(Part 1 of The WFH Report)

Overnight, literally millions of people started working from home. We’re all human and are all different, so the way we approach it, cope with it and come through the other side will be different. There is likely to be a deep mental, physical and social impact, as well as some huge learnings from which new ways of working will become the norm. Since lockdown began, lots of people and companies have been sharing some great tips and tricks on home working (including us), but we wanted to go a little deeper, so we used our human-centred research techniques to understand more about the impact remote working is having on behaviours and habits in order to provide a view on the future of work post C19.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The notion of business being built on handshakes, face to face meetings, travel and networking has all been curtailed by C19. The pandemic has forced many businesses to implement remote working. Companies now find themselves having the responsibility to protect their workforce; to keep them healthy and productive in different ways.

This coupled with uncertainty about the future makes employee engagement an even bigger challenge than before. It’s pretty impressive how even large and complex companies with legacy systems have, when forced to, managed to get their entire workforce working remotely.

Overnight, literally hundreds of thousands of employees have converted their dining room, living area, box room or even in some cases their bedroom into a space from which they can work. But there’s not much consideration being given to how businesses can sustain this way of working into the longer term.

Given the effort that’s gone into setting employees up — from adapting and improving technology through to providing suitable equipment like screens and chairs, it’s easy to see why it’s tempting to take advantage of reduced physical office space overheads.

Offices will shrink and become places to pop into a couple of times a week for a catch-up — at best, rather than somewhere to spend 40 hours sat in front of a computer. Aside from technology (which has now proven to be a myth), one of the things that stopped people working from home before [coronavirus] was the fear that it gave the impression they weren’t committed.

Old school management styles rewarded presenteeism rather than outcomes, so a new modern leader is emerging; somebody with acutely good social skills to manage the dynamic of virtual teams and a visionary who is able to paint detailed ambitions for the short-term future but let go of the delivery.

WHO TOOK PART

Our study involved over 100 participants — from a TV historian to a policeman — who volunteered to complete a twice weekly survey. We also encouraged them to send us pictures and video diaries.

Each working age group was represented, with 59.2% between 26 and 40, covering all other working age brackets. The largest group lived with their partner and 21.4% lived with school aged children — having to manage working from home and homeschooling kids.

Over 75% of participants either never, rarely or sometimes work from home, however despite all this, most felt comfortable at the prospect of working from home.

But, what did they want to get from taking part? Some wanted to understand the impact on companies… “I want to understand how this social isolation that’s forced on us will have an impact on how remote work is perceived by companies. Up until now many companies were still seeing this as something people do when they don’t want to work much, that it impacts negatively on productivity, that you can’t work remotely when you get to a certain hierarchy in a company or that it’s hard to manage teams that work remotely or have meaningful conversations remotely.”

Others were keen to understand the behavioural changes that could result from WFH… “To learn more about how people adjust to different working environments and to look out for behavioural changes in myself and others. I’m interested in how people will adjust when we go back to office based working, which we inevitably will when the crisis subsides, and how the findings Fluxx gather can influence stakeholders to embrace home working.”

Some wanted to learn how different personality types will cope… “I’m curious to see how introverts and extroverts respond to this situation.” And some are just cute! “To help my son (who works @ Fluxx)!”

Next > Digital Adoption Fast Forward (Part 2)

Jenny Burns is an Executive Partner at Fluxx. We help companies like Condé Nast,Thames Water, HSBC, and Addison Lee Group, bring big ideas to life. Check out Fluxx Studio Notes for more stories. Are you interested in learning the secrets for sustained, repeatable innovation models, from expert practitioners? Check out The Innovation Starter Kit. Stay tuned with all that’s Fluxx by following us on LinkedIn or signing up for our WTF Newsletter. Get in touch at Jenny.Burns@Fluxx.uk.com.