As personnel move increasingly from co-located office working to working from home there will be a gradual adaption to the new way of work. This adaptation will be different for everyone and every business, some will quickly settle into the new way of working while others will struggle with any number of different facets. Much of the pace and direction of this adaptation will be dependent on a combination of the organisation and individual circumstances and demands.

Organizational adaptation

Organisations are working to understand how best to maintain their businesses and workflows now that their personnel are scattered across towns and cities. They are making multiple business critical decisions on a daily basis, in some cases simply to keep their business alive, working in a more fluid and complex environment than many will have ever seen or even conceived.

Moving staff to work from home

One of the many early decisions businesses made will have been to move staff offsite to work from home. This will have involved migrating technology and ensuring staff can access corporate networks but may not have considered changes to workflows or embracing flexible working processes for staff. Once staff are reporting in that they are happily set up with computers and phones at home, and have completed an ergonomic and environment checklist for their home workspace, many businesses will move on to other pressing matters, leaving their staff at home but stressed and confused as they navigate their new workflows.

However, the technology is only the enabler in a virtual team environment. Without adequate technology everything else is very difficult, but technology needs to be supplemented by changes to practices and processes, particularly when organisations are inn this for the relatively long haul. Having a staff member work from home for a day or a week alongside a traditional co-located office staff, as has been the case, previously, typically means that the work from home staff align their hours and workflows with the home office, nice and easy, little to no change required. In this current situation, where many if not most staff of many businesses are working from home, and doing so for an extended period of weeks and possibly months, there is a real need for companies to review their expectations and processes.

Organizational factors for adapting to work from home

As I discussed in the last article in this series, there are a number of factors to consider here.

* Many companies have a formally structured “9 to 5” working day, 5 day a week simply to provide structure to their operations. In many instances employees only perform their duties within this framework because that is the cultural norm and aside from tradition, there are often few reasons that structure needs to apply when personnel are working from home.* Many managers and business leaders are comfortable with these traditional structures as this is what they have always known. Performance measurement and client billing is also often structured around this attendance model, building a self fulfilling and for some virtuous circle.* Employees have built their life styles around this 9 to 5 model. This applies as much on the non working hours as well as the working hours, it applies to family time and how parents will divide caring for children.* Organizational reward structures, overtime and different pay rates for hours worked associated with numbers of hours and hours worked at traditionally non social times are also designed around these conventional business hours.

But, none of that applies now.