HP Innovation Journal Issue 15: Summer 2020 | Page 56

WORK LIFE
From HR policy to corporate strategy
While remote work has long been considered a concern mainly for
the human resources department, Keogh says the current situation
offers organizations the opportunity to explore bold new strategies
companywide. She recommends that business leaders experiment
and discover what might be possible in a more-remote future.
“You need to look at it in light of your business and consider
ways that it could give you a competitive advantage,” she says. “For
example, maybe flexibility and mobility allows you to hire more
people, or reach people in a location you couldn’t access otherwise.”
Prithwiraj Choudhury, associate professor of business administration
at Harvard Business School, agrees. He suggests that while
many are anticipating an eventual “return to normal,” business
leaders need to recognize that the post-pandemic workplace will be
distinct from the workplace of just a few
months ago, with new challenges to face
and opportunities to seize.
“This is an ideal time for companies
to have that strategy discussion,” he says.
“Now that we’ve experienced remote work
and the new normal, can we make remote
work more strategic by trimming our real
estate costs? Or by expanding our hiring
to more countries and emerging markets?
That’s the real opportunity.”
The future of work is hybrid
While not everyone will continue
to work remotely after the crisis is
over, Alex Konanykhin, CEO of remote
people management solutions provider
TransparentBusiness, believes that there
will be enough demand to forever change
the form and function of the traditional
workplace.
In the month after stay-at-home orders began, Konanykhin says
TransparentBusiness saw an 800% jump in web traffic, as companies
scrambled to adopt work-from-home policies.
Rather than all-remote or all on-site, he suggests a hybrid model
will become the norm, as demonstrated by a number of early
adopters who allow staff to reserve shared space when they need
to collaborate in person.
“They treat office space like hotel rooms—not a permanently
assigned space, but a space where anyone can enter whenever they
need to collaborate with people in person,” he says. “This pandemic
is going to make it the new normal for a majority of companies, at
least those that are doing computer-based knowledge work.”
The new office: both of them
Employees who do return to work amid the ongoing pandemic will
notice some significant changes. Face masks may become mandatory,
hand sanitizer dispensers will likely be ubiquitous, and
workers will be positioned six feet apart. They may be required to
One remote-work
consultancy saw an 800%
jump in web traffic as
companies adopted
work-from-home policies.
pass temperature checks on their way into office buildings, and
hallways may adopt one-way traffic signs. There’s even talk of
returning to cubicles.
To maintain physical distancing standards, workspaces won’t be
able to accommodate as many people, meaning many will continue
to work from home some of the time, with access to the office on
designated days. “You’re going to have a mixed model moving forward
that actually supports employees in the most optimal way,”
Keogh says.
That means organizations will have to ensure remote employees
have enterprise-quality hardware they need to stay productive, and
employees who have carved out temporary workspaces at home
may need to think beyond dining tables and couches to optimize
working conditions for the long term. Companies will also need
to educate remote employees about cybersecurity
and how to keep business data
safe outside the office.
Connecting with coworkers
in new ways
As employees remain dispersed across
home and traditional workspaces, companies
will also need to find ways to
replicate the serendipitous connections
and collaborations that come from casual
conversations, lunches, and after-work
social gatherings.
“You don’t have the same ability to pop
over to someone’s desk for five minutes, so
you just have to be more intentional about
culture and conversations and meetings,”
says Bury from Willful. “We do a
weekly lunch hangout, virtual coworking
sessions, and Friday ‘demo days’ like we
would in the office, and we’re doing more
game days virtually.”
At HP, employees have been accelerating their use of virtual reality,
for work collaboration and for fun.
“We’re using VR hangouts together to create virtual ‘watercooler
moments’ for our team,” explains Joanna Popper, HP’s Global Head
of Virtual Reality for Location-Based Entertainment. “We’ve met
in virtual spaces that look like a boardroom, a presentation room,
and even the surface of Mars.”
Popper adds that in the future, meetings and social gatherings in
virtual reality will likely replace two-dimensional videoconferencing
more broadly, with VR headsets becoming an integral tool for
remote and hybrid teams. It’s one example of how the challenges
of the moment could accelerate adoption of new ways of working
in the near future.
“In weeks, we learned that we could do things at home that would
have taken us years to learn in a different way,” Keogh says. “There
are a lot of things we’ve learned through this that will become standard
operating procedure in the future.”
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