Building a great WFH strategy

Employees are pretty much wondering whether this is what they signed up for, and yes the confusion is pretty relatable among most employees. Whether it is the employees from Airbnb, Twitter, Apple, Google to many other companies. Technically, WFH is possible. All you have to do is to grab your laptop and sit on your kitchen table with a plate of pancakes and coffee. Sounds fun, eh?

Remote collaboration without any social time with co-workers isn’t working for everyone.

There are many elements that go into creating an effective work-from-home (WFH) strategy, apart from the necessary hardware and collaboration tools, enabling a sustainable remote working environment is essential.

Let's all hope for the best, but who knows, we may never get to work with our team and bring back those happy hours, but there are things leaders can initiate without waiting no more to make sure their internal culture stays intact for the long haul.

The reality is that for many companies, their employees will be working from home for a really long time. Even though there is a possibility to start working at the office, it won’t be the same; many of those same employees will demand more flexible work environments because they’ve proven they can be just as effective. Leaders must implement long-term strategies in order to attract and retain top talent. Not just Band-Aid solutions—to keep workers engaged and motivated while working from home.

Here are few elements to make the true culture shift to an easy managed, supportive, and effective WFH culture:

Think twice, your actions are being watched

Microsoft recently released data that shows their employees have been working an average of four additional hours per week during the pandemic as they are working from home. As a leader, you are setting examples to other staff members by the work that you do. Let's think twice before we start responding to emails at 11 p.m. because, there is a chance of more inexperienced employees who will tend to assume they need to be working at all hours, which can foster an unsustainable, always-on working lifestyle. This could be the start of the burnout!

In a thoughtful working environment, you are online when it makes the most sense for you, which may not be the traditional 8 to 5. However, communicating and providing transparency around when that is and why your schedule is set up that way is what creates the balance of shared and met expectations. When talking about tasks, start to shift your language from a discussion of time spent to a focus on the work itself and when it will get completed.

Connect with your employees emotionally

Start prioritizing providing training that better supports an employee’s “whole person.” Meditation is a good choice and also resiliency education which could be especially beneficial in addition to the traditional skill-based training. Since, our physical and mental work environments have changed these past few months, the way you train your employees–for their individual situations and in the context of their teams–should also change. Start prioritizing providing training that better supports an employee’s “whole person.” Meditation is a good choice and also resiliency education which could be especially beneficial in addition to the traditional skill-based training.

Empowering and encourage your employees to make them feel cared. Be curious, ask questions about others’ work, and seek out stretch opportunities! Leaders can do their part by conducting regular conversations on goals and professional ambitions, then finding ways to actively provide those opportunities.

Have more happy hours

Create more happy hour meetings to add moments of connection that can will help the employees to at least get some sort of the lunch-room moments back. Make better use of the technology you have available by adding polls to your Zoom calls for virtual trivia nights. Conduct musical performances and upgrade the whole happy hour game.

The current WFH environment focuses a lot on what we lose when we’re not in person, but make sure to look for and capitalize on those methods of connection—the unintended upsides of remote work—to actively engage your employees.

Invest and retain your employees

Creating this type of effective working from home environments takes time and it takes money. Take some time and sit down to truly think about what a supportive remote culture looks like for your employees—including how it’s built, rolled out, and championed by leadership. This will save you both time and money in the long run in the form of higher employee satisfaction and retention rates.

Employees who understand and recognize the company’s support of their whole person will less likely turn to burn out and look for opportunities elsewhere. The creation of this sustainable WFH environment is not just something to think about, but its a true investment in your employees.

Putting on some time to craft a WFH strategy is going to save time on new hire processes and reduced expenses for things such as physical office space.

We're all waiting till the doors open for us to go to work, just like old times. Even then, employees will continue to have the chance to design their work in a way that works for them.