#WFA (Work From Anywhere) absolutely includes working “at the office” as well as at home, “anywhere” includes those places. The distinction I seek to make is that once employers and employees fully embrace the concept of empowering and enabling working where we do our best work (wherever that is and whether with human face to face contact or not), then entire paradigms of work and place will change.
From my last post on #WFA on 4 September 2020
Are you a leader making decisions about where your people work from? From what I’ve expressed in the quote above and earlier posts, do you believe in #WFA? If you are at least open to considering #WFA as your core context and driver for making such decisions, then my advice today is simple.
Ask your people about #WFA
Further, ask them lots of questions at different levels. #WFA is about a “both/and” conversation, ask open and expansive questions (not”are you ready to come back to the office Y/N” as I have seen!) from a place of curiosity, every human is different and has different needs.
Once you have openly and curiously asked a set of questions, only then design and create a framework with boundaries as well as flexibility, through which you build back better to a way of working that is best for the company and works for each individual. Some example questions:
- What work do you do best from the office ? from home?
- What would you like to keep from the time working from home?
- What do you feel has been missing (and that you would like to have again) from your work by not being in the office?
- To what level do you feel you want/need to be around people while you work? (give a scale for the introverts/ambiverts/extraverts to measure this)
- To what extent/frequency do you feel would work best for you and in your role in terms of balancing working from home or coming to the office ? (give multiple options here and also encourage open answers under “other”
These are off the top of my head. The key here is to model #OpenLeadership in the way you approach this, to Be Brave, Hungry, Open, Humble. Ask your people what they want and need, then (and only then) create a flexible model that works for your business, your organisation.