Lot of people I knew over the years, looked down upon work from home. Being at work meant more engagement, interest, collaboration. So, why work from home?
Today we are redefining what collaboration means locked up in our homes. An estimated 16 million U.S. knowledge workers started working remotely due to Covid-19 as of March 27, 2020
The same group who once scorned the ability to work from home now talked about how surprised they were being able to work from their own home and numbers started trickling in of greater productivity, more efficiency and everyone happier because of finally being able to get rid of the commute, spend quality time with family and some even working on their newly found hobbies.
Ninety-four percent of 800 employers surveyed by Mercer, an HR and workplace benefits consulting firm, said that productivity was the same as or higher than it was before the pandemic, even with their employees working remotely
Has this era of pandemic broken the traditional idea of work and collaboration? Has this led to taking a modern approach of being able to collaborate remotely bringing in the flexibility of being able to work from anywhere globally. Has this opened up the global market for the talent pool? Does this encourage a lot more women to come back to work or continue with work?
Forbes mentioned “The fastest growth in remote work has been in computer-related occupations, with business, financial, and management occupations also experiencing rapid growth in teleworking”
I know this first hand, I have friends who have moved to other cities or travelled back to their home states rented apartments and are working from there for months now. All of them mostly working in IT. The Facebook groups of home stays are flourishing with a steady growth of members everyday which only can vouch for the fact that everyone is enjoying the newly found freedom of being able to connect remotely.
These changes have steadied few things:
- The market has changed for good- remote working is here to stay. With all myths of remote working being debunked, more and more companies are opening up to the option of continuing with remote work. It might be one of the positive changes left behind by this deadly pandemic.
- Improved communication skills will be required- flexibility and remote working will mean better and more communication skills to gap the loopholes created by not being able to meet face to face. Building teams and camaraderie over zoom calls might reveal new skill sets everyone needs to bridge the gap of real face to face conversations. Team connects will just not be for a stand ups or town halls, it can simply be a break with colleagues or used to welcome a new team member.
- Self-motivation is essential and so are the tools- working on your own schedule and on your own might also need more willpower and self-motivation to get things done on time. This is more challenging with kids at home for the longer run with online from home schools. To be able to get deep work done that require more attention might need setting up rules and boundaries even at home. Tools that allow team to collaborate and work together will likely be more in use.
So, does this mean more remote project management positions openings up? While sites like Upwork who have always flourished on remote work model has 1,223 Project Manager positions tagged and open to hire right now, Fiverr has project managers ready to set up collaboration software for teams amongst other things from Monday dot com to Trello.
Change at any level as it turns out is not easy and this concept of locked up collaboration seems to be just a start to slowly settle down as a mainstream way of working.
What do you think?
(Pic courtesy: Pexel)
