In the span of a few months, the global pandemic has changed the way we work. Many employers that already had telework policies had to dust off and revise them to include broader employee populations. Outlier employers who did not have telework policies in place had to quickly create and implement policies that would actually be effective. Employers also had to simultaneously identify and define “nonessential” employees in order to comply with state and local stay-at-home directives.
What this pandemic has proven is that employers need a business continuity plan that allows the flexibility for the majority of staff to be telework-ready. There is no doubt that technology has played a significant role for employers in helping their employees telework and creating a work-from-anywhere environment.
Adapting to this new normal has been challenging for some organizations. To assist in this transition to a maximum or mandatory telework schedule, employers should review their business continuity plans, taking into account some of these guiding principles:
• Reaffirm that employees should practice some semblance of a work-life balance — even while working remotely from their homes.
• Emphasize that employees are not expected to be online and available after normal working hours. Employers should set critical business hours when employees are expected to be readily available for meetings and/or calls and manage meeting schedules during this time frame accordingly. This small step will help assist employees who have small children at home due to closures of schools and daycare facilities with planning their days, and also provide them with the flexibility to start their workdays earlier as appropriate.
• Encourage team bonding by promoting virtual “coffee chats” where staff can continue to feel engaged as if they were grabbing a cup of java in an office café.
• Host educational meetings to promote their employee assistance plans, which should include valuable resources related to coping mechanisms and managing stress during the mandatory telework period and any stay-at-home directives that follow.
The impact of the pandemic has also challenged employers to review how to efficiently and effectively manage their office space footprint while looking at ways to sublet, adjust sizes, restructure layouts or shrink as needed.
This prolonged teleworking period has certainly shifted prior thought patterns and proven that the old adage “out of sight, out of mind” no longer applies. Employees have shown that they can be trusted to complete their work assignments and do not actually need to be physically present in the office every day to be productive and effective in accomplishing their job duties and responsibilities.
While employers must now begin the task of defining and implementing office reopening guidelines utilizing both federal and local jurisdictions as a road map, they must not lose sight of what was learned over this prolonged period of time: that employees operated effectively and efficiently.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the elephant in the room: the potential use of metrics to identify how successful a telework program is. It should be noted that the use of such metrics is actually subjective because the responsibility to assure their staff members are productive and engaged lies with each individual manager, regardless of their physical location.
This pandemic has turned our daily routines upside down, but it has also made one thing extremely clear: The way we previously worked has and will forever remain changed. It is now time to redefine the future of how we work.
