Available for Interviews: Leni Rivera
Leni Rivera is a Workplace Experience specialist and author of its very first book in the industry, Workplace Experience. Her passion is creating work environments that enable employees to be both productive and happy, regardless of where that is.
What Leni Rivera can say in an interview about
Maintaining Remote Work Environments:
As the pandemic slowly begins to lift, it is becoming clearer that remote working is here to stay. As a result, many company leaders and managers are feeling anxious about managing a team in this new remote work environment. Here are three of their topmost concerns, and practical responses to help leaders and managers navigate this change.
1. How do I know that my employees are coming to work and
doing their jobs if I can’t see them in the office every day?
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- The first thing we need to acknowledge is that even when employees were seen at their desks, it wasn’t a guarantee that they were actually working. This new work environment is an opportunity to change the notion that “seeing” workers work is a direct measure of their productivity. In reality, there are more effective ways to measure productivity—and it has more to do with the work itself, than with where and when someone works.
- This new environment invites managers to no longer manage people. Instead, they need to manage work. The focus is shifting away from what, when, and where employees are working, to the delivery of the actual results (the work). Employees need to be trusted to be accountable for the delivery of those results.
- The metrics for success need to shift as well. Instead of measuring time spent working, or time spent in the office, measure productivity instead through the delivered results.
At the end of the day, it is the results that drive business, not the amount of time employees spend in front of their computers.
2. Teams need to get together in person in order to most effectively
collaborate and brainstorm on projects.
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- Studies have shown that the traditional ways that teams collaborate and brainstorm, need to evolve—whether in person or in a virtual environment. Traditionally, in most of these sessions, it is the ideas of the loudest person or persons in the room that gets carried into action. But these may not be the best ideas, and this method discourages diverse perspectives and innovative ideas. There are new ways of improving these sessions so that they are more inclusive of different personality traits, neurodiverse considerations, and physical impairments. And these new methods are not dependent on being physically together to be effective.
- This new environment is an opportunity to improve the ways that teams work and collaborate together. So, rather than trying to fit old ways of doing things into a new environment, focus instead on developing new ways to do things that can leverage this new environment.
3. Building and maintaining a culture can only happen when
employees are physically together.
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- Culture is the set of beliefs and behaviors which define the ways in which workers interact with each other, with their managers and leaders, with business partners, and with their customers. While some interactions are more effective in person, many are just as effective virtually, but all of them exist regardless of the method of interaction.
- To put it simply, an employee can experience a company’s culture as soon as they bring their first idea to the table. Is the idea even considered, or completely ignored? Is the same idea given more credence if it is said by someone else at the table? Will someone else take their idea and present it as their own? Are they given the resources they need to build and further develop their idea? How many layers of management approval will they have to go through before they can start working on it? The response to all of these questions provides very clear clues to employees about the company’s culture—and yet none of them have to be experienced in person to be understood, felt, or imbibed.
Interview: Leni Rivera
Leni Rivera is a Workplace Experience specialist and author of its very first book in the industry. Her passion is creating work environments that enable employees to be both productive and happy, regardless of where that is. Additionally, Leni is currently working on her Master’s in Industrial & Organizational Psychology.
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