This week, Zoom canceled its remote-only work policy for employees. In a remarkable, and ironic twist, all Zoom employees are now required to come back to the office.
Is this a sign of the end of remote work? Hardly. Zoom has mandated that employees who live near an office must report to the office a certain number of days per week. Hybrid work environments are here to stay, but the evidence is mounting that remote work isn’t as productive as experts first believed. The same day Zoom made its announcement, NPR ran a story pointing to hard evidence that in-person work is more productive than remote work.
So what to make of the new shift?
I see this as an opportunity for people trying to move up in their careers. Here are three concrete steps you can take to move ahead:
1.Find the parts of your job that require human interaction and become the very best at those.
There are parts of every job that don’t require human interaction. Spreadsheets, reports, and project-based work that is individual. And with the rise of artificial intelligence, it’s likely that those parts of the job will become more and more automated. I see this as an opportunity for humans to concentrate on the parts of their job that only humans can do. I don’t know your career, but I bet if you ask yourself what human-to-human interactions cannot be done remotely or by machine in your field, you will come up with a path toward accelerating your career.
2.Sharpen your soft skills
As we emerge from the pandemic and return to the workplace, either fully or in hybrid form, the new gold standard for promotions, will be human soft skills. These are the habits that I’ve seen the highest performers exhibit over the last 15 years. Our firm has done 30,000 face-to-face interviews with top candidates, and we’ve asked ourselves the question: what do the best of the best exhibit? The answer was stunningly clear, the best of the best are really good at human soft skills.
How can you learn to show more emotional intelligence? How can you learn to focus on the things that only humans can do? Answer these questions to elevate your career and irreplaceability.
3.Offer to come into the office
As a small business owner, I can’t tell you how much it means to have team members willing to come into the office. When I first asked our team to come back as the pandemic started to wane, I felt like there were probably voodoo dolls of me somewhere in Houston, but the team showed an amazing acceptance and willingness to try. In fact, a few people offered to come into the office. Even since then, I’ve had people come to me, asking if they can cancel the remote day because they’re getting more done at the workplace. The employee who offers to do what many people are complaining about having to do is the employee that often gets on the radar for promotions.
I see this as an opportunity for business owners. The evidence is clear and twofold: hybrid work will likely be a reality going forward, and in-person work is proving to be the most effective. So how can you as a business owner leverage these emerging realities?
Here are three concrete steps you can take:
1.Make remote work a reward.
Our COO had a brilliant idea last year. She decided that if every one of our teams would set monthly stretch goals, we could make remote work a reward to be celebrated, rather than a privilege to be tolerated. The results have been amazing. The goals that our teams set are not small, they’re tangible, concrete, and difficult. But nearly every team has met their monthly goal since we put this into effect. The reward for hitting the goal is that the following month, Wednesdays are remote workdays. What used to be a tenuous balance of how much remote or in-person work to allow has become a strategy for productivity, employee engagement, and for us, a great solution. Perhaps there’s a way you could adopt a similar strategy for your own business.
2.Reward in-person productivity
I don’t know your business, but I know that people love rewards. I’m learning over time that people don’t need huge monetary rewards. Oftentimes its recognition, a trophy, or a raise from time to time, whatever the case people love rewards. How can you set up a system in your business to reward people who show high productivity when they’re in the office? Could you even make it a competition to see who can get the most done in person? If the research we are seeing is right, then in-person productivity will win the day. How can you make people feel like winners while working towards that goal?
3.Make your workplace irresistible
If you’re a business owner and asking people to come back into the office, you should ask yourself: what can I do to make this workplace irresistible? In the two years leading up to the pandemic, we sent out a study of 150 workplaces that kept winning top culture awards, best places to work awards, and the like. We found unique traits in every one of those workplaces, but one common denominator was a dedicated plan and budget for building a great culture. I think you’ll find that spending some time and money and planning on building a workplace culture will actually have a higher return on investment than you can imagine. And if there are people questioning whether they want to come into the office, I think you’ll find that building a workplace that is irresistible will solve a lot of the tension many business owners face. You can take a look at our culture tool to get started. Or if you’d like, take a look at the results of our study in the book I wrote called Culture Wins: The Roadmap To An Irresistible Workplace. I’m a firm believer and student of culture. I think it will be the new competitive advantage, as we all race to retain great employees and find productivity in a new world of the workplace.
I’m still learning the balance of the new workplace. I bet if you start asking these questions that I’m asking myself, you’ll unlock new productivity in your career and in your business.
It’s a brand new day in the workplace, and every time a new day dawns, so does a new opportunity.
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