Covid-19: A Working From Home Experiment

It’s been described as a massive work-from-home experiment,  Covid-19 has been the dramatic catalyst that has catapulted us into working remotely. Undoubtedly there are advantages; less time in traffic and more flexibility around the hours worked, and in our current environment - less concern managing social distancing.  But there are also issues around what we lose by not being in the office, the value in opportunistic conversations that spark an idea or undo a roadblock, the mental health benefits of contact with others, the need for robust systems that work outside of the office and the trust required when we can’t ‘see’ what employees are doing.    I see the answer in a hybrid model, where you need the combination of the two to get it right.  And while the way we use our offices in the future will have to change (see post on the 6 feet office ), there’s also plenty of potential to evolve the way we work from home. A Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) where you measure team members by their performance or output, not by their presence in the office or their timesheet recognises the differences in the way we work at home. With  ROWE, it’s not just flexi time -  the time your team spend on a task is irrelevant, it’s only the results that matter.   Our work from home experience has been accelerated in a short space of time, but getting it right as a long term solution will require more consideration.