With a new year ahead of us, SWAYworkplace looks forward to helping the modern enterprise evolve to an agile and female-forward. If you or your business intends to accomplish big things this year, take a few steps towards making your office environment more flexible and innovative.
1. Empower a Remote Workforce
Tap into the creativity across the country by looking for employees outside your primary city. Collaboration technology has long surpassed the prevailing fixed model of work -- a model that says you need to be at your desk in an office to have value for a company.
One immediate benefit? With fewer employees working on-site, your team will learn how to better communicate and collaborate virtually, and you might even save some funds usually spent on outfitting or maintaining a fixed office space.
2. Get Comfortable with Tech Tools for Agile Businesses
No business cultivates creativity through micromanagement -- this only leads to stifled workers who stick to safe answers they know their managers will approve. Now that you’re empowering remote and agile workers, your teams need to get comfortable with the modern technology required for effective collaboration.
Remote and agile teams can avoid common stereotypes by learning to over-communicate in a virtual world and plan for regular check-ins with their teammates. As we’ve discussed on our blog before, invisible biases exist causing those on-site to devalue the work of remote teammates, despite evidence to the contrary. One way to conquer this bias is by creating progress reports and deadlines for your team.
Simple solutions include GSuite and Microsoft OneDrive which allow for real-time collaboration. Slack or Teams lets you talk to your coworkers throughout the day, and each of these have video chat options when you need to see each other’s face.
In 2020, SWAYworkplace will provide a platform for employees and enterprises to learn important digital competencies, as well as cognitive skills to bring creativity to more traditional fields.
3. Embrace the Video Call
While this could be included under tech tools, video calls deserve their own 2020 resolution. If you or your teammate works remotely, you need to embrace video tools for communication. While it may seem like a hassle to be on camera, “face-to-face” meetings will help you understand each other better over time.
In a remote work environment, you can’t just poke your head over a cubicle wall to ask a question. Sometimes chat works well to find a quick answer (if you and your coworkers respond in a timely manner), but other times you’ll need to hash out a project in person. Stop sending complicated emails back and forth, and just get on a video call. You’ll see each others’ facial expressions and watch how the other works.
Always be somewhat camera/microphone ready (just like you would in an office), and embrace the power of video!
4. Find a Space that Works for You
If you’re planning to work remotely either part- or full-time, or have already started, make 2020 the year of excellence in productivity.
Each person works best in different environments. While some people need to be sitting at a designated desk in their home office, others find local coworking spaces, libraries, or coffee shops. Surprisingly, many find they produce the best work from the couch (despite ergonomic issues with this posture), and a few remote workers even write from their local supermarket!
If you plan on working remotely, you should learn where you’re the most productive in order to replicate the environment when you have big projects.
5. Support Each Other!
As companies become more agile and female-forward, the need for virtual mentorship grows. We can better prepare women for the workforce by teaching the confidence necessary to become agile employees. We grew up with a work model biased against women and their need for flexibility, but with support from other expert women, we can change the way we work. Seek out, join, or create a locally-based, high-performance networking team.
Connect with SWAY to Build Your Agile Workplace
At SWAY, we’re committed to building a female-forward, agile model of work throughout the country. With the collaboration possible through today’s technology, enterprises and employees will see more innovation over time as they move towards a gender-balanced world of work.
If you’re looking for more suggestions on embracing a new model for work in 2020, contact us at hello@swayworkplace.com, and let’s connect.