Like so many of you we’ve switched our operations from the traditional office environment to a 100% remote, work-from-home scenario. A few days in and so far so good.
For advisors running a practice, the challenges presented by mandated office closure orders for non-essential businesses (heaped on top of a volatile market) can feel overwhelming.
We’ve rounded up some resources that should prove useful to you and your team.
The first one is a biggie. Our home office is a stone’s throw from Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond, WA. As an employer and corporate citizen, they have a huge impact on life in our area – their leadership team and employees are our friends, family, and clients. 40,000 people in all work on their main campus. You don’t just send a workforce the size of a small city off without a plan and the folks at Microsoft felt so good about theirs that they decided to share it with the world as a roadmap for similar transitions. You can download their plan here (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/18/making-the-switch-to-remote-work-5-things-weve-learned/).
Raise your hand if you used Zoom video calls before last week? Heck, raise your hand if you even heard of Zoom before last week? Few technologies have been adopted so quickly as Zoom’s video conferencing solution and with good reason. Zoom is super easy to use, connects large (and small) groups in a logical and meaningful way, and is platform agnostic – meaning no worries about who is on Mac or PC (or even who is on desktop vs. a mobile device). Read our article about how to make your video calls more impactful by clicking here (https://prod3x.wpengine.com/blog/video-calls).
And finally, the Harvard Business Review published the transcript (https://hbr.org/2020/03/15-questions-about-remote-work-answered) of a video call with Harvard Professor Tsedal Neeley, an expert in the field of managing dispersed teams. The article covers a lot of territory, especially around the areas of valuing and enabling the connections and innovations that arise from impromptu conversations in the workplace. Having rituals and allowing space for more social connectedness (in the absence of them happening organically around the “watercooler”) are key. Professor Neeley offers some valuable insight into measuring employee performance in remote environments and the overarching value in knowing and trusting your team.
