“When you work from home there is no such thing as a holiday.” ― Anthony T. Hincks
A study of fossils reveals that diversity, variety, and variations represent defining themes in the ongoing processes of animal and plant evolution. We could attribute such findings to the many impulses, inputs, and factors that continue to inform and drive biological evolution. In the modern world, professional work routines have similarly responded to various forms of (external and internal) stimuli, resulting in markedly different paradigms that shape and govern the modern workforce. Interesting phenomenon such as work from home processes have emerged in recent times; such emergence has coincided with the expansion of digital technologies and ubiquitous, broadband-based access to the World Wide Web. These New Age processes have recent origins, and help expand the choices offered by employers to associates, workers, and employees; thereby leading to higher levels of productivity registered across the modern enterprise. The work-from-home paradigm also creates greater ability for employers to harness the potential inherent in geographically distributed workforces, thus effectively removing from the concept of the traditional, monolithic, location-bound workplace. A variety of work from home processes can find expression inside analytical devices such as the modern flowchart.
Technology performs a key role in the planning and execution of successful work from home processes. We could elaborate this assertion to include broadband access to the Internet (wired into the homes of associates and workers), digital chat platforms that promote instant communication among dispersed workers, fast unimpeded access to central databases and digital work platforms, various forms of voice, video, and text-based communications among workforces, 24×7 access to online search engines, proprietary software-based tools and services, durable and functional hardware such as work stations, laptop computers, smartphones and connected tablets, and more. Designers can use these elements to construct a cohesive, functional, and highly effective working model that individual workers can utilize to discharge professional functions from home-based environments. When positioned inside flowcharts, these elements help frame different work strategies that enhance and boost outcomes irrespective of the physical location of associates and workers.
Employee motivation, flexibility in work routines, and worker productivity could pose challenges when business managers set about implementing work from home processes to cope with different scenarios. Therefore, these problems could find expression inside flowcharts as part of subsequent efforts to brainstorm effective, long-term solutions; these could emerge in the form of cash-based incentives offered to home-based workers, undertakings to allow high-performance workers to participate in special training programs, additional sets of paid holidays above and beyond the norm, digitally-organized social events beyond work hours, fast-track career development projects, the ability to choose working hours, and others. These solutions, when effectively communicated and implemented, help enthuse home-based workforces, spur productivity, reduce the lack of interest that may frequently assail home-based workers performing in a non-social work environment, empower the sponsor enterprise to confidently attain client objectives, and evolve a hybrid workforce that performs in concert from multiple locations. The flowchart remains a key enabler that helps overcome stated problems.
Recent research indicates – “Employees in their 20s and mid-30s value meaningful experiences more than possessions and they want to be able to pay attention to all the important aspects of their lives.” This finding, when interpreted through multiple prisms, generates potential to promote work from home processes and introduce these to the domain of standard/mainstream work routines. Pursuant to this stance, contemporary employers could explore concepts such as digital excursions into nature parks, remote islands, famed entertainment avenues, and others. In addition, the menu could include digital sessions with experts in fields as varied as guided meditation, yoga classes, comic routines, stand-up comedy trips, live musical performances, tours on board cruise ships, virtual reality-enabled experiences, and more. These modes of entertainment operate through digital interfaces such as display panels built into home computers and workstations. However, these instances of virtual entertainment also cater to home-based employees’ needs for meaningful distraction and recreation inside the confines of their home-based workspaces. Flowcharts can empower planners to curate and sponsor these experiences, thereby adding interesting variety to the lives of those operating within work from home processes.
Conversations between associates, employees, supervisors, and line managers represent a significant aspect of modern work from home processes. Such conversations could include regular counselling sessions related to work issues, discussions to troubleshoot problems in work processes, an exchange of views to further streamline work routines, sessions to discuss the work appraisal of individual workers and associates, hand-holding for new employees entering the work-from-home process, senior guidance from veterans for the benefit of junior workers, discussions pertaining to productivity enhancing methods, individual feedback sessions, and other such processes. Each of these digitally mediated processes, when configured into the operational dynamics of work from home processes, enables a steady connection that humanizes remote or home-based work routines. Such configurations could potentially expand the visual image generated by home-based work processes; however, their utility is apparent in the long-term operation of this performance model.
Intelligent employees/associates could organize different sections of work routines in attempts to spur the speed and quality of execution undertaken through work from home processes. When designed inside modern flowcharts, these techniques could take shape as clusters of productive activity assigned to specific sets of home-based workers and associates. For instance, home-based associates working for a consulting firm could allocate specific tasks to sets of workers in a bid to defeat the confusion that emerges in the absence of direction. A senior associate could helm each cluster of activity; this individual vets the quality of work, defines timelines and drives adherence to the same, checks progress periodically, and retains overall responsibility for delivery of quality output. The emerging diagram allows readers to connect to different forms/editions of such work practices, thereby elevating the quality of deliverables when successfully executed in real time. Such techniques must gain approval at managerial levels and must serve the overarching objectives of sponsor organizations.
Digital devices such as group mailboxes can impart method and discipline to operators that participate primarily through work from home processes. These devices can help all members of a group stay on the proverbial same page, allow updates to gain visibility across a group, promote the scope for suggestions and inputs flowing from members of work groups, elevate the quality of work routines and processes, and drive smooth collaborations between groups of home-based employees. Therefore, organizations that encourage this mode of work must create special provisions for group mailboxes, allot dedicated (human and technical) resources to such devices, periodically assess the quality of conversations registered therein, mine the information for insights into the performance of work groups, and utilize insights to drive higher levels of functionality and sophistication inside remote work processes. Flowcharts can be instrumental in designing and executing the different aspects of such a stance; these diagrams can assist in the design of subsequent editions of work-from-home models that can be scaled to meet the evolving objectives of sponsor organizations.
These explorations empower modern organizations to design and implement cost-effective models that promote remote work practices. Readers must remain cognizant of the fact such practices are evolving in the present day and will gain definitive shape and varied forms in the future. Therefore, organizations must invest brainpower, experience, and resources to refine such work processes as part of efforts to design the future of modern work.
