Slides from my webinar today exploring how to avoid disruption in digital employee experience and maximize effectiveness as many of us suddenly become remote workers. Covers remote work foundation, line of business apps, comms and collaboration systems, digital skills/training, and shifting to a culture of distributed work.
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A Global Crisis Has Come
• The situation with COVID-19 is rapidly changing day
by day, even hour by hour
• Businesses, schools, and other organizations are
being impacted by a steady stream of new cases
• Plans for response are hard to create in this very
dynamic environment
• Coronavirus is leading to mandatory work/learn/etc.
at home policies around the world
• Organizations must take rapid — and often dramatic
— action to avoid disruptions and significant hits to
productivity / customer experience
• Here are the key first steps…
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Now for a Brief Advertisement for Usability
• Despite amazing advances in consumer tech world, most orgs don't emphasize the
importance of simplicity and usability
• Solutions most often chosen by those that tick all the technical boxes and/
or is the most trusted/cost-effective
• But if you want your investment in remote work to pay off, spend real time on
usability
• Recommendation: Pay special attention to whether the average worker
will be easily able to use your solution, as tools for digital access span the
range of complexity and user experience
• Recommendation: Put a strong emphasis on tools that are simple,
straightforward, and "just work."
• Recommendation: Do rapid lab testing of remote work scenarios +
configuration with all your leading worker personas
• The risk in not doing so is quite significant:
• Support costs for remote work will simply be higher, with less to show for it
in terms of preserving productivity, as workers spend more of their time
getting the solution to work
• Despite this, most orgs won’t do this because they are not accustomed to doing so
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Internet Access
• Many workers have good high speed Internet access
• But a surprisingly significant number still don’t,
especially in rural areas
• Compounding the issue is that entire families are now
working/learning from home or soon will be
• Creates significant challenges for video meetings in
particular
• Recommendations:
• Baseline what your workers will need and verify
your capacity and their (#RemoteWorkCheckup)
• Provide a simple way for a worker to test if they
have enough bandwidth, then multiply for number
of people at home
• Be prepared to offer hotspots and/or stipends to
upgrade connections
• Advise workers to hold voice-only meetings
• Anecdote: Even
residents in Silicon
Valley are telling me
that two people at
home can’t video
conference at times.
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The Key Accessories to Improve Remote Work
• A webcam for web conferencing, if the worker's base computing
device does not have one
• 720P is the minimum acceptable resolution for quality
results, but that is usually standard now in most webcams
• A high-quality headset or headphones with mic
• While workers almost always have headphones, you'd be
surprised how many don't have good enough microphones in
their headphones for phone or web conferencing
• An "On the Air" sign
• Workers located at home or shared locations are at risk of
being disturbed during remote meetings by those around
them. Inexpensive On the Air signs with remote controls can
be purchased at Amazon
• Make a real difference in the overall quality of the remote
work experience during meetings
• For the budget-conscious, On the Air door hangers are also
available. The positive impact of using these signs to ensure
smooth communications is surprisingly high
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Modern Remote Work Apps Make a Difference
• Address the shortcomings of remote work through new apps that can help
break down silos and isolation. Some examples:
• Sococo - Provides chat, voice, and video that offers a virtual office overlay
which can be especially effective at making people feel like they're still in an
office. Workers can visit each other in virtual dedicated offices of their own and
shared meeting rooms by working like they would in a physical space.
• Mural - A visual collaboration tool that provides workers with shared artifacts
similar to a whiteboard, Mural gives people higher bandwidth and more direct
connection to their teamwork. Teams can organize on an online canvas using
lists, flowcharts, diagrams, frameworks, methods, and drawings to help them
stay aligned and well-coordinated.
• Status Hero - How is everyone and what are they doing? These are the
questions that this tool answers by centralizing the status of workers so that a
cohesive team picture automatically emerges. Status is pulled by the app both
by querying workers occasionally as well as pulling activity from other systems.
It then broadcasts major events and achieved goals automatically so people
have awareness of what's taking place with their colleagues and teammates.