“Successful telework requires a different mindset”

Working from home is making us reconsider work processes

A failed experiment. This is what business psychologist Bart Wille sees looking back on the large-scale telework during the corona crisis. An excessively high dose, uncontrolled circumstances and incorrect peripheral conditions meant that we all got the wrong idea of what working from home could and should be. Still, according to him there is a lot to learn from it…

As a business psychologist, Wille tries to bridge the gap between workers and employers in a scientific manner. “We have an objective look at people’s behavior in a professional context. And we share those findings in the same way with both employers and workers. Our starting point is simple: those who feel good about their jobs will perform better. We succeed only when we can increase well-being and productivity at the same time.”

What this requires, he summarizes in a simple ABC: autonomy, belongingness and competence. In the context of working from home, ‘autonomy’ means a certain freedom of choice about how workers want to organize their work. ‘Belongingness’ indicates that they want to stay connected. And ‘competence’ is the desire to be good at what they do. Feedback is a requirement for this.

It is clear that the corona-induced teleworking was not a perfect illustration of this. Hence the ‘failed experiment’. “The administered dosage was far too large,” explains Wille. “Due to the mandatory lockdown, things suddenly went from 0 to 100% for many employees. This does not work. You have to learn to work from home. This takes baby steps. There was also no time to discuss this telework. It all had to happen very quickly because of the mandatory lockdown. And on top of that, all lifelines for teleworkers were also shut off. Schools were closed, the children are suddenly around the house all the time, and grandparents were not allowed to help out.”

Not an ideal context to familiarize oneself with a new way of working. Lots of room for improvement. “Employers, workers, scientists, politicians,… will all have to think about how work from home can be embedded in our work organization,” explains Wille. One thing is crystal clear to him: “One size fits all won’t work. There is no system that works for everyone. The circumstances and needs are different for everyone.”

Hybrid form

Quite a few employers were obliged by the crisis to let their workers work from home. This blew the doors wide open. But not always wholeheartedly. “I am still often still startled at the mistrust and negative premises employers harbor against their workers.” However, they do realize that working from home is here to stay. At the same time, the initial enthusiasm shared by many home workers is also somewhat nuanced. They are happy about saving on commuting time and with the improved interplay between work and family. However, at the same time they have become more aware of the added value of social contact and office work. “Sometimes you have to take something away to demonstrate its value,” Wille explains. According to him, the solution lies in hybrid work forms that combine the best of both worlds.

Because working from home offers considerable advantages for everyone involved. “In the past, all office work was organically intertwined. Working from home makes us reconsider our processes. Did it make sense to drive to work with the laptop every day to do things one could be doing just as well or even better at home? Is it not more efficient to sometimes isolate yourself so that you can continue working undisturbed? But at the same time there are things that work better when people meet in person. Digital meetings are not a full substitute for physical contact. This is something we learned by now as well,” Wille explains.

Keeping contact is important. But it’s not the same as keeping control.

Providing leadership

Leadership is also interpreted differently by working from home. “You are forced to let go of a bit of control. You still want and need to manage and know what your employees are doing, but you can no longer observe them. You can still try through tracking systems that measure how much time workers were active or how many keystrokes they logged on their keyboard. Or by having them indicate in an Excel sheet every evening what they did that day. But these things do not work. They are also very demotivating. It is better to focus leadership on output, to provide coaching on a project basis. Staying in touch enough to know what is going well and what is going wrong. What difficulties are encountered. How people are doing. Keeping in touch is therefore important. But that is not the same as scrutinizing.”

Working from home also requires a different mindset from team members. They have to learn to plan and estimate how they can best achieve results. The organization can also foster this by providing workers with new skills such as time management. “The resulting gain is tangible for both parties in the short term,” says Wille. “There is no harm in employees knowing that things are challenging for their managers as well. Working from home is a shared responsibility. If workers show that they can handle their responsibility through a proactive attitude, this gives their managers confidence. ”

Working out routines

Guarding borders is also a shared responsibility. The temptation to do more work than in the office is real because of the absence of the commute that marks the start and end of the working day and because of the ever-present computer. “Workers must learn to deal with this and set boundaries. Or work out routines. I myself reserve a time slot around noon to go out for a walk. I cannot be bothered to in the evening, because then it is dark and cold. A walk is much nicer around noon. Everyone will have to find similar routines for themselves that prevent them from working too long. As a manager you should of course pay attention to this, but it is not easy,” he says. “It is important to formulate mutual expectations.” In any case, he is not arguing for collective solutions such as shutting down the network outside office hours. “Because this in turn does not respect the work schedule of other workers who want to be active at that time. But I do indicate to my workers that I do not expect them to respond immediately to emails I send outside of regular working hours. The work schedules that work for me are not the norm.”