COVID

In Part 1, I examined how COVID dramatically changed our world in terms of telework specifically and remote life in general. In this exploration I want to share some of my research to date. I must thank my current colleagues for their discovery efforts and conversations regarding these issues. When we examine teleworking, we find that important relationships must be created and/or nurtured to bring success to organizations that use this technique. There are best practices to be learned in terms of communication, flexibility, standards, and team building. Communication best practices include managing both face-to-face and online situations, while flexibility best practices help in achieving work-life balance. Best practices in standards and team building relate in part to collaborative relationships and adjustments to new or distributed operations. The best practices must be driven by a set of rules for operating that should be driven by shared understanding between leaders and members. I use those terms instead of employee and supervisor because I am basing this approach on the theory of leader-member exchange (LMX). LMX is a relationship-based approach for managing teams. It drives leader effectiveness through developing dyadic (two-way) relationships with members. I believe the discussion is important, as some organizations have made the decision to greatly reduce or to abandon telework. In fact, we see stories everywhere about workers who would rather resign that come back to the office. These are issues organizations must deal with in one way or another. NOTES: I offer this series to help leaders and members reinforce what we know, discover what we do not know, and identify what we should ask questions about. The results are intended to assist everyone to deal with positive and negative aspects of telework. This series is my educational journey that I hope is valuable to you.

We all realize that COVID dramatically changed our world in terms of telework specifically and remote life in general. We are still learning new things about balancing family and work, trustworthiness, performance, and accountability issues, important changes and discoveries about the way the world goes to work, and discussions of the dynamic ways people communicate. Along with several colleagues, much of my research has turned to examinations of the reasons for resistance to telework to shed light on how COVID has changed us. So far, information from qualitative interviews concerning telework, an evaluation of employee engagement now and in the future, and ideas and actions that should prove helpful to organizations are at the heart of the discovery. A variety of issues or concerns are evident, including distractions, fatigue, accountability, communication, productivity, technology, coping, work hours, resources, and telework plans or the lack thereof. The analyses I speak of are intended to help leaders to reinforce what we know, discover what we do not know, and identify what we should ask questions about. We can use these results to assist us in working through positive and negative aspects of telework. This is the first in a series, but I don’t know how many parts there will be. I am simply looking forward to the educational journey.