David Walker writes….
When ‘lockdowns’ started around the world, we were talking about how we work at home much of the time, and there would be little impact. Of course, that meant that there was little change for us in our working practices, but for clients we needed to change some of our work so that we could deliver online, and we knew that some programmes would be postponed until after the public health crisis.
Once we thought a little harder, we realised that not everyone is conditioned to a life of working solo. At The Change Maker Group we collaborate through Microsoft Teams. Videoconferencing and instant messaging is just the way we get stuff done. My view is that I’m massively more productive working from home than I would be routinely commuting and working in an office environment.
Because we work at home a lot, we tend to have well-established routines for domestic tasks and childcare. Most of us have built up these routines over many years. This isn’t the case for many people being asked to work at home now though.
So, we have taken a few actions to try to help people who are learning to be productive whilst working at home. The first is a series of very short videos, where we each talk about our top tips for being productive at home – you can view them all on YouTube.
We’ve also promoted the opportunity for people to take this opportunity to learn – for instance, we have our Insights articles and microlearning.
We also recognised that people will need support whilst working alone, and teams will need to develop ways of maintaining performance. Everyone is dealing with such a lot in their personal lives, and working in a substantially different way can potentially add to anxiety and stress levels. For this we’re using some of our existing solutions such as 1:1 coaching, team coaching, reflection sessions, personal resilience activities and so on. Please get in touch if you would like to know more.
Wherever you are in the world, best wishes and stay well.
—
Contact David at [email protected].
Please get in touch or book a call. We’d love to chat.
