As we all know working remotely and online virtually is now becoming the norm and doesn’t look like changing soon.
According to a recent Harvard Business Review report “Reimagining the Urban Office” it stated that the office is not going to disappear, however, the need to collaborate virtually will remain. Working From Home (WFH) is now common and as stated in the June New York Times magazine, anywhere from 5 to 15% of Americans worked from home pre COVID-19, and as of April, half Americans now report WFH, according to early research by a group from MIT, NBER and Upwork.
WFH is has been increasing steadily over the last 15 years for knowledge workers and now, COVID-19 has accelerated this trend for all of us – whether we wanted to or not. Furthermore, workers and businesses have seen the many benefits and want to continue this way of working. Again there is a lot of data that support increased productivity from working at home, however we still need that relationship, interaction, that “collision” with other people to create new ideas, innovate and gain further insight and knowledge to support productivity and performance.
I can remember when video conferencing was for just big organisations with large IT budgets and departments, to invest and support the necessary technology, which typically took a long time to set up and get started – so long that the meeting was nearly over! But now, everyone can host and join a video conference at a click of a button along with a decent Internet connection, so that they can share and collaborate with people at will. This has certainly enabled a large number of businesses and workers to continue operating despite the restrictions. However, you can only go so far once you have talked, seen the other person, shared and presented content or “sketched” on a virtual board.
Online meetings typically include communicating, presenting and agreeing. What about taking action? Actually doing work that produces a tangible deliverable and outcome?
A common business activity is completing a workshop, typically with People, Paper and Post-it notes – the 3 P’s. Clearly that’s not possible now, due to the current pandemic. So, going back to your video conferencing – Zoom MS Teams, Webex and the like, you need to start augmenting your video conferencing technology with collaboration behaviours, skills, processes and tools.
With regards to completing virtual online workshops with people WFH or in other remote locations and doing it in a visual, collaborative and interactive way is a challenge for a lot of businesses. Workshop-as-a-Service (WaaS) is a tool that you can use with your current video conferencing systems. Pre- COVID-19, WaaS has helped many organisations save time and money with regards to travelling, venues, hotels, etc. and increased the overall productivity of their workshops such as Innovation Portfolio Management, Stakeholder Management, IT Roadmaps to Performance Management workshops, since 2012. Now, the challenge is that travelling and meeting with other people is severely restricted at best, or not allowed at all.
If you are looking to increase your WFH, online productivity and facilitate collaboration between colleagues, business partners and stakeholders, click on the R-WaaS (Workshop-as-a-Service) Call event below and select a date and time to book your complimentary WaaS call and lets see how you can boost your online performance, productivity and collaboration quickly and easily.
Select the R-WaaS event below and I look forward to meeting with you soon.
