3 Old Habits That Were Shattered by the New, Virtual Workforce (The Future of Work Series, Part 4)

We started a new series on the future of work and began by sharing how the disruption that we’ve all feared is now here; the four demands the client of the future wants from you now; your outdated selling skills and how to fix them, and in this installment, we’re exploring how the conventional workforce has been shattered and through it, a rare opportunity to build beauty from ashes. You can now download the complete Future of Work eBook in a free, easy to read, downloadable PDF. Click here to get your copy!

Gallup conducted a study of over 62,000 teams and discovered a few essential keys to building a resilient and thriving workforce. Among the five critical elements were factors like having the right materials and equipment to do the job, opportunities for employees to do what they do best, and a real connection to the mission of the organization. 

The Gallup study foresaw something that none of us expected, COVID ushered us all into a workforce revolution. Everything about the conventional workplace was upended: the slog of a daily commute, the disappearance of innumerable vapid meetings (that suck the energy from even the most vibrant teams), and the tyranny of a 9-5 work habit. 

In hindsight, dragging ourselves to an office sometimes made employers seem like overlords and employees feel like they carried the soul of Bob Cratchit. 

We were overdue for a revolution. 

COVID, for all its horrendous implications, creates a unique opportunity for us to change the way we work. Following are three habits that were shattered through this experience and how we can begin building new habits that will create the workplace of tomorrow:

(I) The Tyranny of the 9-5 Habit is Broken Forever

It seems we at commonsku have been talking about it for years, but suddenly the subject got a center spotlight by everyone, blinding even us in its intensity. 

The subject? 

Workplace flexibility. In study after study, besides affordable insurance, “flexible work” is the number one benefit required by job seekers of their employers, and in many studies, flexibility ranks #1 even above health benefits. 

The work-from-home mandate forced us to emerge from the industrial age and into the 21st century with more of the world working in multiple time-zones and across a wide range of experiences. The tipping point for flexibility occurred around the disruption of the physical office space. Though this stark introduction to a “work from anywhere” environment was not how we would have wanted it to play out, the positive repercussions will have a dramatic impact on you and your team’s productivity. 

In fact, those who found themselves working from home for the first time discovered something that some of us who have worked from home have always known: Your focus is stronger, your life is richer (due to a blending of work and personal priorities), your contribution is freer, and your work is more fulfilling. 

Many who have tasted the benefit of working from home for the first time are now requesting from their employers that they remain working from home. A few distributors recently sent out surveys to their employees asking whether they would prefer to come back to an office or to remain working at home and in each case, over 75% preferred to remain working from home or at least have the option of working from home and going to the office when the situation demanded it. 

The long-short of it: work-from-anywhere is here to stay, which means that this shift from a 9-5 habit due to COVID is not temporary.  We all need to embrace the reality of a work-from-anywhere workforce in order to cultivate a thriving, flexible culture (we’ll have more on how to do this in a subsequent post). It’s time we gave our teams the autonomy they crave and in so doing, we’ll watch our progress soar. 

Your Tomorrow Task Today: Reimagine your office space. Instead of bland cubicle farms and work stations in open office environments, rethink what that space could become:

• A bigger showroom? 

• Ditch the ongoing desk set-up for a kick-ass, state of the art conference room? (And while we’re at it, can we kill the name, “conference room” to something more akin to what we will now “conference” about, maybe “idea incubator?”) 

• In this case, moving to a “hoteling” concept (work-from-anywhere) will require a significant change for those who are reliant on paper and tangible factors like shipping catalogs and samples to an office, but moving to a “hoteling” concept is vital for a workforce that requires flexibility (but it has been done by many in this business!)

• Perhaps you’ll do what our friends at Soul and Swag did and build a bar in your space?

• Create a rec room for employees to just hang out together? 

• Or, maybe you’ll imagine a space where collaboration with a client is actually creative and not merely another faceless meeting facade!

The good news, that dreary old office space can suddenly get a kick-ass makeover or you’ll decide you can save that money and invest it in resources that truly ignite sales (more on that below).

(II) The Jill-of-all-Trades Myth is Busted

If you read our previous post, Four Demands the Client of the Future Wants From You Now, you’ll realize, due to the intense expectations the fast-changing customer requires, you can no longer live in a world where employees do “a little bit of everything.”  

It’s so common in this business that it’s shocking how repeatable we make the mistake: We take an amazing employee and because they are so responsive, so capable, we saddle them with a little bit of everything. They are part traffic coordinator for difficult projects, part salesperson, part bookkeeper, part designer, and on and on and on …. We take the most capable employees and water their superpower down to a fraction of its strength.

Even “salespeople,” who have the most definable position in the industry, remain overburdened by tasks that prevent them from doing their best work. From tracking orders to preparing quotes and researching products, this fragmentation will no longer be tolerated by a client who expects the majority of your time to be spent on market research, not product research.

This multi-tasking, multi-roled myth is a residue leftover from the days when your only unique value prop as a business was the ability to source product. But now that everyone can source product with a mouse click, you can no longer function as a dull swiss army knife, from now on you must specialize. 

Specialization of roles -from traffic coordinators to salespeople to production coordinators and client management- will make you leaner and less bloated. (For a detailed dive into what this means for salespeople and the deeper work required for client research, check out our previous post regarding your outdated selling skills and how to fix them). 

Specializing roles will allow your entire operation to be fast enough to respond to the ever-increasing need for speed. Give your team the opportunity to cultivate a mastery over their superpower and they will return that gift to you fourfold.

Your Tomorrow Task Today: Build your new org chart that specializes in roles and use it as a map to begin making small steps toward role specialization.  

(II) The “Tolerable” Tech Stack Topples

So far, as an industry, we’ve mostly been getting by with a frighteningly outdated, Frankenstein tech stack. From our land-locked operating systems to our communication tools (mostly email), they once served a purpose, but that’s from a bygone era that now seems so far away. 

Zoom meetings and video calls are now the norm. Instant messaging tools like Slack and text messages are ubiquitous. Some of us were ahead of the curve and already adopting cloud-based tools but now every tool must be cloud-based, everything must be immediately accessible, all the time, by anyone on your team, from anywhere they want.

If the workplace has shifted to work-from-anywhere, then the tools that power our operation must be flexible themselves. For some who were, “waiting for when business will slow down” before they would adopt faster, smarter systems, this is an excuse you can no longer cling to … things have slowed down. Yes, as a platform provider we have a vested interest in saying all this but we’re saying it because it’s true (the Gallup poll stated it as a key component): The company that does not power its workforce to work at any time they please, anywhere they want, will be left behind. 

But most importantly, if our workforce is now remote, and if our tech tools do not do more than just make us leaner, if they do not cultivate intimacy, foster community, and allow for more efficient teamwork, then whatever culture we have will evaporate. The tools we use must not merely be built for a faster business, but for a connected business, one that operates with heart and head. 

 Your Tomorrow Task Today: Review all of your tech tools and realize they -not your office, not your showroom, not your fancy headquarters- are now your greatest asset. Make a list of those tools that need to be overhauled and build an action plan to replace them, or better yet, replace and consolidate.

The post-COVID picture for the thriving workforce is a beautiful one if we navigate this right. It’s a rare benefit derived from a difficult time for us all. 

But if we adapt ourselves to this new environment, we’ll all be more conscientious of our time, more aware of the needs of our colleagues, more empathetic with our customers, more fluid and faster in our work, and more balanced in our lives … all of which builds more value and authenticity -heart and soul- in our businesses. 

You can now download the complete Future of Work eBook in a free, easy to read, downloadable PDF. Click here to get your copy!