{"id":4248,"date":"2020-06-17T08:54:28","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T15:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=4248"},"modified":"2020-06-17T08:54:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T15:54:28","slug":"revisiting-enterprise-managers-during-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/revisiting-enterprise-managers-during-new-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Enterprise Managers During the New Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just under two months ago, I moderated a webcast<\/a><\/span> with technology and collaboration managers from firms such as Google, Morgan Stanley, Poly, Verizon and others, and asked how they were handling the transition to 100% remote working.\u00a0 I was expecting the comments to be about issues with technology and other 20-20 hindsight \u2013 but surprisingly, the panelists didn\u2019t have many complaints.\u00a0 They described a generally painless and successful transition.\u00a0 Now that approximately forty-five days has past, I thought it would be a good idea to check in with them again and see how they were doing.<\/p>\n

The prior participants that were available joined me on a new webcast (which you can watch here<\/a><\/span>) and continued to report that things were going well.\u00a0 The collaboration tools that each firm was relying upon were holding-up well, with no major failures or issues to report.\u00a0 They did, however, have some interesting insights into managing a nearly 100% remote workforce and working from home for an extended period of time.<\/p>\n

Time to Perfect the Home Office Setup<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When the stay-home orders first came out, people didn\u2019t think they\u2019d be home for as long as they have been (with still no end in sight).\u00a0 As we approached two months of remote working, employees have started making requests to improve their home set-ups<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 In some cases, this is asking that larger displays and higher-quality headsets be retrieved from their prior office workspace and sent to their homes.\u00a0 In fact, some enterprises have small teams doing just that and making these available for their employees to curbside-pick-up.\u00a0 In other cases, employees are realizing that they need higher quality equipment than they previously used.\u00a0 When joining a meeting remotely was a once-in-a-while event, it was fine to use a tablet\u2019s embedded camera and speaker.\u00a0 However, when you are making daily presentations to colleagues and clients, the quality of your sound and images is much more critical.\u00a0 Enterprise managers have been generally open to providing this essential \u201cbetter than basic\u201d<\/em> gear for employees\u2019 remote workstations.<\/p>\n

Adjusting to Managing Fully Remote Teams<\/h4>\n

The further into the 100% remote working experiences we go, the more enterprises have realized that it is easy for most employees to be very productive from home.\u00a0 However, they have also realized that the job of managing a remote workforce<\/span><\/a> takes a completely different skillset than most managers have used in the past.\u00a0 When you don\u2019t bump into your employees in an office every day, you need to be good at staying in touch, being available, monitoring output, fostering communications and a few dozen other skills that many managers have never been introduced to before.\u00a0 There are some excellent remote-workforce-managers in the world, so expect these skills to be highlighted, sought-after, and further developed through employer provided educational programs.<\/p>\n

Camaraderie Will Take Some Extra Effort<\/h4>\n

All the participants reported that top-down company culture was doing just fine.\u00a0 High-quality\/high-reliability collaboration tools and platforms were allowing company executives to stay in touch with their teams and provide high-level direction.\u00a0 Town hall events are reaching tens of thousands of individuals with great success.\u00a0 However, our participants reported that the typical, daily interactions between employees around the office have been somewhat neglected.\u00a0 Chats about travel, community, family and similar topics foster a sense of camaraderie between employees, and remote working will not automatically provide such opportunities.\u00a0 Some enterprises have not yet taken action to replace these experiences.\u00a0 It is clear that this will require specific efforts to be replaced via collaboration tools.\u00a0 Enterprises that have done a better job with this issue use events like scheduled \u201challway chats\u201d amongst teams for about fifteen minutes twice a week, where video calls that explicitly don\u2019t talk about work take place to allow for social exchanges.\u00a0 Other activities such as photo galleries and\/or contests (with family, outdoor views, pets, etc.) can be shared on a team chat channel.<\/p>\n

As the pandemic moves through its various phases, we will see some employees be able to return to traditional offices, but there will likely be significant changes to prevent the spread of the virus (pre- any vaccine or treatment). This phase \u2013 \u201cThe New Normal\u201d \u2013 will see fewer people in the office, but mostly out of fear and\/or caution.\u00a0 Once there is a vaccine or effective treatment and fear begins to drop away from the equation, \u201cThe Next Normal\u201d phase will be greatly influenced by the widespread success of remote working \u2013 bring about significant changes to the model that was in use before the pandemic.\u00a0 Some people will return to offices, some will now make their homes their primary workplaces, and some will mix the two.\u00a0 As this future unfolds you can be assured that high quality collaboration tools will be the glue that keeps knowledge workers productive for many years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just under two months ago, I moderated a webcast with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":4251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[548,508,517,526],"tags":[130,131,1370,330,448,173,115,1691,348,378,120,122,1622,1664,712,126,215],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}