- Getting communication right means shifting from work life balance to work life integration
- Flexibility doesn’t mean lower expectations
- Clear boundaries and a collectivistic approach benefits everyone
- Successful remote work culture requires trust
What a difference a few years makes. Remote work is the new, and likely, permanent normal. Going back to commuting and overpriced commercial real estate seems silly, these days.
Remote work also comes with great advantages for workers and appears to have no impact on productivity. Workers have more autonomy than ever. They can work from anywhere, they have more career options, the commute is very short, and who doesn’t like keeping their PJ pants on for most of the day? From a business leader’s perspective, lower overhead means fewer expenses, the talent pool is much deeper and geographically boundless, and advancing technology means very few projects can’t be completed from a distance. This all seems great doesn’t it?
Well, there are some unintended consequences to remote work that we haven’t properly thought through. Remote work makes it harder to learn, connect, and collaborate and often comes with distractions. These consequences are outcomes of the blurring of work and life boundaries. This blurring is creating the social and relational implications we are experiencing while toiling away from our home offices or kitchen tables.
If managed well, remote work can be very rewarding and motivating. Unfortunately, I believe most of us have been duped and aren’t benefiting from remote work as much as we hoped. Why? We experienced a cosmic shift in how we communicate that most organizations ignored. When the primary communication channel changed, the way we connect and communicate also needed to change. But most organizations continued with business as usual and we are now experiencing the negative impact of not properly adapting our communication processes to the physical and social distance.
To be clear, I don’t want to see millions of people return to the office. There’s no point. Instead, I work with businesses to help make this shift work for them. And it is also important to recognize that some people are always going to be happier working in person. They want to feel the energy of their colleagues and go through the routine of coming and going each day, creating a clear separation from their personal lives. And for now, these people can and should seek out in-person work environments. But for those who prefer to stay home, this issue is far more communicatively complex than most realize.
Remote work is here to stay, but we have to rethink, adapt and prioritize how we communicate so we can properly create a productive, relational and supportive remote culture. I believe business leaders did not properly think through how their company culture or their employees’ lives would be impacted by remote work. And in their defense, we had no choice but to all jump into the deep end together, at the same time as shutdowns emptied cities and offices everywhere. We didn’t have the time to think through how we should adapt communicatively and culturally. But we do have the time now.
So, what does a proper remote work culture and communication look like?
First, let’s think about the logistical changes needed in work culture for remote work to function properly. We need to recognize that as soon as we moved the office into our homes, we deeply integrated our work and personal lives more than ever before. Work life balance is no longer a thing, and instead, we have work life integration. I think this is a healthier way to approach work than the work life balance perspective we became used to. For many of us, there was never any balance. The reason for this is because for a balance to occur, we have to give up part of our personal life and part of our work life, causing many of us to constantly feel like we’re failing someone or something. The work life balance idea is not realistic when we are connected to work via our phones 24/7 and the office is in our spare bedrooms or at our dining room tables.
Business leaders and employees need to lean into the work life integration idea because it’s how remote work will function best. To do this, start by creating flexible boundaries based on deadlines and when people best focus on the task in front of them. This gives everyone agency regarding when and where they get work done. As long as the work is getting done by the deadline and with respect to people on their team’s time, then who cares when and where it happens? But this requires you to TRUST your employees. Trust they will do quality work and meet deadlines. Don’t assume that most people are going to take advantage of the organization.
In addition to trust, for work life integration to work well for both sides of the equation, you have to think collectively not individualistically. This means it’s not just about you and your own schedule, you have to also consider when the rest of your team and clients work. Businesses who have prioritized communication will set up overlapping work times that respect time zones to be as considerate as possible to every team member and their clients. This does, however, require serious consideration, some time planning, and communicating clear expectations from the start.
Expectations provide boundaries and people love boundaries because they reduce uncertainty. People also love having some freedom to adapt within those boundaries so they can go to the doctor in the middle of the day or run to the grocery store. Clearly stated expectations and coordinating overlapping time periods serve as those boundaries.
If you can adjust your culture to this flexible structure, you’ll create a strong foundation for meaningful communication to occur, resulting in a more supportive, connected and productive work culture. Think about it this way: skilled people know what they need to do, so trust them. They want to get their work done, and they don’t want to leave their colleagues hanging. Show them you believe this, and more often than not, they’ll find ways to over deliver to maintain some flexibility. This may seem radical to some, but we have experienced a radical shift that requires radical adaptation.