Hello,

Today I want to write about a subject that creates heated debates, stresses management and rattles workers.

I am talking about the Back to Work policy. Now that the pandemic is contained you see different companies trying to get workers back to HQ in some form. There are also others that embrace the work from anywhere policy and go full speed for this model (example Spotify at this time of writing).

Now this is not a decision that is taken lightly, there are multiple viewpoints that need to be taken into consideration.

From a management point of view :

• Is my workforce feeling less connected ?
• What will the impact be on the workers if the comeback is forced ?
• What is the right balance between on site and remote work ?
• What about the other ( non-knowledge ) workers , do they require additional compensation ?
• Etc

From an employee perspective :

• I like this new work/life balance , why should I change ?
• Is my company loosing trust in me ? I have proven I am delivering results.
• Will I have a choice in which days I’ll be on premise ?
• Etc

This is definitely a case where one size fits none , getting the right balance for the comeback is crucial.

But wait , let’s get back to the Digital Workplace. I would like to use some guidance provided by Doctor Eliyahu M. Goldratt ( link : Eliyahu M. Goldratt – Wikipedia ).

He carefully uses the following phrase :

“Technology can bring benefits if and only if it diminishes a limitation.”

Eliyahu M. Goldratt – Beyond The Goal

It’s a simple sentence but every word counts. The words “can” and “if and only” are important.

There is a process that can be followed in order to do this. These are the 4 questions (in order) that need to be asked:

1. What is the power of the technology ?
   • Contact your vendor for this. They’ll be glad to point that out : )
2. What limitations does this product diminish ?
3. What rules were created that helped us to overcome this limitation ?
4. What are the new rules ?

The book describes a great example. Let’s share this so it makes more sense.

In the seventies the MRP technology was made available to businesses. MRP is used in manufacturing and stands for “Material Requirements Planning” , in short it calculates the number of raw materials required for a certain demand. Before MRP was available there was a team of specialists that did nothing but that , calculate the number of raw material required.

You can imagine that with several products being created ( with different sub-parts etc ) this is quite a complex task that could be automated. However it took quite some time for companies to really get the promised benefits from this technology.

Why ? Let’s go over the steps !

1. The power of the early MRP was to do dependent calculations fast.
2. The limitation it diminishes is the amount of time and manpower it takes to do these requirement calculations.
3. The rules established to overcome this limitation was : You do net calculations once a month because of the time and energy it takes.
4. The new rules : And this is where it went wrong. Most companies had the technology installed but only did the net calculations … once a month. They should have done them once a week , once every 2 days to get better results … but not once a month.

So let’s take Collaboration and Communication tools like Microsoft , Google and other vendors provide as an example.

1. Value proposition : Work from anywhere , Work is an action you perform and is no longer limited to a space or time.
2. Limitations  : The limitations that the product helps to overcome is being bound to physical company locations in order to do valuable work.
3. The rules : This gets more tricky , what are the rules applied to overcome the limitation ? Well I would say that there is a strong focus on creating value  ( both for employee and company ) based on actions performed in a specific timeframe at a specific location. This could result in 40-hours presence required a week , in linking connection to with the company to the physical locations and people in it etc.
4. The new rules : Again , no magic solution here but we’ll try. A strong focus on creating value ( for employee and company ) based on actions. [Period] No longer bound to locations and timeframes but based on how actions and interactions are performed.

So that’s partly why it so hard to get people back to the office , because most companies have yet to define the new set of rules that are required.

This worked during the pandemic when there was a real necessity and Digital Collaboration Tools were rolled out in a record pace but now there is again a choice. Companies can embrace this new way of working or fold back to previous habits.

Recognizable ? Drop us a comment to give your point of view.

Bye.