A question that I am often asked as a consultant, in the last year is: are you aware of any changes in workplaces due to Covid?
The most obvious one is the widespread adoption of remote work (or WFH – Work From Home). Now that the situation is easing, many companies are trying to figure out if it would be better to continue with this hybrid approach or not.
I started adopting more consistently the same measures I was applying before COVID.
These measures are meant to foster a deeper understanding of the most intimate needs and purposes of the employees.
I am advocating for remote workplaces since 1998 and I have worked since in building what today are called hybrid workplaces/jobs. I am convinced that finding and then living according to your core purpose and values is more important than just money.
In most business environments COVID has put a lot of stress on groups and employees and now, as a consultant and a coach, I am seeing that many people prefer remaining at home to have a more relaxed approach to their jobs and enjoy a better work/life balance.
Companies that steered rapidly towards this new mentality are experiencing growth and huge increments in their people’s satisfaction, sense of belonging, and commitment.
Yes, there are companies that say that they are afraid of losing their company’s culture as people are not working in the office.
I have met some customers in the last months who tried to bring up this argument that, in my opinion, it is just an excuse.
If one company’s culture gets affected by people working remotely, then you have no culture established or agreed on.
Of course, I am talking about office jobs, those who do not require, per se, the physical presence in the office to be carried on. When dealing with that objection, I worked with the top management to let them work on different approaches to daily/weekly routines so as to keep everyone engaged and cooperating. This sometimes has meant working on the procedures, on the way to create products and offer services, even the approach with the customer.
But when you are able to let people see the advantages of a flexible approach, many accept the steer.
Seminars, role-work, group and individual coaching and assessment have a huge positive impact in situations like these.
There are also situations, ie workplaces designed by extroverts for extroverts, where the team is built around the physical coexistence in one single place of all the involved actors, yet, in my experience, these are the minority of the total.
Raffaello Palandri's Blog 
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News.
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