A battle royale has emerged in workplaces in our post-COVID world. A title with a huge reward for the victor…welcome to the fight for the future of work.
[cue ring announcer voice]
In the red corner, are the co-located office traditionalists. Weighing in with decades of inbuilt expectation and a proven track record. The former champion ruled over the division for many years until suffering a heavy loss in 2020. But it returns to the ring to reclaim it’s mantle as the best way to work.
In the blue corner, the current champion, the hybrid work enthusiasts. Buoyed by a shock victory last year, the fast moving lightweight is up on it’s toes and looking to establish itself for many years to come.
Let’s get ready to rumble!!!
Where we’re at with Work From Anywhere.
Adopting a Work From Anywhere approach may sound a little daunting, especially if you’ve struggled with the move to remote work after the events of 2020. However, it is possible to get great (dare we say, incredible) results when embracing Work From Anywhere in the workplace.
If you’re up for the challenge, or are being thrown into it by necessity, we’re here to help. As a behaviour and motivation strategy company brimming with psychologists, behavioural strategists and employee experience experts, you could say we’re the perfect people to learn from.
Ready to make the Work From Anywhere approach ‘work’ in your workplace? Here are some of the benefits to bring to your leadership team.
Increased autonomy
One of the main benefits of adopting a Work From Anywhere approach is increased autonomy. How many times have you seen people complaining about micro-management on LinkedIn or Glassdoor? We can hand-on-heart say that one of the many things that detracts from performance and employee experience is a sense of micro-management and distrust.
When a Work From Anywhere approach is embraced, autonomy becomes the norm. Individuals are encouraged to seek out answers, solve problems and think outside of the box in a way they never have before. This can often result in increased performance, productivity and job satisfaction.
Opportunity for innovation
Adopting a Work From Anywhere approach often results in innovation, which is something just about every company on the planet claims to want more of. Innovation, creativity and ideation comes naturally to teams that embrace Work From Anywhere because of the dynamic nature of the approach.
Individuals and teams need to think on their feet to solve problems, come up with creative solutions and uncover new ways of doing things. This leads to innovative ideas across all areas of a business; from HR to project management all the way through to IT.
Innovation grows in leaps and bounds when Work From Anywhere is rolled out across an entire organisation.
Visibility across team projects
This one is controversial, but we’re going to call it now. Visibility across team projects can significantly increase when a Work From Anywhere approach is taken.
But, we know what you’re thinking. “When people are working remotely, how am I meant to know what they’re working on? I can’t keep track of it all!”.
While we understand that concern, and see its merit, we also know that there are a plethora of tools and approaches that when used in a Work From Anywhere context can actually provide far more visibility than when working co-located. Allow us to explain.
Work From Anywhere teams that use project management tools like Monday offer a detailed view of every task being completed and worked on across an organisation. Teams that take it a step further by calling out what they’re focusing on at the beginning of each work, and follow it up with #workshare updates in a social channel like Slack, are far more visible than co-located teams.
Taking this a step further, let’s address silos. Over the years we’ve heard countless leaders express their concerns around teams operating in silos; withholding information, missing opportunities for cross-team collaboration, and so on. In North America specifically, communication silos are said to cost 7 hours per week of productivity; totalling more than 350 hours per year. That’s a pretty shocking statistic, and one that we know Work From Anywhere can address.
Adaptive collaboration
How often do your teams collaborate? If you’re honest with yourself, it’s probably not as much as you’d like. There’s likely to be opportunities for innovation and information sharing that are being missed, simply due to behaviour (or a culture) that doesn’t support collaboration. Boom.
When moving to a Work From Anywhere approach, team members are often rotating between working from home and working from a shared office space. This rotation allows team members to interact with members of other departments that they may otherwise rarely get to speak with. This can lead to increased collaboration, as well as adaptive collaboration by way of utilising virtual collaboration tools like Miro.
With collaboration being one of the key challenges for teams everywhere according to our State of Remote Work Report 2020, we’d say that WFA offers an enticing solution.
Individualised routines for heightened performance
Flexible working, remote working or working from home. Whatever you choose to call it, when individuals are given the opportunity to manage their time in a way that best supports their work outputs, they thrive.
In our own team we’ve noticed a huge uptick in performance outcomes since embracing a Work From Anywhere approach. That isn’t to say we weren’t high performers co-located, we sure were, but there has been a noticeable difference in our team’s behaviours and approach to high performance periods (aka: when there’s a lot to get done).
Working From Anywhere allows individual employees the benefit of being able to create a workday routine that supports their lifestyle, health, and overall well being. At the end of the day, WFA can significantly improve the experience of work, and that’s something we think is worth fighting for.
Enhancement of face-to-face gatherings
Think back to a time when you caught up with a good friend that you hadn’t seen in a couple of months (or even years). The way the conversation flowed like you’d never been apart; the way you laughed and felt connected in that moment.
That’s what can happen when you embrace Work From Anywhere with your team, and you gather as a whole organisation face-to-face for the first time in months. This feeling of gratitude and sense of connection is enhanced when we work remotely and then come together – it’s in our biology.
So, what do you think? Would embracing a Work From Anywhere approach make sense for your organisation? If the benefits are currently outweighing the objections, we’d like to join you on the journey. Pick up a copy of our new book, Work From Anywhere today.
Send us an email or read some more of our Work From Anywhere tips. We’re here to help.
