As the government is starting to ease lockdown and put together timescales for allowing a return to the office, I thought it was worth revisiting some of the ideas I discussed in cross-country coding to see what applies to the upcoming hybrid world, where we know we're capable of working remotely.
Obviously there will be done time to adjust as we inevitably feel with the mental health consequences of the anxiety of returning to the office as well as the adjustments we'll need to add or undo to deal with family life, all the new pets and babies that have joined since the start of lockdown, and the mental space we've held for new hobbies, for home schooling, for the new health rules.
So take this as a waypoint on some future journey.
I'm not qualified to talk about the mental distress or whatever changes you need to accommodate in your life, but I want to think about how your employer and the technology may need to work in this brave new world.
- Face to face matters. If you've seen someone out breaks down barriers to talking to them. Video beats phone, in person beats video.
- Trusted insiders are very useful, when there's multiple offices, or a team you need to check in with that you're not in all the meetings for. There's always small things that are missed when you're just looking through the window.
- Invest in video. It needs to be good quality. Get better broadband. Get better webcams. Get better microphones.
- But try and be asynchronous. As soon as there's friction to synchronous communication, collaboration plummets.
- Reminder that in open offices, people prefer electronic communication. "The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences"
- Set expectations. Emergent behaviours only happen through observation and feedback, and distance dampens both dramatically
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