About the Virtual Work Environment and Its Benefits
A retreat I recently ran for a scientific organization began with an amazing fashion show. The show started with staff members discussing a new closet section for their telework wardrobe – you know the waist-up outfit. As coworkers began to cross the cat-walk in pajamas, workout clothes, bike pants, grass-stained garden clothes, weight-lifting attire, scarves to hide unkempt hair, satin robes over blue jeans, and clashing above and below-the-waist combos of every type, the MCs’ mentioned that one of their pet peeves about telework was that there was no one to tell them how cute they looked.
The purpose of the retreat was to sustain productivity and excellence while embracing the benefits virtual work environments offer. Over 90% of this workforce uses some form of flexible schedule, telework, or virtual working agreement. Yet, working remotely brings challenges both in staying engaged for remote participants and for onsite team members to come to grips with the shift in communication required to bring remote participants present. Teams that have a high degree of telework risk moving down a rung on the continuum of extraordinariness, from extraordinary to solid or from solid to ordinary. No one wants to lose this productive edge. Yet, the same areas that distinguish ordinary teams from extraordinary ones emerged as cornerstones of maintaining excellence and productivity in these increasingly mobile and virtual work environments.