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Coming to grips with remote workforce challenges

Are you seeing remote workforce challenges?

Our small business has transitioned to working from home and we now are addressing remote workforce challenges. In preparation for this change, my staff and I had a frank discussion a few weeks ago about what we would likely see and how we would respond to Covid-19. We discussed disruption of childcare and schools and social isolation. Our team identified that even though we are small and even though we work in an open concept office, communication is our Achilles’ heel, a challenge that would likely be amplified in a remote work environment.


We addressed this by adopting an online workflow program that we have now had in place for a week. It will greatly improve our communications…if everyone embraces it. It will be another continuing challenge. We generated a policy for this that included remote working. I already have a paid personal time off that exceeds 2 weeks, so we didn’t touch that. But no amount of planning can really get you ready for the deluge of cancellations impacting business that came in last week. We experienced
cancellation of conferences, and speaking engagements indefinitely postponed. Our outside work for the next two months vanished as the emails and phone calls came in.


So, now the planning is taking a much different direction for us. How do we pivot? (Luckily, we are really good at pivoting). How do we help our clients show their clients that the show can still go on in a meaningful way? The communications struggle we addressed earlier now seems like small potatoes in light of redefining our business. Our new focus is transitioning to virtual classroom live engagement, and sharing our experiences with others.


Have we solved our remote workforce challenges? No, we are just uncovering them. But we are now watching for the ‘gotchas’ that can impede our business and talking about them.

If you are experiencing the same challenges, know you are not alone. If you want to share ideas, please post them below. Knowing we are all working together to figure this out is helpful to me.