Your guidebook to restart your business with the new normal, safely, productively, with high morale for employees, and reduced costs.
Your company sent office workers home in March in a mad scramble to protect them from COVID19 and to keep your business alive. The survival of your workers was at stake. Now, as you plan the reopening of your office, it is clear that the survival of your business is at stake, and the old normal is obsolete.
It is time to be disruptive. It is time to create the new standard for a productive, innovative, less expensive, and safe office environment.
The fears of COVID19 infection will remain at the forefront of everyone’s mind until we have a vaccine, a cure, or until 70 percent of the population has been exposed to the virus. Any of these scenarios maybe six months away, such as for a miracle vaccine, or up to 24 months away for a cure. Vaccines may have to be reconstituted every year for this mutating coronavirus, like the flu vaccine.
It is time to think big. It is time to make the moves now that will propel your business to be number one in your domain during this era. It is time to engage with your most valued asset, your workforce. It is time to provide them with an enabling environment so they may thrive, achieve great results, innovate, feel safe, and feel like trusted members of your organization.
This is not the time for half-measures, happy talk, and incrementalism.
Your business needs to break away from the ineffective, habitual practices of the past with a bold long-term vision to be productive and to keep your workers safe.
The open, crowded office bays of 2019-before COVID19- were unproductive work environments. The average worker was disrupted every three minutes. It took some workers as long as 23 minutes to return to the original task.
One legacy of the COVID19 crisis will be the dramatic increase in remote work.
Before COVID19, remote work was already:
- preferred by 80% of the workforce, and all ages
- the No. 1 preferred non-pay work benefit
- growing more than 11 times faster than the rest of the workforce
- enabling 43 percent of the workforce to work from home some of the time
- saving employers $10,000 to $20,000 per remote worker per year by lowering real estate costs, turnover, and absenteeism and increasing employee productivity.[1]
- saving carbon emissions. Consider this: According to Ladders, Just a 20% reduction in working from an office (one day a week) results in a 30% decrease in a person’s carbon footprint
- enabling busy US workers in two-parent households, who work 58.5 hours a week between work and family duties, to have more work-life integration, higher job satisfaction, and less costly commutes and stress.[2]
This trend to remote work has already started. Due to COVID19, Brookings estimates that about half of the US workforce is working from home, with most of these people being higher-paid professional workers. About 3 percent of 1,000 HR professionals in the US, surveyed by the Society of Human Resources in April 2020 said their salaried employees were working remotely when the year began. That number rose to 64 percent by April. PwC reports that 49 percent of Chief Financial Officers responding to their March 2020 survey say remote work is work is here to stay for some roles, as companies plan to alternate crews and reconfigure worksites.
How will remote work be in your future? How bold are you willing to be?
As someone who has directed HR operations for global businesses of at large corporations for over 20 years and has implemented flexible work arrangements, I am offering the benefits of my successful experiences to you so that you can restart your business safely, profitably, and by providing a great and comforting experience to your workforce. My new guidebook, 9 Steps to Implement a New Post-COVID19 Office Environment, will give you valuable information allowing you to guide your own organization
With this guidebook, you will learn this valuable information:
- Which jobs, not workers, are ideally suited for home-based work, and which criteria you use in making this determination
- Guidelines to keep office workers safe as you bring them back to your new office environment
- Which digital technologies to use and the importance of bandwidth strength
- Leadership in the Virtual and Collocated World: How to effectively set operating norms for virtual meetings and how to keep employees aligned to your mission and goals.
- How to have employees respond, wherever they are, when you need them.
- How to digitally store and share essential policies, procedures, files and data.
- How to reduce or eliminate excess office space and accumulate huge savings.
- How to convert a traditional office space to a flexible work environment where works have the space, tools, and time for great performance
- How to make sure these valuable changes drive your top and bottom line and improve your employer brand.
Much of the guidance I will provide you, comes from my experience implementing remote work and flexible work environments, at Medtronic’s offices in Santa Rosa California, and with other Medtronic business across the world.
Following a 30 percent increase in the use of remote workers, the Medtronic businesses based in Santa Rosa experienced significant productivity increases, of up to 22% for remote workers. The employees who would remain residents, coming into the office every day, enjoyed an upgraded office environment with improved videoconferencing capabilities, more conference rooms, huddle rooms, and open areas.
Employees and managers alike reported a 98% satisfaction rate with the implementation of remote work. In addition, management saw substantial reductions in real estate costs, employee turnover, and carbon emissions. Employees who worked from home did not miss their average hour-long commutes. They appreciated having more control over their work life integration and reported more confidence in the leadership of their managers and of top management.
Are you ready to get started?
Click here to download my complimentary guidebook today!
Call me at 707-331-6740 to schedule a complimentary one-hour strategy session
[1] Workshifting Benefits: The Bottom Line, May 2010, by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish, Global Workplace Analytics, sponsored by Citrix Online.
[2] Kim Parker and Wendy Wang (March 14, 2013) “Modern Parenthood: Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family.” Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms-and-dads-converge-as-they-balance-work-and-family/.