Most of us have spent the majority of 2020 working from home now, and there’s nothing to suggest that the remaining months of the year will see a significant change.
There are at least two good reasons for this. Keeping your workers safe should be the number-one priority for businesses, even if that means putting up with potential short-term deficits in productivity or motivation. The other is that most people are now used to working from home and many are actually enjoying it more, and even doing quite than when they were in an office.
Many, but not all. In fact, working from home is still not a natural thing for a large proportion of the workforce, and there’s a difference between getting used to a temporary arrangement and adapting to it in the long run. Those who transitioned from an office to a virtual-only environment will have seen clear individual differences in people’s ability to adapt to the office-less age. Some are still struggling.
Among the obvious barriers to working from home include having to balance parenting or other family responsibilities (working from home is generally easier if you are single and have no dependents), lacking a comfortable setup (e.g., fast and reliable Wi-Fi, space, silence, etc.), and being naturally sociable and gregarious (the more extroverted you are, the more lonely you will feel working from home).
The good news is that you can make it a bit easier for others to work from home, even when they are not naturally prewired for it. Try following these two recommendations.
UNDERSTAND PEOPLE’S PREFERENCES
We often talk about working from home as if it were a single, unitary activity. However, there are as many individual preferences and approaches to working at home as there are to working in an office, so your starting point should be to comprehend people's privacy and tendencies. This is harder to do when you can’t see people in person, not least because you must navigate the delicate balance between knowing about their arrangements—which will inevitably include information about their private life—and respecting their privacy.
You can still do this by focusing on work-related matters, allowing your colleagues to disclose as much personal information as they want. So, for example, you can ask them how they prefer to connect (e.g., video calls, email, WhatsApp, messages, or the humble phone call), when (e.g., what time of the day/week/month, how often, how spontaneously versus planned in advance, and for how long), why (e.g., with or without formal agenda, to catch up, to work on specific projects/tasks, or simply to socialize or gossip), and whether they welcome informal contact (e.g., Zoom drinks, group meetings, book clubs, etc.).
BE KIND AND CARING
Empathy goes a long way. Even before the pandemic, the business world woke up to the realization that empathy matters, especially for leadership. The global health crisis has worsen it. There has never been a better time to show your kindness to others, even if you have to do it over Zoom. Digital empathy can be clumsy and awkward, but it is still welcome by others. When your day is packed with virtual meetings, and your life is optimized for higher efficiency and productivity, life can become pretty soulless.
Even if you didn’t have a close connection with your colleagues when you were working together in person, it’s never too late to change. Ask people how they are feeling, how they are doing, and how they are managing this extended period of resilient adaptation. Above all, offer your help and support.
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