![]() (Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images) Brooks Kraft/Corbis News/Getty Images It became very natural for us to have meetings where we had medical, mental health practitioners and discussions about business strategy all in the same meeting.”Ĭisco chief people, policy and purpose officer Fran Katsoudas.ġ4 May, 2015 An interior view of office space with an indoor climbing wall at the Googleplex, the corporate headquarters complex of Google, Inc., located in Mountain View, California. ![]() “It became very natural for us to have meetings where we had medical and mental health practitioners and discussions about business strategy, all in the same meeting.” “We recognized that our employees were coming to us for guidance for everything: the pandemic, how they lived, wanting to know what was safe and what wasn’t safe,” said Cisco’s executive vice president and chief people, policy and purpose officer Fran Katsoudas. There was the mental and emotional toll it took as well. “You cannot build a great company if your people aren’t well.”īut it wasn’t just figuring out the logistics of how to work from home that challenged employers and their workers at the start of pandemic. “That meant we were going to give you the best chair, best screen … that cost us into seven figures overnight,” said Tetu. What's your remote work situation like, one year later? Share your storyįrom the start, the company focused on making sure workers were well-equipped at their home office by allowing things like tech equipment and noise-canceling headphones to be expensed, as well as offering subsidies for high-speed internet. “We always had spare laptops, but not 3,000,” said Chief People Officer Carolyn Patterson. In a matter of days, companies across the globe were shutting their offices and many had little to no time to prepare their employees for getting work done entirely outside of office walls.Īt business review site Yelp, the IT department had to scramble to find nearly 3,000 laptops for workers, primarily sales employees, when it went remote in March. The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. “Hybrid is going to make managing this difference harder.” “Many companies succeeded working remotely in 2020 largely because everyone was doing it – there was no built-in preference for office workers or stigma against remote workers,” said Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at market research firm Forrester. No matter what the approach, workers and employers can expect to hit a few bumps in the road as they navigate the next phase of this grand work experiment. Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesĪnd, of course, some companies will want everyone to come back. Some companies plan to remain 100% remote post-pandemic, while others – including companies like Reddit and Microsoft – will take a hybrid approach, giving workers more flexibility about where they work.Ī social distancing marker is displayed in front of a reception desk at the JLL office in Chicago. Now that more people are getting vaccinated and kids are going back to school, things appear as if they might get back to “normal,” but the workplace as we knew it may be forever changed. We’ve learned many lessons as a result: meetings aren’t always necessary, working a standard eight-hour shift may not be the best schedule for everyone, sitting at a desk doesn’t always mean you’re being productive and perhaps, you miss your coworkers more than you thought you would. They’ve had to loosen restrictions on where employees can work, equip them with the tools do so and support them both professionally and personally. Walker/The Boston Globe/Getty ImagesĮmployers have also been forced to become more nimble. Seth and Nicole Kroll work while their son Louis, 5, entertains himself at their home outside of Boston.
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