Magic wands, wellbeing, and back to basics

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been understanding how life in lockdown has been affecting our WFHers. We’re wrapping up this week with a few key insights from week 5, and with just one week left we’ll be publishing the full report of The Great Work from Home Experiment very soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

We’re more cheerful now than when we started. When we kicked off the experiment just over 10% of the WFHers felt ‘cheerful’, compared to a whopping 52% in the last week of the study. In fact, the good news is, we feel more positive now in general than at the beginning of the study. And it’s all because we have more time:

“Having more time! Capitalising I’m having greater time to work more effectively, better work life balance and time to self develop after the ‘normal working day’ finishes.”

Remote working is here to stay, but that means corporate responsibility will extend into our homes. Like many other companies, Twitter announced earlier in the week that their employees will be offered the option to permanently work from home. This means employers will need to be responsible for our physical wellbeing at home too, making sure we’re kitted out with the right equipment.

“My boss offered me and my team to buy some equipment if we needed it (a more comfortable chair, etc). If I could push it even more, forgetting about budgets and the current confinement situation, I’d ask for an entire room, with a good chair, a desk I can bring up, a white board, shelves, some plants… Everything I’d need to be fully focused, having my own home office instead of working from my dining table.”

Some businesses still haven’t got the basic remote working principles sussed. There’s been a lot of content about the transition to working from home, but some businesses still haven’t laid the right foundations. This could be because of organisational or technical challenges that some big business in particular, can struggle with. The quickest win has to be to increase the amount and quality of communication with your team using the channels you have available.

“I wish my boss would check in with me more often…even when we’re really busy. I would like more updates about what the wider team are doing and using video calls to get the valuable face to face time to help me feel more connected”.

Employees’ mental wellbeing has to be the first priority. Some have adjusted to remote working better than others and some have adopted workarounds and hacks to feel connected. Although most of our WFHers feel empowered to structure working days to get the right balance between professional and personal life, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in working hours for all participants. Not being able to switch off and feeling guilty about taking breaks will not be conducive to the ‘new normal’ when more of us will be working from home in the future.

“We never miss a delivery. I’d love to say that the time I’m getting back from not commuting is going into reading and personal dev but it’s not as simple as that… I am doing longer hours — but don’t necessarily feel that I’m actually being more productive.”

We’re collating all our valuable insights from The Work from Home Experiment, along with industry intel, into a digestible report for businesses to use as a guide when planning their employees return to work. We’ll also be hosting a Fluxx Talks session — where we’ll be sharing our findings through a live broadcast. Let us know if you’d like to join (hello@fluxx.uk.com).

Are you curious as to how Fluxx has helped companies such as Condé Nast, Mars, Thames Water, HSBC, Addison Lee Group, and many more? Check out Fluxx Studio Notes. Want to learn the secrets for sustained, repeatable innovation models, from expert practitioners? The Innovation Starter Kit is for you. Stay tuned with all that’s Fluxx by following us on LinkedIn or signing up to our WTF Newsletter. Got a thought on any of the above? Drop me a note at jassi@fluxx.uk.com.