2020 Best Practices Study

Established patterns in the workplace don’t change quickly or easily. Remote work has been discussed, debated, and experimented with for decades. Despite evidence that remote employees are often happier and more productive than their peers in the office, 2020 began with only a small portion of the U.S. workforce working remotely – 3.2%, according to flexjobs.com (Beth Braccio Hering, February 13, 2020). COVID- 19 created a “tipping point.” Virtually overnight, the question changed for most businesses from “should we embrace remote work?” to “how do we do remote work successfully?” The remote work adoption timeline was radically compressed. In June of 2020, the WSJ reported that nearly 50% of the U.S. workforce had transitioned to remote work due to COVID-19 (Laura Forman, June 6, 2020).

Forced to figure out how to successfully work remotely, many businesses found they could and are also discovering remote work offers benefits for both employers and employees. Current technologies, though not perfect, are generally sufficient to effectively support remote work, suggesting the slow pre-COVID adoption of remote work was due more to inertia and reluctance to change than to structural or technical limitations. Is remote work here to stay? Almost certainly, we have entered a new world of expanded remote work that will remain even when the pandemic has subsided. If so, how can agents and brokers embrace it? 1) Protect your culture. Acknowledge that cultural development will be more difficult as employees become more dispersed and personal interactions become less organic. Random encounters between people that occur naturally in a physical workplace help to develop relationships, spark new ideas, and promote culture. Technology is a poor substitute. You will need to be intentional about protecting your culture. How? Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Proactively find ways to: •

Reinforce your shared values and goals.

• Keep employees informed on corporate level goals, initiatives, etc. • Celebrate wins.

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