Sharing Good Books: Secrets to Successful WFH

WFH在家工作的成功祕訣
美國中小企業最佳CEO教你高效、彈性、具團隊精神的企業競爭新優勢
How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace : Simple and Effective Tips for Successful， Productive and Empowered Remote Work

作者： 羅伯特・格雷瑟 米克・史隆 原文作者： Robert Glazer Mick Sloan 譯者： 孟令函 出版社：遠流出版

Purchase Recommendation Website:

• Readmoo Online Book Purchase

Preface:

This is the eleventh book I've read this year. Since the international outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, the company has actually started to accelerate its transformation into a Hybrid Office concept. The so-called Hybrid Office means having flexible office seats, plus flexible remote work. During the severe pandemic, we even directly launched a full-stage WFH.

Whether you are employees or supervisors, are you afraid or fond of WFH? Do you like it because you don't need to spend extra commuting time, but you also worry that your home doesn't have enough equipment, and you also worry that you don't have actual interaction with your colleagues? When I saw this book, I thought it was interesting, so I bought it and read it.

Content Introduction:

Build a virtual office and enhance future competitiveness!
"If you are still struggling with remote work, Robert Glazer can provide you with some immediately actionable advice." - Adam Grant (Professor at Wharton Business School, author of "Give and Take")

When millions of office workers around the world were suddenly forced to work from home (WFH, Work From Home) to prevent the pandemic, business owners found that employees were more willing to accept it than they had previously understood, and most of the work content could still operate normally. However, not every company and every office worker can smoothly transition overnight, and it's not enough to simply apply the work procedures and strategies commonly used in physical offices. In the future, as remote or hybrid work models become more and more common, companies that do well will have a clear competitive advantage and attract the best talent.

As the founder and CEO of "Accelerate Partners," a 100% remote work organization with 170 employees working from home, Robert Glazer has drawn on more than ten years of valuable experience to extract the correct principles, strategies, and tools for managing remote employees, allowing companies to excel in both the virtual and real worlds.

Office workers will from now on:
✔ Don't have to commute, stay away from the pressure of high housing prices and high rents in the city
✔ Not be disturbed, create their own work schedule and environment
✔ Enjoy the ideal life of balancing family, interests, and work

Companies can even:
✔ Save costs, or can invest more resources in employees and customers
✔ Improve efficiency, and can achieve excellent performance and work results globally
✔ Create an equal and cohesive work environment, retaining outstanding talent

Chapter Outline

Part 1: The Winning Mindset for Remote Workers

What exactly is remote work? It's not a product of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, many companies needed businesses or customer service marketing personnel around the world. But they couldn't afford to set up physical offices in every region. The result was that employees came from all over the world and could work from their own homes.

The Winning Mindset for Remote Workers

• Recruit diligent, responsible, and self-disciplined employees
• Give them enough trust
• Perfect work procedures
• Excellent company culture

The Basics for Remote Workers

• Develop a work plan and execute it effectively
• Create a suitable work environment
• Establish a clear boundary between work and personal life

Properly Manage Your Email

• After remote work, the probability of email exchanges will increase.
• How to let others know your reply frequency is very important.

Methods to Improve Work Efficiency

• Allocate energy well
• Create a buffer before and after work
• Prioritize and allocate time.
• Establish expectations
• Stay focused
  • Try to focus on one thing for at least 15 to 20 minutes a day.
• Take care of yourself
  • Physical and mental health is very important, don't ruin your health because of WFH.
• Establish communication between people
  • Create some chat channels
  • Allow more participants to speak in meetings.
  • Make good use of asynchronous video (use videos instead of emails or announcements)

Changing Work Location

• Make sure that the region (country) has an office of the company, otherwise there may be problems with salary remittances.
• Due to the difference in labor laws and tax rates in various countries, employee benefits and labor regulations are different.
• Changing countries may result in salary differences, which will be adjusted based on the cost of living in each location.

Part 2: The Success Rules for Remote Work Companies

Starting from Organizational Culture

Since remote work companies care a lot about employees' autonomous work motivation, every colleague needs to have an in-depth understanding of the organizational culture. (And also be able to deeply identify with it).

Company Culture:

• Vision
• Values
• Goals
• Consistency
• Clear and explicit

How to Describe the Core Concept of the Company:

The core concept is to think about a specific future point in time, and use the tone of describing the current facts, as much as possible, to detail what the company and employees will be like at that time, and how they will feel.

When to Use the Core Concept:

• Recruiting employees
• Major policy decisions

How to Recruit Suitable Remote Employees

• Ask the other party if they have remote work experience
• Whether they agree with the core concept
• Look at the other party's concept and handling methods for remote work
• You can ask detailed questions
  • Do you like remote work -> Why do you like it -> How do you arrange it -> Self-adjustment

How to Conduct Remote Interviews

• Fact-based interview questions
• What changes does remote work bring
• Are you troubled because you can't work face-to-face?
• How to communicate effectively without meeting
• How to avoid feeling isolated while working from home

Will not waste training resources for someone who only meets the average standard

Notes for Remote Work Colleagues

• Complete onboarding process
  • 1 on 1 with each supervisor
  • Colleagues breaking the ice
  • Setting up equipment
  • Related pre-education system
  • More special:
  • Introduction to company regulations (especially related to remote work)
  • Introduction to company culture (to constantly keep everyone on the same core concept)
• Reduce meetings, especially reduce regular meetings, and change to irregular, fast, and concise discussions with a small number of participants
  • Meeting participants rate themselves whether they need to attend, if it is less than six points. Then cancel the relevant meeting.
  • Everyone participating in the meeting must speak
  • Meeting summaries are very important (to avoid someone not being able to participate)
• Etiquette in different time zones
  • Emails and messages should clearly indicate the time zone that needs attention. (If possible, convert it to their time zone)
• Travel strategy
  • The probability of business trips is expected to decrease after the pandemic
  • Become more individual, more face-to-face meetings with fewer people
• Team camaraderie
  • Deepen camaraderie through regular meetings and casual chats after meetings.
  • Play some online games
• Performance management
  • Compared to physical work, remote work requires more feedback and suggestions
  • Don't always think that you only give opinions during performance evaluations.
  • This can increase the sense of trust between colleagues.
  • Praise, praise immediately!
• Responsible culture
  • Avoid the strategy of close monitoring
  • Through weekly reports, or daily regular reports.
  • Give more trust and care appropriately.
• Trust crisis:
  • If any violations occur, they need to be handled immediately.
  • And announce it (without announcing the name, only providing the violation) as a reminder among colleagues
• Physical employee conference
  • Although everyone is working remotely, it doesn't mean that everyone doesn't need to meet. You can arrange for everyone to meet in the same place once a year.
  • Connect feelings and synchronize company culture
  • And it can make more people work more smoothly

Thoughts

This book was written by the founder of a startup accelerator company, and his company has also been doing full remote work for a long time. The whole book clearly explains remote work through the impact of the pre-pandemic and the pandemic. Two major aspects:

• As a remote worker, how should you adjust?
• As a manager, how should you manage your all-remote team? (or even a full-remote company)

This book gives remote workers the psychological preparation they should have. After all, remote work is not just about saving commuting time, but also about paying more attention to the overall transformation of the work model. Remote work requires a higher degree of self-discipline and proactive aspects. Only then can supervisors and company colleagues trust and feel at ease. It is even more necessary to balance your life and work to avoid blurring the lines between work and personal life because of working from home, which can lead to early burn-out.

And as a manager, you need to pay more attention to the company culture and core concepts. Because employees are scattered everywhere, they cannot feel the banners and slogans in many office decorations. You need to frequently communicate relevant information, and you also need to pay special attention when recruiting employees. Not all employees can understand and properly use the benefits that remote work brings to them. This book also spends a lot of time teaching how to build corporate culture and core concepts (remotely), which also gives me a lot of in-depth understanding.

Finally, whether you are a prospective remote worker or a management level who may become a remote worker, this book can help you.