Work From Home pilot for Coronavirus Preparedness

I’ve been advocating work-from-home as a sensible strategy for most businesses for a while now and have instituted full-time work from home at CCS. . 

 

The value of working from home is clear:

  • Reduced commuting time/cost

  • Reduced office expense

  • Improved employee lifestyle

  • Improved focus on deliverables and clear communication, documentation and teamwork, rather than a focus on time in the building

The hesitancy to try a work from home program is also clear:

  • “what-if” problems. 

    • What if people slack off? 

    • What if people have trouble communicating? 

    • What if people aren’t online when in need to reach them?

 

All the “what-if” issues generally revolve around not being able to trust your people to deliver with reduced supervision. It’s a catch 22 though- you don’t really know until you try it, but you’re hesitant to try it because you think it may fail, and if it does it’s hard to take away.

 

Preparedness for a possible epidemic like Coronavirus (COVID-19) presents an opportunity to test out a work from home program with no extra cost, and no disappointment if it needs to be reversed. Whether Coronavirus eventually necessitates work from home or not, it would be pragmatic for most businesses to design and test a plan that can be executed if needed.

 

The short-term benefits you could get from running a pilot program:

  • Identify and test tools and processes to facilitate working from home

  • Increase focus on deliverables and accountability

  • Time and cost savings to employees

 

The long-term benefits you could get from running a successful pilot program:

  • It works and you’re able to carry-over all of the above short-term benefits into the long-term

  • You’re able to reduce the cost of office space in the future 

  • Improved ability to attract and retain workers

     

The long-term benefits you could get from running a failed pilot program:

  • You have a plan in place that you can tweak and execute for future events 

  • You now know that work from home is not a viable option as structured and you gain information which can help you plan for the future

  • You can show that you’ve put in an emergency plan for work from home, but when you implemented the plan it proved inappropriate for long-term use

 

With the need to be prepared for the possibility of widespread Coronavirus issues, there’s a lot of upside to validating a work from home program, and even significant value to running a pilot that doesn’t prove the case for a continuing work from home program. Best of all, in either case there is no down side to trying.

Dan Plawiuk is the Founder and Managing Director of CCS Professional Services, and can be reached at dplawiuk@ccs-pro.com.

 Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels