will need to chart a path forward to ensure they achieve their intended objectives for flexible working.”
Develop clear guidelines and expectations while implementing plans.
Efficient employees want to maximize their time and ensure their timeline deliverables remain on track and workflows are productive.
Here are a few best practices when directing a team:
- Ask, don’t command.
- Emphasize what to do and not what to avoid.
- Explain why the project’s initiatives are essential to understand why the work they’re doing is necessary.
- Give your employees freedom of action, especially when they are competent and tend to overperform. They may be able to contribute new ideas that will benefit the team in the long run.
- Schedule biweekly team debriefs to check in on progress.
Managing distributed team members can be challenging when running a team, especially when you don’t have a dependable communication solution.
Through SmartChoice’s VoIP phone system, you can hold conference calls, send messages to team members with inquiries, and, better yet, monitor productivity from one portal.
Suppose your enterprise requires a video conferencing solution to pair with your existing business phone numbers. In that case, you can trust SmartChoice’s ability to integrate Microsoft Teams into your collaboration ecosystem – it is compatible, easy to use, and won’t require you to purchase any additional hardware.
Thoroughly assess your team’s performance
The good thing about a hybrid work environment is its ability to give employees the option to choose to work from home or in the office. While many prefer to work from home, a recent study by Forbes claims that 90% of Gen-Z workers desire and value a human connection when it comes to their at-work communication.
Either way, the high-performing employees will make it a point to be productive and meet deadlines regardless of their location. This enables supervisors the ability to track progress and see which areas of the department need more attention, allowing them to base performance on deliverables and achieved deadlines, rather than presence.
By doing this, they can measure outputs, make room for new talent, and develop new processes that contribute to a successful team.
SmartChoice is a technology company based out of New York City with a unique portfolio of solutions including UCAAS, collaboration, software and analytics, dedicated contact centers, security, infrastructure, and managed connectivity. Through its unsurpassed white-glove service and 24x7x365 U.S. based support, it has grown to become one of the largest award-winning PBX/SIP providers in North America.
