Covid-19 puts the home office model to the test

Currently, we have the technological and digital tools that allow us to carry out most of our professional activities remotely, that is, through the home office.

However, there are organizations that have not yet made the leap towards this work model. And, precisely, the situation in the face of Covid-19 has exerted "pressure" for this to happen. And it is certainly the only way to keep moving forward, without stopping the day-to-day operation of a business.

What to do to implement an effective and productive home office strategy?

1.-Breaking paradigms. First of all, we must break with some paradigms, such as:

"The employees of an organization require continuous supervision so that the activities are executed."

It is an outdated paradigm; However, if it is true, we are talking about a very basic level of collaborators. It depends on their maturity but, at the same time, on the leader, feeling that they have responsible people who can work without their physical or face-to-face supervision.

When working face to face with a collaborator, the leader has many elements to assess his performance (punctuality, cordiality, good relations with the work team). But when you don't have the person around, the only element you have to evaluate that person is the result: you made it or you didn't.

A company becomes very effective when it evaluates its staff based on results, under a management by objectives model, where employees know that no one is calculating how many hours they worked. The only thing the company knows is whether or not they met the activities and objectives to be achieved.

"People who work from home work less."

The home office model began to be implemented in the United States in the 1980s. In those 40 years in the most developed countries there are more evolved companies that have applied the model and one of the things they detected is that people who work from home They tend to work longer hours, for a simple reason: savings in travel time, there is no time limit ... In fact, one of the recommendations for people who work from home is precisely to establish work hours, to avoid working twelve hours a day.

2.-Do Pilot Tests. Many companies do not do it for fear of the result.

I recommend doing a pilot test, selecting an area of ​​the organization where employees do not need to be there in person; later, choose 5 more mature, more trusted collaborators to start this test. And, of course, measure the results afterwards. If companies do this, they will be positively surprised, people will be productive and they will commit twice.

3.-Define very clearly the results and metrics that collaborators have to achieve. It is not just about telling them what to do, but what to achieve and how they are going to measure it. In this way, it is the responsibility of the collaborator to achieve the result, becoming an accountable person.

4.-Training of leaders. Leaders must learn to delegate, supervise, and give feedback to their people when working in remote settings. In a home office model, there must be supervision, there must be phone calls, teleconferences, and, perhaps, some face-to-face meeting, if possible. This is a different type of supervision.

5.-Feedback. It is important that leaders ask their collaborators how they are feeling under this work model. Not everyone has a suitable profile for this, either because their family environment at home is not optimal or for other reasons, so it is important that the employee's feedback is important to fine-tune strategies; there will be things that can be corrected and others not. If the employee does not have a suitable space to work, it may not be feasible. You have to be in contact with the collaborator to know if it is working or not Expansion of the Home Office Model in companies, after Covid-19

The current situation is working as a "pilot test" in the implementation of the home office model in many organizations. The current health context is forcing us to make people work from home, so it serves as a temporary pilot.

However, after this situation, it is important to take advantage of the moment to measure the results. It cannot happen that organizations, after living this experience, do not undertake the task of measuring the results regarding whether they improved or not. I think many companies are going to realize that, in terms of productivity, they are not losing, but winning. There are many committed people working from home.