Before COVID-19, the remote working discussion was on the increase. Exponential research inferences were that people could do much more by working from home or anywhere other than their workplace.
In fact, in countries like France(1) and Australia(2,3), there is legislation that has evaluated the pragmatic and general policies guiding a daily 8hrs work hours (38-40hours per week) as people continue to respond to work-related assignments at home outside their work hours and are not paid for it.
Fast forward to the Covid-19 pandemic era, where businesses are forced to take the stand on a contactless or remote approach to work if they are to survive.
People are beginning to report getting overworked(4). Many say their organizations are sticking to the same daily productivity measures as if they were meeting physically, even working from home(5). For many business leaders, it is working as usual, but it should not be.
Clocking In, more meetings, more emails, more chats, more project collaborations, more phone calls, and all the contactless nuances mean employees are more anxious and stressed out greatly and are beginning to find working remotely difficult(6).
The cause of this among many organizations is simple, A COVID-19-enforced adaptation and not a digital transformation process-led transition.
My suggestion to right some of the already known wrongs includes:
- Adopting an adequately designed process for the digital transformation of work
- A change from daily productivity metric to task-measured performance metric
- With a well-defined approach to communication, you can not just zoom it away
- A group leads real-time project collaboration instead of general cascading
- Prioritizing Projects
- The use of a data-driven business process management tool that can actualize and measure productivity transparently
This is best realized in an individualized business-focused digital transformation plan and strategy.
The people, i.e., employees' input are the critical growth measures in a remote work process; they need to work optimally to achieve a business or organization's vision. It would be a disservice to not be strategic in business operations by helping them stay motivated and not burnt out.
Do tell me, what is your approach to adapting the work process during Covid-19 and post-Covid-19, and what are you doing to avoid burnout?
Some of the resources
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-13/can-you-be-paid-for-your-commute/11480300
- Fair work act 2009 - SECT 62 Maximum weekly, http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi- bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/fwa2009114/s62.html
- https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2017/05/03/answering-work-emails-at-home
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/working-from-home-in- covid-era-means-three-more-hours-on-the-job
- https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200309-coronavirus-covid-19-advice-chinas-work-at-home-experiment
- https://www.pbs.org/wnet/chasing-the-dream/stories/overworked-free-time-working-from-home/