This might describe you. At the start of 2020, you went to the office every day. In April of that year, you worked from home every day. Now you are, or will be, doing both. Whether you will be in the office most days or at home most days, you need to create the dual work routines that will serve you, the team, and your productivity
The Big Idea
There are advantages inherent in working in proximity to others, and advantages to a solitary situation. If your work is or will be become a hybrid of these situations, you need to acknowledge those differences. If you treat all workdays the same, regardless of work location, you are missing a significant chance for improvement in your work quality and productivity – and perhaps your enjoyment of your work too.
Determine Advantages
While your specific situation may vary, there are some general observations about what the advantages might be for the days you are in the office, including the chance for more casual interaction and for face-to-face meetings and conversations. Similarly, when you are home, there likely different advantages like being able to do more uninterrupted work. But if the schedule, task-lists, and flow of work are the same regardless of the day and your location, it really won’t matter.
If you come to the office and have no interaction, why did you come in?
If you are home all day and can never work on an individual project because of meetings, maybe you should have been in the office?
If you have thought about these or similar questions or you are nodding in agreement as you read them, take some time to think about this question:
Which parts of my work are best suited for which working environment?
With that answer, you can begin crafting a new set of work routines for when and where you do which parts of your work.
Make Adjustments
Hopefully some of these adjustments can be small tweaks that you can begin experimenting with yourself. If so, try them! See if your ideas play out in your real work situation. Share what you are learning with others too – as your successes can likely be repeated for them as well.
Some of your ideas however you won’t be able to implement alone. They will require others to make similar changes. For example, if you want to suggest that project meetings happen in person, you will need to schedule them on the days everyone is in the office. You likely can’t make that change unilaterally, even if you are the project manager.
Gain Agreement
After doing some testing on your own, and finding some success, share the question you asked yourself with the group:
Which parts of our work are best suited for which working environment?
Asking that question will lead to valuable conversation and insight for the group. Then you can share the individual successes you are already having, which will help you collectively create some new approaches, schedules, and plans.
Bringing everyone into these conversations after you have done some personal testing will give more credibility to your question and give you some examples to share. Make sure you don’t present the question in an egotistical way, but in an open curious way. Share your successes, rather than leading with “Here is what is working for me, and I need you to agree with these new ideas.”
The goal is agreement and commitment to some changes. When you act as a change agent through modeling and encouragement, you will have a better chance of gaining agreement to some new ideas that will support your success and help others, too.
Create Supporting Routines
As the team agrees to some new work routines, everyone will be more intentional about creating more productivity for themselves and the team. Your new agreements and approaches can create a chance for healthy accountability – where everyone is working together to find the best time and way to do things, not just haphazardly adding new things to a calendar or task-list.
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