With the vaccines finally coming to market for COVID the question for 2021 is should we keep working from home.
I will be the first to admit I miss some of the face to face (literally). However, I also have become accustomed to not having to travel 3 to 4 hours daily to our major clients and leaving during rush hour to teach evening grad classes.
I take issue with SHRM’s recent return to office antics at the height of the pandemic. Their CEO even dished on this topic in the most recent SHRM magazine “From The CEO” introductory editorial. Out of fairness he presented different angles and did focus on HR’s role in insuring culture, communication, and commitment were focused on regardless of where an employee works from.
In regards to teaching, I have found the sweet spot of using ZOOM breakout rooms for activities (note to Microsoft: improve your breakout room technology for assigning and reassigning folks as it is clunky) and my students actually have come around to virtual instead of live. There are still some challenges to providing tests as Moodle and Blackboard are not where they need to be for creating online testing, but with that said, I much prefer ZOOM over classroom.
For clients we provide three core services. First our leadership training has not skipped a beat online. Second, we are able to do coaching and 360 work as well if not better online. Finally, the project work only suffers from being in an office to ask questions, however with technology we have been able to work around this and access data via technology.
So for me there is no question that work from home or from anywhere is a plus. In fact this Spring and Summer I am tee’ d up to do some conference speaking potentially live and being able to do work from a hotel room in between is a huge plus.
Now I understand, not every job or industry can provide the same dynamics as my own, however the past 8 months have acted as a litmus test for the future.
What do you think? Inquiring minds would love to hear from you!
HumanCapital3 