Linked: Remote Work Doesn’t Have to Mean All-Day Video Calls

As I look at the workplaces that have remained remote, versus the ones who couldn’t wait to get back to “normal”, I suspect this has a lot to do with the difference:

“The Covid-19 crisis has distanced people from the workplace, and employers have generally, if sometimes reluctantly, accepted that people can work effectively from home. As if to compensate for this distancing and keep the workplace alive in a virtual sense, employers have also encouraged people to stick closely to the conventional workday. The message is that working from home is fine and can even be very efficient — as long as people join video calls along with everyone else all through the day.”

The workplaces who have wanted to “see” everyone on video calls during the day, multiple times, just simply lacked the imagination of what the remote workplace could look like, and how it could work. They’re stuck in this paradigm of seeing you work, at the same time as everyone else, and unable to fathom a place where you get work done that they don’t see you doing.

Of course, the saddest thing is that most of you who work in these types of environments probably got less done because of the non-stop video meetings, and probably can’t wait to get back to the office too, but it didn’t have to be this way.

For many of us, it’s not this way, and it’s great. It’s flexible when it needs to be, and allows us much greater control over our work.

It just takes some work to do things a little differently, this article gives you an idea of how it does work. Think about how it could work for your employees too.

And, for God’s sake, even if you do need to have regular meetings, don’t make everyone turn on their cameras. You’re really just wasting bandwidth and making it uncomfortable for some of your employees.

https://hbr.org/2020/09/remote-work-doesnt-have-to-mean-all-day-video-calls

Follow these topics: Career, Links