Does working from home require better systems?

Happy New Year to you. I hope you and your loved ones are safe and had a great Christmas break.

This coming year will be very interesting. We are all now familiar with what working from home means and that the restrictions can change overnight.

On a personal note – living in the Southern part of the Northern Beaches in Sydney – we just had been luckily and allowed to have guests for our Christmas celebration. It was a very close call.

In other words, for the foreseeable future, working from home will be the norm and working in an office the exception.

Now, does working from home require better systems for your workforce?
The initial answer is “of course it does”…

Well, when you think about it, your team might be putting up with some bad modelling and workflow.

By working from home the boundary between private life and work is not clear any more but fuzzy. Everyone is more inclined to put up with bad systems.

And if your team finds themselves working at 8pm at night – it might just be because they spent the morning looking after their kids – so they don’t speak up.

And of course, everyone having a job right now is happy for it, so why complaining if the Excel spreadsheet is not loading correctly or the mundane copy ‘n’ paste takes way too long.

I see people putting up with flawed systems all the time. It’s like having a stone in their shoes.

Now, when you are working from home, no co-worker sees your frustration, no manager is aware of your struggle. And you’d rather put up with it.

The tolerance for a stone in your shoe just got bigger with the pandemic.
There is a better way.

Here’s what you could do:

• Check in with your team and enquire whether all systems are running smoothly
• Don’t put up with a bad workflow yourself
• Organise a free call with me where we could talk about your individual situation and requirements.

Don’t let working from home be an excuse for bad modelling