There are obvious benefits to the employee of working from home.<\/p>\n
However the negatives to the company are too significant to ignore.<\/p>\n
In every turnaround of a distressed company I have fixed, the absence of face-to-face cross-functional communication was glaringly absent.<\/p>\n
Cross-functional communication is defined as employees from every function meeting as a group on a regular basis to discuss anything affecting the company\u2019s performance including: priorities, problems, issues, creating new opportunities, etc. These functions or departments include: sales, marketing, accounting, manufacturing, engineering and human resources.<\/p>\n
Effective cross-functional communication starts at the top with the Chief Executive Officer. A successful CEO must meet regularly with direct reports, as well as with lower organizational levels. The organizational tiers below the CEO level must meet regularly. The meetings should include a mix of officers, managers and individual contributors. Depending on the issues and their severity, by meeting regularly I suggest weekly.Cross-functional communication must be done face-to-face. In person communication simply provides the most honest, candid, productive exchange.<\/p>\n
Whether problem solving or evaluation of a new opportunity some people will not express their opinions openly in a meeting. There are many factors for this hesitation to share thoughts, including basic modesty, shyness, uncomfortable speaking publicly, pecking order politics, etc.\u00a0 Successful managers must be able to read a team, recognize the body language and facial expressions of a person reluctant or shy to express themselves and have the skill to draw the person out \u2013 get them to open up.<\/p>\n
This is very hard to do at a distance via conference calls and other contemporary technology. It simply cannot be done relying on Zoom calls.<\/p>\n
A further complication of employees not working in the company\u2019s offices is the elimination of informal communication. Employees frequently stop to chat informally in a hallway or someone\u2019s office to further discuss an issue important to the company. Occasionally in these informal meetings a solution is formed.<\/p>\n
The staff of any company working exclusively from home will negatively affect creativity, problem resolution and company performance.<\/p>\n
Articles:<\/p>\n
Goldman Sachs lifts all COVID protocols, orders staff to return to office full-time<\/a><\/p>\n Is the work-from-home debate already over?<\/a><\/p>\nTweet<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are obvious benefits to the employee of working from home. However the negatives to the company are too significant to ignore. In every turnaround of a distressed company I have fixed, the absence of face-to-face cross-functional communication was glaringly absent. Cross-functional communication is defined as employees from every function meeting as a group on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,185,36,269,20,14,46,285,286,78,149,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-management-association","category-avoiding-a-common-manufacturing-problem","category-books","category-broken-business-model","category-business-failure","category-ceos","category-chief-executive-officer","category-cross-functional-communication","category-effective-management-and-employee-communication","category-leadership","category-management-2","category-turnarounds-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4059,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions\/4059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}