Is Working From Home Really for Everyone?

Is Working From Home Really for Everyone?

by | Sep 29, 2021 | Culture, Trust

There are still many people who do not want to work from home.

Not every day. It’s not that they don’t want to work remotely; it’s just that they don’t want to work from home all the time.

Why? Because they need time off from their home life. It can sometimes be easy to draw lines between personal and professional life when working from home, and other times not.

People were faced with the challenge/opportunity of working remotely when the pandemic began. For many people, this was their first experience working from home, and they were unprepared.

There are numerous advantages, but it can be challenging to focus when you do not have the best possible home environment. This results in working longer hours and added stress from juggling multiple responsibilities and spreading your attention across various things.

When working from home it becomes increasingly hard to separate personal issues from your professional life.

What would you do if you suddenly had a mental breakdown during an online peer meeting?

  • Say you have a bad connection and leave?
  • Chat about your need to retrieve for a while and shortly explain you are dealing with a personal issue that you have failed to handle better?
  • Continue to participate in the call despite being visibly unwell and turn the participants’ attention towards you and what is causing you distress?

Is it possible that depending on the workplace culture your answer might be very different?

The fact is there is no correct answer. But one thing is certain: being vulnerable should be acceptable. Moreover, given the current situation, everyone is facing their own challenges when dealing with the COVID pandemic.

As we mentioned in our last article The War for Talent, it’s no wonder that many people are actually considering changing jobs or even careers. Many are the reasons: a change in priorities, feeling lack of support and safety from employers throughout the pandemic, a demand for better work culture, a need to adjust their job to suit lifestyle preferences, just to name a few.

Even though it has also been becoming increasingly hard for employees to set clear boundaries when working from and at home, these should be a priority and one of the first steps to take when creating a healthy work-life balance.

“I do not want to work from home and do not have a physical office. Where can I work from?”

The options at the moment depend on where you are located given the current COVID restrictions:

  • If possible, choose a co-working space close to your house. You can discuss your situation and talk about the possibility of the company covering the cost of the workspace.

Otherwise, you can find a coffee shop or a library and retreat into a quiet place when taking calls and having meetings.

  • If you are unable to leave the house and have no other available workspace, create your work bubble. Make your boundaries known to everyone and find a comfortable and private workspace to work in.

As much as possible, make sure that your sleeping space isn’t visible on your eyesight to avoid feeling easy and drawn to sleep.

And, because simple things work best, here are some helpful tips and habits to remember:

  • Remember to avoid digital fatigue and to plan strategies for achieving daily or weekly professional objectives and goals. Limit screen time by finding other activities and pastimes to do besides watching TV or Netflix.
  • Allot at least 10 minutes of not checking your mobile phone or any device after waking up and 30 minutes of digital detox before going to bed.
  • Integrate social interactions to avoid loneliness, whether it’s a virtual coffee or a weekly dinner with close friends.
  • Do exercise and schedule some self-care time in your calendar. Don’t limit yourself from allotting time for self-care, as it is imperative to combat fatigue even after these trying times.
  • Always keep yourself hydrated.

These are minor details that significantly impact people’s lives in ways that not everyone is aware of.
This brings up the issue of mental health, which many people have been struggling with even before the COVID pandemic.

Fear for your own safety and the safety of your loved ones, having to face an unknown future, and months of social isolation all add up to thousands of people feeling emotionally distressed.

Mental health is a necessity, but it remains a taboo subject for many people. It is up to each of us to break it by seeking professional help and sharing our needs with those with whom we work and live, as it is not always easy to go through it alone.

The less we know about ourselves and our needs, the more likely we are to experience burnout and depression.

It may still be a challenge for most people to get to know themselves; that’s why you must allow yourself to rest from working all the time and give yourself that much-needed self-care and alone time. This will help you relax and rejuvenate and provide you with time to realize and reflect on things that you’re not able to notice because of being focused on too much work.

Emotional intelligence is important for finding a work-life balance and helps us deal with strong emotions like anxiety and stress.

Keep in mind that being mentally healthy does not mean always feeling upbeat and happy. Be aware of toxic positivity which is vastly spread across social media channels and adopted in many workplaces nowadays. It indirectly promotes the concealment of negative emotional states and mental/psychological illnesses, leaving those who suffer from any of these with the pressure of pretending they are “doing great”. Even on a job platform like LinkedIn, professionals try to portray themselves as balanced people with successful careers, although this is not always the case.

Again, this is why we need to set boundaries between work time and personal time. We all need to understand that we have our own pace and don’t need to be too pressured by other people’s timelines.

Making yourself vulnerable has always been interpreted as lacking emotional intelligence, strength, and reliability. But is it true?

When it comes to sharing your own problems and personal life at work, use common sense and share as much information as you find adequate and feel comfortable with: allow yourself to be transparent when possible in sharing what is going on rather than having to lie about it.

Nowadays, it takes more courage to be vulnerable than it is to simulate being happy. And with every action, each of us helps set the standard for our workplace.

How many barriers can you break in your organization to make everyone feel comfortable being themselves?

Allow yourself to be human. And allow others to do the same.

Cheers,
Sandra Gouveia

P.S. WE CHALLENGE YOU:

Every year on October 10th, World Mental Health Day is celebrated. Consider what you can do this year to make your employees feel like they work in a safe environment where they can have open and honest conversations about their mental and emotional health. One simple action that could help you as an organization to achieve more mental health inclusiveness and transparency.

The Rise of the Semi-Retired Life

The Rise of the Semi-Retired Life

by | Sep 6, 2021 | Employment

Retire in 30 years or semi-retire today?

Retirement – the idea that one should withdraw from work at a specific age – is dead!

It’s an obsolete concept; it is flawed at best.

Retire in 30 years or semi-retire today?

Retirement – the idea that one should withdraw from work at a specific age – is dead!

It’s an obsolete concept; it is flawed at best.

When physical work dominated the labour force, the concept of retirement emerged. Workers were forced to retire when they couldn’t perform the physical work any longer. And although they remained an important part of the community, they were no longer able to work full-time.

As a child, I spent my summers visiting my grandmother. In her younger years, she would still help out in the family, cooking every day and putting her abilities at the service of the community. In some cultures, retirement takes an even more extreme form: the elderly are abandoned for death when they are no longer able to serve their families and become an economic burden.

In today’s world, is retiring well even possible for most of us?

Shouldn’t we all aspire to something else? I have pondered over this and I have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to retire. I enjoy what I do too much to stop doing it!

In fact, here is a question for you: why would you stop doing something you enjoy?

I’ve decided to aim for something different.

Allow me to elaborate:

If retirement is obsolete, why is it still such a popular concept?
Why has no one challenged it over the last few years?
I’ve met a few people that said: “No, I am not ready to retire yet”. I saw a surgeon retire at 95 years of age – this is way past the ‘consensus’ or the ‘acceptable’ retirement age.

I don’t want to retire.

More and more people are working into their 70s and 80s. Some workers do this out of necessity, but others simply enjoy what they do too much to stop.

Yet, retirement is still something that many people aspire for. For many, it is just a target, an ‘end date’ for their misery. It is something that helps to make the unbearable present a little more bearable.

How many people do you know that love what they do? And how many of these people talk about retiring?

What are we doing so wrong in the workplace to make employees say, “You know what, I can’t wait to retire.” In other words: “I need a deadline. I need a deadline for this misery.”

This is an unfortunate reality: in many countries, where the retirement age is on average 67 years, people will spend 35 to 45 years working. If we are spending this much time working, shouldn’t we aspire for work that is fulfilling? Instead of something that we see simply as an obligation.

It should be much more than that. You may notice that when people finally really meet this ‘deadline’, they aren’t always as happy as they thought they would be. Are people more excited about the idea of retiring than they are about their actual retirement?

Is the concept of retirement actually more enjoyable than the reality?

I’ve also realized that I don’t want to work 10, 12, 14 hours every day anymore!

So, I’ve come to the conclusion for myself: I don’t want to retire, I want to semi-retire, possibly this week.

And as I write this, I’m in Spain, traveling and bringing my work with me. I’m now sitting at a restaurant, outside, in one of many plazas in Madrid, taking a long lunch break.

I’ve made the decision to ‘retire’ a bit every day.

I enjoy staying alert, keeping fit and sharp.

Granted there will be 14-hour workdays and that’s just part of the game. There may be some weeks where I have to work 60-80 hours but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Instead, what I aspire for today is to work 4-5 hours a day, every day.

I don’t even mind having to work a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday. In fact, I’m a creative person and it does happen that I get the brightest ideas outside the “usual working time”. And why wouldn’t I jot these ideas down and work on them on a Saturday?

It comes down to working when you feel the most inspired and productive.

I would happily create a video for my clients on a Saturday or Sunday.

Why wouldn’t I take 15 minutes out of my lunch break to do that? And then, why not enjoy the rest of the hour or even Monday afternoon off?

Whilst I am writing this I am picturing some of the great inventors, a great influencer, someone like Leonardo Da Vinci, having an idea and thinking to himself: “Nope, it’s a Sunday, I should not be thinking of work today.” Think about it…

Truth is, life is much more different today than it was 50 years ago. Even five years ago, actually, scrap that, make it two years ago.

Don’t we need to aspire for new models of working?

In reality, I have been aiming to work five hours a day since January. I have had days off and I don’t normally work on Fridays, especially to compensate for some of the crazy early/late hours I do while working remotely with clients on the other end of the globe.

For tomorrow’s (Friday) early retirement dose, I have scheduled doing some physical activity in the morning and then visiting San Sebastian for the first time (which I suspect won’t be the last…).

For me, the new model is working a little bit every day so I don’t feel tired and dying for the weekend.

I have come to realize that I don’t need as many holidays as I used to. I can take them whenever I want and also because I’m structuring my day around my personal, professional and social needs rather than on my work only.

I’m not where I want to be yet, to feel comfortable about taking off four to five days every month. But I am getting there and making more progress than if I was doing the alternative +40-hour workweek.

Working myself to death in my 30s and 40s is no longer an option.

Especially if all that is in lieu of a possible retirement when I reach the age of 60, 70 or even 80.

Looking back over my experience I have noticed that I am much more balanced. I have lost some weight, I eat healthier, overall, I feel less exhausted than I used to. More than that, I have the feeling that my productivity almost doubled. One of the biggest areas I have noticed an increase is in my creativity. I don’t remember the last time I felt as creative as today.

If you are a leader, when you go to work tomorrow, look around, if you are working remotely, look into the cameras:

Are the people genuinely happy to be there or are they just waiting for the ‘deadline’?
Are they counting down the days to retirement?
Shouldn’t we aspire to create better work environments where employees feel fulfilled?
Some more Food for Thought this week.

Would be happy to hear your insights and opinions on this subject.

Back to you soon,
Dom

P.S. This post was written a few months ago. While writing this piece, I was sitting at Mica Restobar in Madrid. A beautiful place with great service, incredible food, and super friendly people. Today I am sitting across the ocean on the beautiful Portuguese island of Madeira.

Full Time = Dinosaurs?

Full Time = Dinosaurs?

by | Aug 31, 2021 | Employment

Are practices like 40-hours/week, 9-5 work schedule, and permanent employment heading towards extinction?

So I had a conversation with one of my peers the other day and although I had similar talks in the past, I felt it worth writing about this particular event.

She currently works in a C-level position at a startup.

She called and said:

“Hmm, my boss called me and was excited to share the news that we could all go back to working full time.”

At that time, the company had reverted to reduced working hours, given the extensive impact of the pandemic. After working from home part-time for a couple of months, she had already gotten used to it. She then continued: “Dom, what if I don’t want to go back? How the hell do I tell my boss that I don’t want to go back full time?”

Initially, I was surprised to hear this. Most people choose to work at startups because you can get a different experience you do not get in other organizations. Enthusiasm, passion, hope, the fast-paced and diverse nature of work are all traits that are synonymous with startups.

This begs the question: Why don’t people want to come back?

Which brings us to the next two questions:

  • What can we do to make people want to come back?
  • What can we do to have people excited, eager for an email, call, text, or slack?

You know the kind of excitement I am talking about. The same people get when they camp outside or queue in line to see the latest Star Wars or to buy the new iPhone.

What should we as an organization and business do to ensure that our employees and customers are also queuing outside?

What should we be doing to have people saying “This is where I want to work! Here, because they have listened to and supported us throughout this crisis.”

Another thought occurred to me:

What is wrong with not wanting to work full time?

In this day and age, everyone has access to some of the most powerful productivity tools available. We, like many other organizations, have already been operating for months with many staff working part-time.

Is it better to prioritize quantity above quality? Is it really necessary to work full-time in order to achieve our goals? Are we at risk of alienating an army of high-quality, hard-working, talented individuals who could transform our business simply because they do not want to work 5 days a week, every week?

This begs a new question: What do we value?

Shouldn’t we be aiming for people that consistently excel?

Shouldn’t we strive to create settings in which our employees can thrive? Environments that have a direct impact on efficiency?

And finally, is it really necessary to measure whether or not people work full time in 2021?

I personally don’t care about full-time vs. part-time work. I believe it’s time to stop measuring productivity in hours spent on the job and start measuring employee success in terms of timely meeting their work goals.

I recall spending far too many days at my desk simply because I had to be there, even if I had completed my work for the day, week, or even month.

And I know what you’re thinking: “Why didn’t you ask for more work?” or “How come you didn’t take the initiative to work on other projects?”

Believe me, I did it plenty of times. However, too many times I heard: “Chill, relax, you’re making everyone else look bad!” So eventually you become institutionalized.

We should never fear being labelled an overachiever.

The point I am trying to make is this:

Why are we putting people in a position where they should choose between working full time or finding an alternative?

And, in doing so, do we alienate the ones we most need? Isn’t it better to have a great employee working part-time rather than losing them in the first place?

Looking back on my career, I can pinpoint plenty of instances where I left a particular position and sought a new source of inspiration because I felt under-challenged.

I frequently wonder what would have happened or how my career may have turned out if my boss at the time had just said: “Dom, if you are done with your job on Thursday, just go take the day off, maybe go to the beach, take that scuba diving course you mentioned”.

I think about parents, and how many of them would not have given up on their dream job if their employers had been more flexible in their work-life integration.

Just yesterday, I had a long-time friend, a recent dad, telling me that he is shifting to part-time, 20 hours a week. It fits in better with his new lifestyle choices and will allow him to spend more time with his daughter. The employer really supported him in his choice. In fact, the organization has been preparing for it over the last couple of months by training and upskilling other staff members to take over some of his tasks.

Sometimes, it may just be a matter of weeks or months, instances of minor priorities that are important to employees. It may be all they need to remain engaged and loyal to the organization.

I understand that some jobs/industries may require a 5-day workweek or 24/7 availability, but in my experience, when employees are given the freedom to choose their own tasks, plan their own schedules, and collaborate to meet weekly goals, they will more often than not find a way that works for everyone. More often than not, it results in a better solution than the one proposed by their leaders. More often than not, it results in increased employee autonomy, ownership, efficiency, and satisfaction.

So what’s wrong with having a C-level executive work part-time? Shouldn’t that be encouraged?

In some ways, wouldn’t that mean we’d have two or three more extra hands on deck? Maybe a couple more employees in our organization that we can now afford to hire, ready to step up if they are needed?

I am absolutely convinced that work-life integration is the way forward. A work world in which employees are empowered to contribute and think for themselves. To put it in Semco Style terms, a work world where employees are truly treated like adults. Responsible adults that are happy to solve challenges, contribute and come up with rational solutions that serve all stakeholders.

At the same time, I am left wondering, almost curious. How much great talent is out there who would love to work for your organization but maybe on a part-time basis. That person might be all you need to push the division to the next level. I hope we are not going to filter them out solely because they can get the job done in 3 days instead of 5…
I am going to leave you on this note with a lot of Food for Thought.

Cannot wait to hear your thoughts and comments in regards.

Back to you soon,
Dom

The War for Talent

The War for Talent

by | Aug 11, 2021 | Talent

The Organization’s War for Talent

After running a few sessions for organizations last week I realized I keep getting very similar questions about the talent, salaries, and employment forms. I felt it was time to share a few of my thoughts on how these matters have shifted.

Priorities of the workforce have been changing for quite some time now and Covid-19 definitely sealed the deal.

Covid times accelerated the change in organizational patterns and brought it to a point of no return where traditional models got to a point of “we are going to give this a go”. I can only say I saw this coming as my own vision of how things work and should work has always differed from the norm.

The Big Exodus of the Workforce

Countries like Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia have been built with the support of many immigrants. But, gone are the days when people had to move continents to find a job.

Even my own story is quite aligned to that, as my grandfather and father both migrated to find better opportunities. I, myself, migrated again in search of a better lifestyle and career opportunities first to Dubai and later on to Australia.

And now, after so many decades of people migrating in search of a better life, a dramatic shift is happening.

A few years ago, I was running a workshop with public servants from local, state, and federal agencies. I still remember the look on their faces when I mentioned that councils are in fact competing with each other as their clients (aka citizens) can move if they prefer the Customer Experience of other councils or states. As a matter of fact, I had left Germany, as I preferred the “Customer Experience” that Australia was offering.

For the first time in ages, more people are rather moving out of big cities than moving into the cities to look for employment.

I also mentioned that it wouldn’t be too long for people to be living location-independent. At the time, at best, people might have thought I was just a lunatic. Yet, less than 4 years later it is happening: the big exodus from cities and countries. Worldwide, cities like Milan, New York, Sydney or Melbourne are witnessing this big exodus of professionals moving to the countryside or even to other nations. And this, of course, shifts company culture and employment rules altogether.

The Rules of the Game Have Changed

In the past, the workforce had very clear functions, roles, and responsibilities.

Even the division of functions in married couples was mostly clear, one partner focusing on the career and the other on taking care of the house and family, right?

After the industrial revolution, entire industries were built on values like status and career progression. The number of hours that would cost and what it would do to the work-life balance of employees was always secondary.

If work got tougher and people complained then a big bonus or a pay rise would fix it. And when that didn’t do the trick anymore, employees would keep looking for other status symbols at the workplace: things such as the corner office, the paid company vacation, etc.

Well, nowadays, all these past rules are no longer applicable or at least they don’t work as well as they used to. Call me crazy but I see so many talented people on the job market that are literally bypassing the system by choosing different career paths and alternative forms of employment. They are challenging the playbook and I would even dare say they are playing a completely different game.

The old ways are gone now as we are entering a new era – an era I would like to call the “war for talent”.

The War for Talent Has Only Just Begun

There is now a category of workers that is no longer motivated by the same values that worked in the past. Nevertheless, entire industries keep trying to fight new challenges with the same old tools and strategies.

I recently read an article about the hospitality industry in England. Granted, Brexit took its toll, but overall, hundreds of thousands of people decided to turn their back on an industry that they lived and loved in some cases for decades.

Why would people want to quit a profession they love so dearly? It’s quite simple: their values have changed!

And I am not only talking about the younger generations I see this across the board. In the last 3 months, the amount of people that have told me they turned away from a better paying job in favor of a better work-life balance is the highest I have ever witnessed. In the past, I heard many people saying they sacrificed time with their families for a career opportunity (“only for the next two years” they would say) but today they are actually more than ready to take on a lower-paying job in exchange for lifestyle benefits.

I remembered one of my first employers in Sydney, moving the office from St. Leonard’s to the CBD, as it was going to make the employer more attractive for talent.

The new priority is no longer the base salary. The new priority is no longer the great location of the office. The new currencies of the labor market are flexibility and autonomy.

Attracting Talent: Multinationals vs Startups

I have to smile when I hear multinational companies saying they cannot attract talent. When I ask them what they are doing to attract more talent the two most common answers I get are that they either increase salaries or reduce entry requirements.

On the other hand, I see startups that haven’t been in the market for even a year being overrun with applications. What are these companies doing differently and why is talent choosing them over big, powerful, successful, established companies?

Quite simply, they know what the workforce wants and have their priorities straight! These companies understand their workforce and are ready to join the war. The war for talent!

These new companies understand that flexibility, team culture, purpose, work-life balance, autonomy are values that are more important and valued than salaries and status symbols, like the corner office.

Offer Lifestyle Over Career

This war is different as it defies the traditional boundaries and rules. And I am not debating here whether or not this is right or not, I am just sharing what I can observe from my own experience of working with organizations and individuals.

People will find ways to support their lifestyles and even move countries if they have to. Not to find the right employment as they can find that no matter where they are. They will move to find a better and more suitable lifestyle within their budgets.

In the past, the workforce was trying to get the best work-life balance out of the job they had. Nowadays, people look for jobs based on their lifestyle choices and are less likely to make sacrifices for a career than ever before.

Food for Thought…

Imagine your Sydney-based company is struggling to attract new, motivated, and highly-skilled talent. Is there a chance that some other company in a remote place like Bali or Hawaii is set up to offer this talent better working conditions? And more, this company doesn’t really care if their workforce is based in an expensive studio in Sydney or in a large property in Tasmania as they can run remotely. Would your company be able to compete?

What is your company doing to win the war for talent?