Working From Home – A CEO’s Insights

In my last blog series titled 'My Journey to Seera' I reflected on some of the tactics Readify used in our early days to attract and retain elite consulting talent.  One of these was the option to work flexibly, including working from home.   

With Coronavirus having now forced many businesses into working from home arrangements, this probably doesn't sound so revolutionary as it once did.  But back in 2003 it was definitely cutting edge from both a cultural and technology perspective.  I also recall a corresponding increase in the size of extended Readify family, but I’m sure that was just coincidental 😊.

At the same time, I recall several conversations with fellow industry CEO's where they expressed their utter shock that we would place so much trust in our workers 'doing the right thing'.  As I'm sure many fellow CEO's and people leaders are wrestling with the same concerns today, I thought I would share some of my learnings from many years of leading businesses who work flexibly.

The New Norm

Firstly, I believe working flexibly, at least for part of the working week, will remain the 'new norm', long after COVID-19, and rightfully so.  This is because, done properly, it delivers significant long-term benefits employers, employees, and society.  For the employee, this allows them to self-manage their workday, accommodating external demands from family and personal life whilst still meeting their working hours commitment.  Employers are seeing an important uptick in employee satisfaction from this new flexibility, not to mention the possibility of downsizing their expensive physical office footprint.  And for society more broadly the lessening of demand on transport infrastructure is a major win for our increasingly congested cities.

However, working remotely and flexibly comes with additional regulatory, management, and technical challenges that shouldn't be underestimated or ignored.  Unlike the concerns of my peers mentioned early, very few of these considerations are actually to do with staff productivity or 'doing the right thing'.  In fact, I've experienced very few such issues over the years and I've also found that these arrangements become largely self-policing with staff, wanting to protect the benefits of working flexibly, tend to be the first to call out any suspected abuse of the privilege.  Obviously each workplace will be different and appropriate management should always be applied, but this isn't the biggest iceberg you need to watch out for.

The Productivity Dilemma

Somewhat paradoxically, the first consideration to watch for is 'over-working'.  Whilst we all like to get maximum return for our wages paid, many staff have difficulty turning off when they have access to their workplace 24/7.  This can lead to fatigue, disillusionment, and other serious mental and physical wellbeing issues.  But how to protect against this given the technical difficulties and privacy sensitivities of monitoring remote home networks and environments?

Whilst most staff will accept the need for adequate home network cyber security while accessing corporate systems or handling sensitive data, 'sniffing' a home network for traffic flows, similar to how you might monitor your office network, is generally considered in appropriate no matter how well intended.

I've found that simpler solutions for measuring productivity work just as well.  For example, monitoring the amount and timing of emails and chat traffic via your corporate platforms can provide pretty detailed insights into your workers' productivity and hours, without additional network intervention.  Not only will this provide sufficient data to identify ‘over work’ concerns, I’m sure you’ll also gain considerable peace of mind from your overall productivity statistics, recognising that, overall, staff are more productive when given the choice of when and where they work.

I vividly recall reviewing a graph of email numbers between staff members which, between 10:00am and 3:30pm followed a fairly typical curve that you would expect from 100% office based staff.  And whilst traffic definitely reduced between 3:30pm and 7:30pm, obviously accounting for school runs, family meals, and relaxation, it then roared back to life, hitting daily peaks after 8pm and stayed very active until well after midnight.  Now granted we are talking about software developers who, by their own admission, keep somewhat strange hours.  However, overall, we were definitely the beneficiary of a significant productivity gain, which I’m sure you will find as well.

Building Engagement

The second important thing to monitor is engagement.  Although somewhat more subjective than outright productivity, I highly recommend monitoring that everyone has logged onto the corporate systems by a reasonable hour each day, and that they are attending the majority of scheduled one on one and team calls.  Again, this isn't to impose Big Brother type monitoring, rather recognising that late log-ins or meeting no-shows may indicate a reduced ability to work due to wellbeing or burnout issues.  Likewise, not turning on your camera during VCs, particularly when expected to do so, can also indicate wellbeing issues or some other levels of disengagement with their workplace.

And it is critical that this engagement monitoring be maintained, no matter what the other competing priorities, as potentially dire consequences may result.  I can attest for this first hand where on one occasion, with the best intentions in the world, we didn't notice an individual's absence for three days while they were suffering a significant mental illness episode.  Clearly this wasn't good enough on our behalf and is why I’ve always tried to educate others as to the pro’s and con’s of working from home arrangements.

A Guide to Assist

Consistent with this, Seera has just released a Working from Home - Compliance Self Assessment’ survey resource, including a section on physical and mental wellbeing.  Compiled based on the best practice guidance from leading authorities on Work Health and Safety, this is a must for managing your Working From Home compliance obligations.  We offer this self assessment as a free PDF download, as well as an advanced online solution incorporating automated workflows and management reporting.

While none of these tips and practices are fool proof, and appropriate management training and support must be provided, I hope these insights and resources help make this generational change in working arrangements a successful one for your business.  

If you are a leader and have any other advice on how to best manage teams working from home I would love to hear your ideas as we are all in this together.

Regards Graeme