Episode 32 - What have we learned after six weeks of remote work?

Speaker 1:

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Craig Anderson:

Hi, welcome to Q and A on breakthrough leadership. I'm Craig Anderson.

Lou Quinto:

And I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig Anderson:

Today's topic is we're going to be talking about what have we learned after six weeks of remote work. Lou, I shared with you a report from Mary Meeker of Bond Capital where they captured the key trends that they've identified from the Coronavirus so far. This is an add on to their annual internet trends report. So they've had some really interesting findings and we'll link to it in the show notes. But today Lou and I are going to just cover three key findings that we found pretty interesting of what the trends are and what we're learning so far for businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Craig Anderson:

So one is, "What's happening to productivity?" And what they're finding is that the margins, it's the same or even higher. The second thing is, "What does this mean or what has this meant for work life balance?" And then the third topic is, "What are we finding out about the most successful companies and how they're leveraging their technology?" So Lou, why don't you kick us off for the first one and let's talk about productivity a little bit.

Lou Quinto:

Yeah. From the report that you sent me, it says that productivity is at the same level or if not, higher. When I first read that, I was like, "No, it's not." We're starting at the beginning of this whole thing and I don't want to disagree with Mary, I'm sure that she and her cohorts are doing a lot of good research. But I've been talking to a lot of people. In fact last week I did three webinars on how to manage a remote workforce. And one of the things that I've heard from participants is that there is so much confusion right now. It's the remote worker really doesn't ... they're not comfortable. There's a lot of anxieties, frustration, "I've got to take care of my kids and I got homeschool." When it comes to communications, I'm on a bunch of video calls and we all know that meetings are not productive.

Lou Quinto:

And so I think more people feel like they're spinning their wheels during this whole thing, but I do believe that everyone's starting to find their cadence now after six weeks. And I think it's important that with the title of the report is, "What have we learned over the last six?" But I think it's exposed a lot of perhaps bottlenecks within the organizations that we have to lessons learned. We have to be able to write them down and say, "Okay, let's gather all of this data and let's look at how we can improve." I agree, but I tend to disagree. I've not talked to anyone who said, "Hey, we're just business as usual."

Craig Anderson:

Yeah. Well I think the one that really stuck out to me was the one about preexisting bottlenecks or being amplified in this. So what I think we're seeing is companies that were already inefficient, are becoming more inefficient through this because they don't have a crisp cadence of how they get things done at the company. So yeah, I can absolutely see how that would get maybe even worse when you don't have that day to day contact. People I've talked to say where they're losing productivity is those hallway encounters, right? Where you have some little problem and you just knock it out walking through the hallway and you get to the bottom of it. But I could also see you do I ... at least I'm finding, and I think the other folks in my house who are working at home through all this is your day starts earlier because you're not driving in and your day ends later.

Craig Anderson:

You're actually taking that time that was commute time and turning that into productivity time. But you're right, I think you start to pick up the cadence. And I think the longer term implications for remote work is, "What is this whole deal with having to teach your kids while you're trying to work?" Once that goes away, how does that impact this and how much more productivity can you get? I mean my kids are a lot older, but I can't imagine having a preschool or a young elementary kid trying to work and trying to keep them focused. So I can certainly see where that would have an impact.

Lou Quinto:

Yeah. And the other thing too is that even though the school term will technically be over in a couple of weeks for many school districts, now it's summer vacation, which is every parent's worst nightmare. Now there's not even learning to be able to distract the children with. It's going to be, "Go out and play. Well wait a minute, we can't go out and play because we got to maintain social distancing." So I really don't know. Those interruptions, I think, are going to be amplified just as we talked about some of the inefficiencies. That's again, my opinion.

Craig Anderson:

Yeah. No, I don't think you're wrong.

Lou Quinto:

Yeah. Let's jump into that second point. And that second point obviously is the work life balance that the remote workforce situation has provided. Craig, you've got two people in your house. What's it done with your work life balance?

Craig Anderson:

Yeah, well setting aside just getting used to the rhythms and cadences we had, my girlfriend was working out of the kitchen initially and we realized early on that's not going to work because my son and I are constantly going in there for coffee all day long. So we had to relocate the temporary office. But I think-

Lou Quinto:

You in the garage now?

Craig Anderson:

Yeah, that's right. Whoever hogs the internet the most has to work out of the garage. So I think the report said, and I think this is right and we touched on one of these points is, one, you've got time flexibility, right? So you've worked from home for a long time. I've worked from home a couple of years. You do get into that for good or for ill rhythms, say, "Wow, if I got to get it done, I'll just sit here and get it done." Or go off and do what you need to do and come back and sit at your desk until eight or nine or 10, whatever to get it done.

Craig Anderson:

But I do think that time flexibility is helping people. We have it pretty easy here in Indianapolis. Commute times aren't that bad, but if you're used to those hour long plus commutes in the big cities, that's gone away. And so that does move into either more work life balance or you put some of that time into family time and some of that time into work time. But then one thing I've noticed is every night you're sitting around the table together eating dinner because you do have that opportunity to talk. So I think from a work life balance standpoint, I can actually see that this has some real positive benefits for everybody involved.

Lou Quinto:

Yeah. Well and the biggest ... one of the things I warned people about is be careful because you may find yourself, and I think we mentioned this in a prior video, but you're putting work off, particularly at this time that you're learning. You're at the beginning of this learning curve on "How do I work from home?" And you may think, "Okay, wow, look at all this flexibility and you're helping the kids. You're doing things around the house and before you know it, it's late in the day. Now you're working till late at night." I always recommend to anybody who's new to remote workforce is that you've got to set those hours and you have to be very disciplined that, "These are the hours that I'm going to be working in." So that this way you can enjoy the work life balance by watching a movie at night with the family, having that dinner together as opposed to, "Well, I'll just grab a plate and I'm going to go back to my desk because I got a whole bunch of stuff I didn't get done today." You can destroy that as well.

Craig Anderson:

Yeah. All right, well the last piece that I thought was pretty important in there was talking about how companies are using technology effectively. And those companies that are using it effectively are finding more success. So what did you take away from that section of the report?

Lou Quinto:

I should have bought Zoom stock a lot sooner. So unfortunately I'm not a Congress person so I didn't see it coming. But no, I think in this particular instance when it comes to technology, the few aspects that I looked at is one, we're obviously using more video conferencing than we've ever done before. When we were back at the office, it was, "Let's jump on a conference call." Now because we want to see people, we want to keep that community going back and forth. It's, "Okay, let's get on a virtual call. And let's face it, face to face like you and I are doing right now is a lot better because I can see your facial expressions and we have that interaction versus just talking on the phone. We're learning a lot about technology, but I think at the same time a lot of companies are finding that some of their employees aren't technologically equipped at home.

Lou Quinto:

They may not own the proper equipment that helps them do their job efficiently in this particular setting. Their wifi or their broadband isn't strong enough and they're dropping off during video sessions and things like that. So they're going to have to go back to more emails or something, or jumping on a conference call as opposed to everybody else who's there, I'm on the phone talking. One of the things you talked earlier about expenses that companies have, this is going to be an expense that if companies expand that remote workforce, providing them the proper technology in order to get their jobs done, is going to have to be something they're going to have to consider.

Craig Anderson:

Oh yeah. Well and I took away from that section was the importance of creating the office online. Because as you know, Lou, I'm big on employee engagement and how do you do that when everybody's distributed? And they talked about regularly scheduled meetings, which I know you're big meeting guy. Active social experiences, where are the happy hours or just lunchtimes together? And even putting the training online and doing it in such a way that you're building that rapport that's so important to building employee engagement, or at least one piece of building employee engagement. Because I like to get it in every time. It's being very intentional about how you build that strategy and that cadence of meetings and trainings and unofficial time so that you can start to build up those key relationships. Because no matter how much work life balances this generates, you're still spending the preponderance amount of your day at work. So I think it's important to build that social aspect that you're not getting in the office into the whole system. So.

Lou Quinto:

Yeah, without question. Let me ask you, what key takeaways based upon what have we learned over these last six weeks when it comes to the remote workforce in business in general?

Craig Anderson:

Well ... and I don't want to ... I probably said something different on our video when we first started talking about remote work, but as we keep getting deeper into this, it really becomes clear that remote work is going to be viewed very differently on the other side of this. As we see that people can be productive, as we can see things are getting done. You shared an article with me today about a company that had already planned to shift to the point where 25% of the people were in the office at any one time.

Craig Anderson:

And I think that's going to change and companies are going to start to look at this and figure out how much money they can save if they don't have to have a 100000 feet of office space, that they can just have 20000 square feet of office space. That's a savings to the bottom line of the company. And we're going to start seeing those shifts because people are going to realize, "Gosh, we can get business done this way. Let's try and figure out how we do it." So I think that first point around productivity is an interesting one to keep an eye on.

Lou Quinto:

Yeah. And even when the green light goes off, no matter what state you're in, I still think companies are going to protect themselves by saying, "Even though we can get back to work, we're not inviting everyone back to the office because we're going to have to do social distancing.." So I think we've learned over the last six weeks and I think it's important we continue to build on those learnings. I mean like you said, you may change your tune from something you said in an earlier video when we first started remote working. And I think that's the way every company ... my key takeaway is we're still learning and every company has to look at what's going on. And in addition too, each company has to look at what's been exposed based upon their business model over the last six weeks so that this way they can try to fill those holes in the boat so to speak, so that as we move forward, and if a remote workforce is something that we want to do, is that we do it correctly.

Craig Anderson:

Yeah. And I'll say if I haven't said it, we'll link to this report in the show notes. It's a great report. I think it was about 25 pages long, but there's some really good findings, especially if you're starting to figure out, "Where do we need to make our company shift going forward?"

Lou Quinto:

Sure, yeah. There's definitely a lot of good things out there. We'll, always post things on our website that will enable you to dig a little deeper into our subject. With that, we hope you've enjoyed today's episode of Q and A on breakthrough leadership when it comes to, "What have we learned over the last six weeks?" If you've liked this podcast, please like, and share with individuals who you think this might be beneficial to. In addition, don't forget that all of these webcasts can be downloaded on your favorite podcast platform as an audio file. So we hope that you're getting through this situation extremely well. As I tell everybody, keep your hands washed and keep your distance. I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig Anderson:

And I'm Craig Anderson.