Dear CEO: Considering a Distributed Work Program for your Team?
What is Distributed Work?
You may have heard of remote workers.
I prefer to use the term distributed workers, or even better, distributed teams!
It seems like meaningless nuance to some; however, I feel it’s important for distributed workers to ensure they don’t feel remote.
When done well, distributed work allows a business to be more nimble, more resilient, improve productivity, and reduce costs, without anyone feeling “remote”. The reality is that most successful global companies are already practicing distributed work without even realizing it. Many businesses have team members spread over multiple offices, cities, or countries. They work effectively together and support customer and drive business group.
COVID-19 was a push factor for home-based distributed workers, however, the concepts remain the same and the results can be very positive.
As a consultant who helps my clients navigate the many facets of distributed work optimization, I wanted to share several common themes that often dominate my conversations with business leaders and HR professionals.
Are you Afraid?
Are you afraid of using distributed teams in your business?
If you’re like many of the C-level executives I work with, then the answer is likely yes.
And for good reason! When I ask my clients why they’re afraid, that’s when it starts to get interesting. In many cases their fears are grounded losing control of people and productivity.
What I tell my clients often is that many companies are finding great success with distributed teams, creating lean businesses with cultures of accountability, better employee retention, and overall better financial outcomes. Like any success in business, those who do it well have invested the time into “doing it well”, and you can too.
Hidden Opportunity
My dialog with business leaders around work from home normally is framed in a less-for-more framework.
That is, business leaders often feel that letting their teams work from home or in a distributed manner is all risk and no reward. They feel that employees will get more, and the company will get less. I work through a process with business leaders that starts with aiming to identify and capture all of the areas of potential upside for your company.
I assure you there is likely a LOT Of upside.
Without first understanding how distributed work can add value to your business, it’s hard to determine whether it’s worth the risk. Start by exploring the opportunity. At this stage we normally work through a Hidden Opportunity Framework that’s builds around the following buckets of opportunity:
Time Savings
Enhanced Productivity
Employee Satisfaction
Customer Service
Financial Savings
Every Company is Different
Remember that every company is different. We’ve all heard that LinkedIn and Twitter and other companies are allowing all employees to work from home indefinitely. That may work for them, but distributed work doesn’t have to mean 100% at home, 100% of the time. Many companies seek a more innovative and nuanced approach to work from home and distributed work teams.
It’s important to define what’s going to work well for you, and then build a framework to help you adjust and fine-tune as you move forward. I always encourage options within teams and we’ll discuss that further down in this article. You may decide that you want to provide 50% of your team with the opportunity to work remotely (and productively) 50% of the time. Perhaps it’s 30% of the time. The important thing to remember is that you can make it whatever you want it to be, and whatever is best for your business. Remember too that you can always change it in the future.
Define Your Objectives and Vision
After you’ve identified areas of hidden value, it’s important that you define your objectives and vision. These objectives will vary by company, however, it’s critical that you are clear on why you’re making this change in your company. Like any strategic decision, we’re going to tie other decisions to this strategy, and it’s important that we really understand the priorities around this decision. For some of our clients, their over-arching goal is to ensure their teams have the tools to be nimble and resilient in the face of pandemic. For others, they want to significantly reduce and change their real estate footprint. A potential client told me about how many of their senior people are nearing retirement may want to work part time into their retirements. A distributed workforce strategy, when fully implemented, allows you to undertake these considerations in a thoughtful and controlled manner so you can maximize the benefits and reduce the risks.
Set and Communicate the New Rules
Often CEO’s speak to me of the technology tools they need to support effective distributed work. In reality, the most important part of this strategy is the people, not the technology tool. It’s important when you move to distributed work in your organization that you align staff and management around some “new rules” about how people will work together. These rules help people manage themselves and help you and your leadership team manage expectations.
The new rules worksheet we developed helps to define answers around common distributed work questions. The worksheet aims to bring organizational clarity around daily working expectations (can I work from the beach?), what constitutes time off (I’m driving to my cabin, but I’ll be working from the car!), and parameters around working with each other respectfully (I’m working until 10 tonight, so I need you online too). These rules are important for business leaders to define and communicate to teams. We often recommend developing an updated employments agreement, or addendum that ensures employees understand the rules, responsibilities, and privileges that come along with work from home or distributed work.
Give Your Team a Choice
I believe that giving people choice is one of the essential ways you help align expectations in an organization. Choice also allows you as the business leader to frame the discussion and set expectation.
For instance, rather than simply giving your team carte blanche to work from home you may want to give them three option. Option 1: Work 100% from the office. Option 2: Work 1 day per week from home. Option 3: Work 2 days per week from home. In order to join the company’s work from home program they must then sign your company’s work from home policy document to ensure you’re all aligned. This approach gives your team freedom to choose, gives them control over their work, and allows you to start exploring benefits of distributed work while also maintaining important control. Your team will love that you gave them a choice, and getting them to commit to a program helps you plan other facets of your business, like planning for appropriate physical space.
Arm your Team with New Tools
To work effectively your team is going to need new tools, many of which they likely don’t have. In an ideal world you want to build a ubiquity of capability that allows team members to perform any task they need to from anywhere they happen to be. The cloud has revolutionized computing and allow you to take almost any software platform you use on the road with you. Let me share the tools that I use.
Although I go to my office about 3 days per week, my work bag provides me with all of the tools I need to perform 100% of the work tasks that I must perform. In fact, I don’t have a dedicated desk at my office. I hot desk with the rest of the team. I take my bag with me on every work trip, home with me every night, and even on vacation. I sleep better knowing that my toolkit is with me. My grey bag is like the President’s “nuclear football”. My bag allows me to do any work from anywhere at any time.
Here are the tools that are part of my bag:
My MacBook which is armed with all critical software applications
- Cloud Softphone with toll free calling anywhere I need to call
- Video Conferencing for a face to face meeting anywhere in the world
- Docusign, to allow me to sign any document anywhere in the world
- GLIP Messaging – team messaging with my entire team. Allows me to perform asynchronous work with key team members.
- Access to our project management platform to allow me to view/update any project
- Cloud file sharing – to allow me to access any files at any time.
- Cloud ERP – I can check order status in real time through our cloud-based ERP
Banking fob for payment approvals
My mobile phone: to provide 4G Data for all my systems (hotspot) and a duplicate of all critical apps in case I need to perform work from my phone or in case my laptop is damaged, dead, or stolen.
My Bose noise cancelling headphones: excellent for phone and video call and helps shut out noise when I’m working from home or in public spaces.
The net result of this approach (one which is duplicated by most of our team members) is that I can perform any common work task whenever it’s required. My productivity, mobility, and accessibility have all benefited from this strategic approach to mobile, distributed work. When it comes time to develop your distributed work strategy, we recommend conducting a workforce audit to categorize team members by job role and ensure each person has the mobile work tools that they need to support their work.
Productivity Based Management
This is a big one, and a transition that sometimes takes a while to implement. Depending on how far you want to take distributed work, there is often benefit from establishing productivity-based goals or measurements for your team. Compensation may also follow, in some form. By shifting your team’s mindset from time-based to productivity-based, you not only enhance your prospects for financial success, but you also arm your team with greater control of their autonomy, mastery, and purpose. These are proven factors in highly motivated teams.
You may also want to consider restructuring your teams into productivity-measured pods. This enhances team productivity by aligning your team into small pods who are responsible for performance together. By providing your teams with autonomy and then measuring their productivity as a team, you will start to see team members hold each other accountable for the benefit of all. We normally work with our client’s HR teams or bring in our own HR consultants t develop these programs.
Redefine Your Workplace
After all this change, planning for distributed work, and providing your teams with choice, you’ll then need to consider the role that your office or workspace will play. Traditionally, most office space has been a box in which small desks are held. If you reduce that by 1/3rd you can save notably on space and will also want to re-envision your workspace. The trend in many organizations is moving away from dedicated workspace per person, to task-based workspaces that can be used/shared by many. You may want some quiet enclosed offices, some collaborative workbenches, presentation room to host clients, and small meeting spaces to support quiet video calls. You’ll also want to revisit your meeting spaces and ensure their form and function is aligned with the new way you’ll be working now and in the future. It’s critical that you create an environment where communication between team members can be supported whether or not they’re physically present in the office.
Prepare to Adjust and Refine
Finally, I always remind our clients that you don’t need to rush, don’t need to do it all at the same time and you can always change your mind. You and your team should treat distributed work as an enjoyable experiment. It’s a chance for many employees to explore their own productivity, revisit their contributions to the organization, and work in a more satisfying way.
Its critical that everyone enters this new paradigm with eyes open, clear expectations set, and an understanding that it may change and adjust as new opportunities for adjustment present themselves.
What Have You Got to Lose?
When you dig deep into it, I suspect you’ll find the only thing you’re likely to lose is poor productivity, cramped offices, and an unnecessary commute. What you may gain is a new way of living, working, and growing and perhaps it will enhance your team performance too.
I challenge you to give it a shot. It might just transform your working life.
About Colby Harder
Colby is a business leader, consultant and a champion of the distributed workforce. With 20+ years of experience creating and leading businesses, he works with senior executives to provide perspective on technology adoption. He can be found working in Whistler, the Okanagan, or wherever the snow is deepest.
About our Distributed Workforce Transformation Practice
Forte is a boutique business and technology consulting firm. We work with clients like you to help you define opportunities, identify risks, and implement strategies. We have a specialization in Distributed Work Transformation, Audiovisual technology & Cloud Communications migration. Often, our team just gives you the extra human bandwidth you need to implement fast change. Our team of consultants include business leaders, technologists, financial professionals, and HR consultants.