Navigating the New Work Rules [Part 1 of 2]

October 21, 2021 - 7 min read

Lionel Valdellon

In just a little over a decade, the corporate office has transformed from being the de facto location where work is done into just one of several venues where one can choose to work. Anyone starting a new job today faces a very different set of work "rules" from someone who started work five years ago. Change is swift. And technology has truly disrupted how we work. At the risk of massive generalization, we've condensed the various ways work has changed and discovered ten succinct work rules which should aid anyone trying to navigate the modern workplace. Welcome to the 21st century!

PART I. THE NEW OFFICE

1. Remote is the New Office

The old: The office used to be a single physical location where people would travel to, in order to meet face to face, work together, and even have informal talks around a real watercooler. It was a holdover from the Industrial Age when all work was done on the factory floor, assembling widgets by hand. If you weren't physically present, you were unemployed.

Sounds like: "Let's all head to the Michelangelo conference room for the all-hands in five minutes!"

The new: What does it mean to work remotely? Today, while the "office" might still be a physical location for certain industries, in some companies it doesn't exist at all. The office may now refer to any number of remote workers in home offices (or shared work spaces), who see one another more regularly on video chats than in real life. Or it's a combination of both physical and virtual work environments. It all depends on your company's working-from-home guidelines.

For many knowledge workers, remote work is now becoming the standard while office locations become meeting spaces where people convene only when they need to work together in person. This makes sense because hiring remote workers opens your company to a wider pool of talent (anyone with an Internet connection) at less overhead cost (no office space needed).

Sounds like: "Everyone who's in the office today, our meeting is in conference room A and the rest use the Zoom link!"

Read:

2. BYOD is the New Desktop

The old: Knowledge work used to be done on beige desktop computers that were on your desk in the office. Work could not be taken home easily. Laptops were few and far between — typically for executives. And entire IT workforces were hired to care for, and maintain, this fleet of cookie cutter machines.

Sounds like: "I'll start working on it the minute I get to my computer in the morning."

The new: Today, it's Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). 44% of workers check or use their mobile devices for work more than 20x a day, and 70% believe they'll use it even more in the future. Workers now comfortably work on their own laptops or mobile devices using apps easily obtainable in public app stores, and connecting to work data that lives in the cloud. This is a generally accepted practice in technology companies.

This means employees can work anywhere since their devices are always on them. However, this has created a very pressing need for each worker to protect their work-life balance because "always on you" can sometimes be mistaken as "always available."

Sounds like: "I'll work on it when I'm on the train, OK? I'll ping you then."

Read:

Mobile Productivity Report 2016 (Wrike)
5 Reasons BYOD for Travel Is Here to Stay (Entrepreneur)
BYOD is Here to Stay (Business News Daily)

PART II. THE NEW MEASUREMENTS

3. Results are the New Metric

The old: Workers used to punch in time cards to start and end their workday — another remnant from the long-gone Industrial Age when hours on an assembly line directly correlated with producing value for the company. While this is still a reality for employees in specific industries (e.g. manufacturing, health care, and others), the new breed of knowledge workers have no need to measure hours.

Sounds like: "I can't wait till it's five-thirsty so I can go home."

The new: Instead, the new metric is output and outcomes. What has the worker accomplished during his work day? And how has the work created value for the company? If the outcome is of high value, it no longer matters how many hours of work were done. What counts more is that a project is moving forward and goals are met.

Sounds like: "I got my quota done a week early, so I'd like to take some PTO."

Read:

It’s Not Just Semantics: Managing Outcomes Vs. Outputs (Harvard Business Review)
Focus on Results, Not Time (99U)

4. Data, Not Intuition, is the New Validation

The old: Business decisions used to be based solely on the finely-honed instincts of executives with years of experience (and competitive intel). Those leaders would leverage both public and private information alongside intuition to lead an organization.

Sounds like: "You've got to trust my gut instinct on this decision."

The new: While the above remains true, there is now the added element of big data — where every click is measured and every interaction graded. Data-driven decisions are now a reality for every manager —particularly when a decision impacts your company's brand, product, or audience. These days, everything from creating a more concise landing page to streamlining a manufacturing process can be aided and validated by data. Just make sure you're measuring the right data.

Sounds like: "I've got the numbers to prove that this decision is the right one."

Read:

An Introduction to Data-Driven Decisions for Managers Who Don’t Like Math (Harvard Business Review)
3 Kinds of Data To Help Avoid Project Management Failure (Wrike)

5. Velocity, Not Uniqueness, is the New Differentiator

The old: In the past, an inventor could come up with a unique idea, build a product and a company around that idea, and prosper. A lot more emphasis was given to creating a unique concept. Or even to perfecting the product so that it came out of the gate polished and final.

Sounds like: "We need to have a unique concept!"

The new: These days however, with everyone having the same easy access to massive amounts of data, a more important factor is velocity — the actual speed at which you execute your idea. When a feasible business idea is in hand (it doesn't even have to be unique), quick execution is of paramount importance in order to leave competitors in the dust. This is the lesson of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology: instead of delaying your release, you build a minimum viable product that works, then improve upon it. You have to be fast (and hopefully first) to win; you don't have to be perfect.

Sounds like: "We need to get this out before Competitor X releases their version!"

Read:

Download free eBook: 7 Steps to Developing an Agile Marketing Team (Wrike)
How to Increase Business Velocity in 3 Easy Steps (Wrike)
Speed as a Habit (First Round)

Next week, we'll publish part two of this series, [UPDATE: Here's part two!] and we'll list the remaining five work rules that tackle the new collaboration and the new culture. If you enjoyed this article, sign up for our weekly newsletter:

Lionel Valdellon

Lionel is a former Content Marketing Manager of Wrike. He is also a blogger since 1997, a productivity enthusiast, a project management newbie, a musician and producer of electronic downtempo music, a father of three, and a husband of one.

#Remote Work #Future of Work

Collaboration 5 min read

Remote Work: Why Reddit and Yahoo! Banned It

When an internal memo from Yahoo! leaked to the public back in February 2013, there was a collective groan not just from people working in the company, but also from supporters of remote work in general. The memo banned remote work for all Yahoo! staff and cited that more effective collaboration would happen face-to-face — that it all begins with being physically present in the office. A Yahoo! spokesperson clarified that banning work from home was not a blanket repudiation of remote work, rather, it was a move that was right for the company's individual situation. They were not the last ones to try to put an end to the practice of remote work. Best Buy followed suit in March 2013 by getting rid of their flexible work program and making employees hold to a more traditional 40-hour work week. Even more recently, Reddit announced the closing of two branch offices in Utah and New York, giving employees two months to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area; then-CEO Yishan Wong cited that while remote work was good for some workers, in the macro scheme of things, the company just wasn't able to collaborate and coordinate efficiently. Why Ban Remote Work? So what has been prompting this about-face regarding work-at-home policies? Why are top technology companies pulling the plug on one of the hottest perks for today's workers? Some clues can be found in the Yahoo! memo. It claimed: "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home." The implication being that remote work slows down overall productivity and lowers quality of output. The memo also positioned the policy as a way to unify the forces physically, stating that the best ideas usually come from face-to-face interaction around hallways and office water coolers. The truth is that there are many challenges with remote work, we can't pretend otherwise. We blogged about the 8 biggest challenges for leading virtual teams and found that according to our survey, the top two challenges were (1) poor communication, and (2) a lack of access to expertise needed to support the work. Jennifer Owens of Working Mother Media says that the move stems from fear: “Fear that if I can’t see you, I don’t know what you’re working on. It’s a distrust of your own workforce.” What it boils down to is that these companies decided against remote work because they believe virtual collaboration is inefficient. Instead of overhauling their work-from-home policies and investing in better collaboration technology, they'd rather herd their people back into a single physical location to enhance teamwork. But... People Love Remote Work! Even though companies like Yahoo!, HP, Best Buy, and Reddit have returned to more traditional work schedules from centralized locations, a thousand more startups and technology companies continue to fly the flag for remote work. Allowing remote work means teams can take advantage of the resources brought by distributed team members who do not want to pack up and move to company headquarters. And people value the perk! According to our remote collaboration survey of over 1,000 respondents, 25% of workers value remote work so much that they’re willing to accept a reduction in salary in order to enjoy it. Other sacrifices they're ready to make include: free meals, reduction in vacation, and paid cellphone plans. How to Make Remote Work Work So what do we say to the companies who have given up on remote work? How can a company successfully implement their work-from-home policy and avoid possible negative repercussions? You have to weigh up the working from home benefits and drawbacks. Terri Griffith, Professor of Management at Santa Clara University and author of The Plugged-In Manager, says: “It takes a thoughtful combination of people, technology, and process to gain the value of virtual work.” We've put together a free eBook on the reasons you should embrace remote work, and the entire second chapter deals with how to successfully implement the policy at your company. We included relevant case studies from companies that have thrived on distributed teamwork, including Johnson & Johnson and Zappos. Want to find out more about how Wrike can help your organization make working remotely work for them? Read more about our flexible work management platform here. Photo Credit: Asher Isbrucker on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Photo edited.

Remote Working 7 min read

The Near-future of Work: Remote Work Trends Happening Now

It’s been a full year since a majority of the world’s organizations began remote work during the pandemic. For some, the switch to a fully remote workforce was a bumpy one. After all, getting an entire company online, delivering the tools that teams need to be productive, and spinning up new processes to keep work moving, is not easy. With this change in where we work came a change in how we work together, the pace at which we collaborate, along with a business’s remote work expectations of their employees. For some of us, this meant we lived in a Zoom world. For others, we became solitary contributors who handed our pieces of work to the next person with no idea if our work was ever done. All of us struggled with processes and tools that suddenly felt outdated or clunky. Now that we’ve had a year of remote work during the pandemic, many of us realize that work has changed forever. As have the ways we manage and facilitate productive, efficient work across teams. Today, we find ourselves facing a what-comes-next wave of big decisions. Namely, do we stay remote, do we bring everyone back into the office, or do we adopt a hybrid model? It may be too soon to tell which of these is the best choice but two things are clear: The decision to stay remote, return to office, or go hybrid requires the creation of longer-term, holistic work collaboration and management strategies. Whatever strategy you devise, you’ll need the proper solutions and resources to simplify how people and teams work together (to remove the threat of burnout). As a company that spends every day working alongside some of the biggest companies in the world to help refine their collaborative work management strategies, we’re noticing a few trends. Firstly, what we’re seeing now is a desperate need for a centralized platform that allows people to work in a way that suits them, that automates workflows, tracks progress and resources in real-time, and makes it easy to access the assets and information they use most in the same platform. 3 Trends shaping the (near) future of work Recently, Executive VP of Business Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix, Tim Minahan, and CEO and Founder of Wrike, Andrew Filev connected on a call to discuss how the future of work is taking shape in these near, post-pandemic times. Watch the full video here: Trend 1: Work solutions aren’t keeping up with employees needs For all the technological advances made in the workplace over the last decade, there are still legacy solutions that refuse to go away. For example, email. (BTW, happy 40th birthday email!) There are organizations that still use email as a primary means of communication or as a project management tool. If this works for your business, fair play. However, there are better solutions and legitimate reasons to replace outmoded ways of working and collaborating. As Andrew Filev points out, “For some, the more the workplace has changed, the more it has stayed the same. Specifically, when we coordinate work across multiple teams, they might use their own five to ten different apps within their silos but when they need to work together, they often fall back to the common denominator. There are businesses that rely on the same tools, such as messaging apps, emails, and spreadsheets…These are in no way a match to the complexity and velocity of modern business.” One rapid modernization tactic Filev recommends is automating repeatable processes. He states, “The application of AI and ML features have been especially important for business leaders looking to extend resources and increase productivity, efficiency, and consistency during the pandemic. I think we’ll see more of this as we shift toward hybrid work environments. There will be another period of transition and adjustment where organizations will need to ensure their workers are provided with the tools needed to do their best work, no matter where they are.” Trend 2: The future of work is frictionless, secure, and reliable Another urgent need within the organization is to remove the complexity from today’s hybrid and distributed work environments so employees and organizations can do their very best work. “I think organizations made great strides last year in their digital transformation,” Filev says, “however, it was done in haste, and now they need to think about the next, most intelligent move that will set them up for success over the long haul. Organizations need to move beyond the basic infrastructure they put in place in 2020 just to survive and roll out more comprehensive solutions that will give them the competitive edge and help them thrive.” The very act of managing remote and hybrid teams is daunting but with Citrix’s unified workspace infrastructure and Wrike’s collaborative work management platform every employee, remote or in-office, can operate in a simplified, secure digital workplace that will enable organizations to transition to “anywhere working” by keeping employees engaged and productive. Trend 3: Distraction, the productivity killer Despite the prevalence of apps, devices, chat channels, and other technologies, today’s workforce isn’t able to manage work as a contiguous business process. “We’ve reached a tipping point,” says Minahan, “many of the technologies that have crept into the workspace are creating an increase in distraction, an increase in noise, adding complexity.” Did you know today’s knowledge worker: Uses more than 35 critical apps to get their work done — often four or more just to complete a single business process. Spends 28% of their time managing e-mail and nearly 20% looking for information across a disparate array of apps and collaboration channels or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. Is interrupted by a text, chat, or application alert and forced to switch context between these work channels 373 times per day or around every 40 seconds. And once interrupted by a text, chat, email, or other notification, it can take up to 23 minutes to get back to the task at hand. (And let’s not even get started on the myth of multi-tasking.) There’s much more to the conversation, and more insights regarding future of work trends to look out for, found in the video above. If you’re interested in learning more, visit www.wrike.com or sign up for a free two-week trial to discover how Wrike is helping teams usher in the future of collaborative work management.

Collaboration 5 min read

Conflict Resolution Techniques for a Hybrid Workspace

Employee conflict is a natural and regular part of any collaborative environment, with 85% of employees worldwide experiencing some form of conflict during their career. However, hybrid work can make dealing with conflict more difficult than it would be in person. Lack of face-to-face interaction, the absence of additional context, and loss of conversational nuance can cause conflicts to go unsolved and fester over time – leading to poor performances, low quality of work, and employee turnover. Thankfully, issues with conflict resolution in a hybrid environment are just as solvable as in-person ones. We’ll take a look at some of the best conflict resolution techniques to prepare your teams for virtual conflict in the new digital world. Filling in the blanks Understanding motive and context is a key part of processing new information and surprises – especially unwelcome ones. When employees are uncertain about why their request was overturned or proposal was rejected, they can tend to assume the worst and take it personally. Left unresolved, this lack of context evolves into a lasting negative experience that has long-term repercussions on employee relationships and productivity. A straightforward solution to this type of conflict in the workplace is a work management platform that can automatically provide the necessary context and historical reference for the decisions being made. Adopting a solution that keeps track of which decisions are being made and why, along with clear visibility into workflow and blockers, can help with providing some necessary context for work conflicts. It can also help employees collect all the facts and communicate clearly when conflict arises. It also helps to always overcommunicate when conversing directly. This doesn't mean dipping into micromanagement but rather being honest and abundantly descriptive when dealing with conflict and potential risks. Details and intent tend to get lost in translation, and virtual communication tools are no exception. Setting an example Although in-office employees can just drop by a manager’s desk to clarify something quickly in an office setting, some employees may have trouble asking questions in virtual environments. Encourage managers to be more proactive about conflict in the workplace to help resolve issues and miscommunications before they occur. Managers can circumvent conflict prematurely by integrating face-to-face kickoffs when onboarding new teams. This encourages people to familiarize themselves more with team members and how each part of the company functions, making it easier for employees to approach one another. Managers should also maintain consistent one-on-one checkups and conversations and lead by example by presenting a measured and professional demeanor when resolving their own conflicts. Work as one – not alone Some employees may feel more isolated in hybrid work environments. Lack of personal communication, water cooler talk, and general uncertainty about how they fit in with the team can lead to problems down the road regarding productivity and collaboration. A great way to work around this problem is to recognize individuals often and reward teams for working together. Take the time to celebrate wins at work, as well as personal occasions such as birthdays and work anniversaries. Create incentives to accomplish work together and acknowledge one another for it as well. It’s the key to helping people understand that each team member is looking out for one other and prevents individuals from jumping to conclusions when conflict in the workplace inevitably occurs. Making it work for you Each of these conflict resolution techniques will help you develop a strong basis for dealing with conflict in your teams as we move forward into the digital age. Preparing your teams to face these challenges can greatly improve productivity, morale, and quality of work over time and will be essential to succeeding in a hybrid work environment. Looking to provide better context and collaboration in your teams? Start a free Wrike trial today.

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Navigating the New Work Rules [Part 1 of 2]