One of the unexpected consequences of the rapid spread of coronavirus is that the shift to remote work is being accelerated – forcing the “world’s largest work-from-home experiment”.
One indication of how rapidly the tides may be turning is that Zoom, a popular video conferencing platform, added as many new users in the first 2 months of 2020 during the worldwide coronavirus outbreak as they did in all of 2019.
Although the pendulum has swung back and forth on remote work over the past few years, most companies are now working to prepare for the possibility that external global factors, such as an outbreak or pandemic, might force them to adopt remote working across a much larger proportion of their population.
At Herrmann, our 2017 decision to go remote as a company stemmed from a moment of crisis, when our headquarters’ location was in the path of a wildfire – a story that Ann Herrmann told in one of her TEDx Talks.
Since transitioning to being a fully distributed team since 2017, we’ve seen first-hand that remote work brings a lot of benefits, from allowing teams to better harness their cognitive diversity to creating significant productivity gains. However, capturing these benefits requires a different approach to communication and work interactions, which may feel foreign in some corporate cultures. Without a mindful approach and concerted effort across the company, remote working can be incredibly challenging and result in lost productivity and engagement.
What can you do to ensure productivity and effective collaboration if you find yourself working from home? Read our 5 Whole Brain® Thinking tips to apply for a more successful remote work experience that have worked well for us and our remote-work customers.
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