It’s the spooky 👻 season, and many of us are still dealing with the toil and trouble of working from home. While most professionals have started to get used to the new remote-working reality, there are times when the work-anywhere environment can deliver more tricks than treats. 😱
We’re not just talking about the headaches of zoom fatigue and panic you feel when your internet connection goes haywire either. Many businesses are now having to figure out how they can handle the issue of “unprofessional conduct” for people working outside of the office.
After all, adding the wrong backdrop to your Zoom meeting or using a silly filter might be fine when you’re just chatting with colleagues. But that’s also the kind of thing that could lose some companies their clients if team members aren’t careful.
For a while, business leaders brushed remote working issues off as problems that would disappear after the return to the office. However, experts say that there’s no “going back” to the way things were. Now that the spread of the pandemic is beginning to slow, most companies are going to continue with their work-from-home strategies.
So, what does that mean for tomorrow’s teams?
Managing Teams in the Workplace of the Future 🕷️
According to a survey from the Institute of Directors, 74% of companies are continuing with increased work-from-home efforts after COVID-19 restrictions disappear. Over half of the respondents also said that they’re planning to reduce their long-term use of physical workspaces.
Around 4 in every 10 respondents in the study went on to say that working from home is more effective than their previous setup. Another 43% said that they were starting to use flexible working strategies significantly more often.
Despite an overwhelmingly positive response to the idea of working from home, the IoD has warned that increased remote work could cause problems as legal questions arise over employer responsibilities. Specifically, what can team leaders do about staff acting inappropriately outside of a formal office space?
We first got an insight into the kind of problems that remote workers face a few years ago when a man in a live news interview had to handle the headache of his children crashing the conversation behind him. The world-famous clip took the world by storm, and poor Professor Robert Kelly became a cautionary tale for those who forget to lock their door during video meetings:
Streaming Screamers: The Tales of Terror Are Everywhere ⚰️
Of course, it’s not just random disruptions from family members that today’s home workers have to worry about. Getting used to new video technology like virtual backgrounds and filters isn’t always easy, as one business owner discovered first-hand.
A woman shared a recording of her boss accidentally becoming a potato during a Microsoft Teams meeting. Unfortunately, after she noticed her mistake, she couldn’t get rid of the filter and had to conduct the entire conversation as a spud.
Other common problems include:
