Back to work: The office will change forever
After over a month of lockdown and with the Prime Minister announcing we are “passed the peak” of the virus, the UK is starting to consider what comes next.
Understandably in such a complex situation, concrete details of phase two remain sparse. However, for many ministers, members of parliament, businesses and the public, the burning question is, “When can we get back to normal?”.
Whether keeping the local cafe afloat or visiting loved ones, a return to some semblance of normality, if and when it is safe to do so, is critical for many, both economically and socially.
Read more: Businesses begin long journey to a new normal
However, the pandemic has also revealed for vast swathes of the economy—those sectors which have been able to adjust to greater flexible and remote working—that the status-quo was less important than we first realised.
In recent weeks we have seen an unprecedented mobilisation of remote working. Business leaders and workers alike have sought not only to adapt to remote work but improve upon it. Not simply by switching to video calls and sending more emails, but creating an entire remote-first culture and embracing the tools that enable it.
As much as we desire to get back to business as usual, now is the time for businesses to think hard about what to take from this experience. Because, like the rest of the world, the UK economy faces serious challenges ahead. Learning the right lessons now, and creating a new normal in the way we work, will be essential to thriving in a post-Covid-19 world.
Challenging the status quo of work
Research suggests that fewer than 10% of people want life to return entirely to normal after pandemic.
With more free time, many are spending more time with their children, rediscovering a passion for reading, or running through the trials and tribulations of amateur baking. In short, people are discovering a new sense of work-life balance. Not only is this encouraging on a personal level, but in the long-term, greater work-life balance has been shown to have a positive effect on productivity and performance.
Of course, the shift to remote working does bring its own challenges. Alignment and transparency can become more difficult without a physical space to gather in. A video call doesn’t replace the ability to tap a colleague on the shoulder, or run a thought by a manager as you grab coffee.
This distance also makes maintaining and building a sense of culture harder. A shared purpose and attachment to the work that’s taking place, as well as meaningful professional relationships are all key to both workplace satisfaction and efficiency.
It can be tricky to recreate all of this with only a laptop for company. However, what many workplaces are now realising is that our technology choices are extremely important. It’s no longer simply about personal preferences and individual use. The apps and platforms we use have to function collectively and collaboratively, and as such have an exponential impact on entire organisations.
Learning to adapt
Email has been the de-facto form of business communication for decades. However, it works poorly for aligning teams. It offers a fragmented, limited view of information. Key people are easily missed from email chains, new joiners start from “inbox zero” and insights are quickly buried, lost or deleted.
These are serious issues when the workforce is in an office. When working remotely, with the added distance and reduced visibility, they are calamitous.
Teams instead need a solution that can offer a digital space where conversations, information and, importantly, the software they use, all comes together. The aim of workplace collaboration technology should be to create a shared sense of understanding around context, goals and priorities.
Covid-19 caught businesses unaware. They had to adapt quickly. However, the pace of change has also shown that large scale digital transformations to more effective tools aren’t always time or resource intensive.
For example, the London-listed investment firm Man Group is centuries old, yet moved with impressive agility in response to the pandemic, shifting its 1,400-member workforce across 19 offices from Beijing to Boston swiftly and securely to Slack’s Enterprise Grid in under two weeks.
A move to communication channels, which can be created for any project or task and provides a single place for teams to share messages, tools and files, enabled Man Group to break down barriers between teams and facilitate cross-department conversations. Colleagues were able to answer questions they may have previously never seen, and help one another adapt to remote work.
Meanwhile, transparent access to leadership through a company-wide channel quickly led to UK teams being given the all-clear by the CEO to take time off to volunteer for the NHS, as he was able to see and instantly green-light a question posed by employees.
This is just one example, but across the world countless businesses are changing the way they work and discovering smarter, more productive workflows and improved company culture as they do so.
Preparing for the next phase
Organisations face substantial challenges ahead. There’s no denying that the public and economy are hurting, and a desire to return to how things were is natural.
It’s important to remember, though, that as we enter the second phase of the response to coronavirus, we leave the first. What that means is progress. Though there are more to come, some of the greatest challenges in living memory have been faced, and tackled.
As we look to the future we need to bear those successes and struggles in mind. Returning to a post-Covid-19 world with a pre-Covid-19 approach to work will benefit no one.
For businesses, the best weapon available for the next phase is the intelligence we have gathered so far. And, used correctly, this could well set us up for a better way to work than we ever had before.