Remember the movie The Social Network in which young upstart Mark Zuckerberg builds his business by setting up company headquarters in his house? He literally lived and worked, round-the-clock, with the smart guys who helped build the beast know as Facebook. In today’s golden age of COVID, Zuckerberg proudly touts his liberal work-from-home policy, but consider this: Would remote work have gotten the company off the ground in the first place? The mind reels.
Read on for reasons why collaboration and co-working will always be necessary, and how you can achieve it.
Some businesses aren’t built for work-from-home.
Every business is unique in its strengths, corporate culture, and workflows—as well as the growth stage it’s in. Some businesses are better suited for a work-from-home policy than others.
Perhaps your company is successful because management has invested in “big brains” who work together to design and perfect brilliant products and solutions. Industries like engineering, computing, and design have historically innovated their way to success by bringing project teams together, physically.
Security threats are high with a remote workforce.
Perhaps your business is in the financial services sector, where cybersecurity is the lifeblood of your business? Phishing attacks increased by 40% in the first few days of the great work-from-home migrate from the office, and some smaller businesses aren’t equipped to deal with the level of security protection required.
Not everybody has a home office.
In less skilled industries where workers are on the lower end of the pay scale, access to technology is the problem. Some workers who couldpotentially work from home, in fields like customer service and telemarketing, lack the personal devices needed to do their work. And companies may not have the margins to provide company-owned devices to employees.
Physical distance can negatively impact company culture.
Let’s say challenges number 1-3 above are non-issues for your business. Your business isn’t inventing anything new, you don’t work in a high-security industry like finance or healthcare, and you do have the financial resources to issue personal devices to all of your employees so they can work from home. What happens to company culture?
Company culture can be hard to replicate digitally.
According to Harvard Business School, Charles Handy, one of the world’s renowned experts on organizational management, refers to company culture as follows: "the soup we all swim about in, and that soup is thin when the ‘here’ is not a location and people are working asynchronously and perhaps not sharing a common ‘way to do things.”
Even the savviest managers of work-from-home teams can’t always overcome the challenge of limited (or no) social interactions between employees. This is something Microsoft management calls the invaluable “two minutes before and two minutes after” a meeting--unscheduled time that can bond colleagues and help move teams forward. “It’s based on honest, productive conversations and helps companies to identify issues and collectively form resolutions,” says Rachael Down of Breathe HR.
Meet MojoDome. A solution for working together, safely and productively, in the open workspace.
Forget what you’ve heard about personal privacy booths with names like phone booths and pods. While old-school inventions might place you in your own private spaceship for acoustic and visual privacy (desk NOT included), today’s workers require a privacy booth that does it all:
- MojoDome creates a private, germ-free environment for when an employee needs to concentrate
- Converts to an open, collaborative environment when it's time to engage with the team, live and in-person.
- Comes with an ergonomic, height-adjustable desk
- Delivers customized, personalized lighting
Companies like MojoDesk are working around the clock to create adaptable, affordable workstations that enable teams to work together in a shared space to preserve innovation, enhance data security, and protect employee morale. All while keeping them safe from airborne droplets that can spread COVID-19 germs.
We're calling our new MojoDome the "Swiss Army Knife." It's a convertible, all-in-one solution by MojoDesk that lets your employees be together for collaboration—and separate when more privacy is needed. Sounds magical, right?
Employees get the “best of all worlds” by creating a safe, personal environment that they can control for lighting, privacy, and acoustics, all with the press of a button.
Ready to bring your workers back to the open office?
Check out MojoDome.