Debates continue to rage about the effectiveness or wastefulness of return-to-office (‘RTO’) mandates across both traditional and social media outlets. Many decry the push from major companies like Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Nike to enforce RTO, while others tout productivity gains when teams gather. A suite of competing acronyms have emerged, from RTO to WFH to IRL.
But what does it all mean for working professionals who just want to do great work on great teams?
McKinsey weighed in recently with an interesting twist. They argue that the specific organizational working model – whether in-person, hybrid, or remote -- is less critical to the success of a company than the work environment and practices of the organization.
Indeed, McKinsey’s research finds no clear working model that leads to higher productivity or employee satisfaction. Employees across all models from remote-first companies to entirely in-person ones report similar levels of engagement, and the data suggests that no single model guarantees better performance. Nature magazine cites data confirming McKinsey’s findings that while there’s no change in productivity between hybrid and RTO working models, there is a change in employee satisfaction - 35% fewer employees with flexible working arrangements quit jobs vs. their counterparts working in the office full-time.
What does come out of the article, however, is that the success of any work model depends on a set of core best practices -- not just policies.
In other words, companies whose workplace culture has established core practices will be most likely to see the best results from their employees.
As the employer liaison at Localized, a career tech platform connecting talent with employers across every sector, my colleagues and I have had enough conversations with recruiters in recent years to know that there’s an urgent need for specific core skills that, together, can be referred to as Virtual Intelligence (‘VI’).
Some of our employer partners have described junior colleagues taking meetings whilst reclining and wearing pyjamas or sitting in front of piles of laundry; others cite new joiners in EMEA offices feeling pressured to respond to emails from U.S. colleagues very late at night, when they aren’t expected to.
All of them agree that a virtually intelligent person demonstrates the ability to communicate, collaborate and engage professionally when not everyone is in the same place at the same time.
We’ve developed essential training to cultivate this in the form of a multiple-choice, badged assessment that’s been co-created with testing giant ETS, in order to ensure that today’s workforces are operating from a codified set of behaviors.
Our ‘Anywherepro’ assessment boosts employees’ VI skills whether they’re in-office employees coordinating with colleagues, teams and stakeholders in different towns and cities, or they’re fully remote employees working across continents.
Localized has distilled this concept of VI into five parts: Meeting etiquette, coordination & collaboration, building cross-functional relationships, seeking mentorship & feedback, and maintaining work/life balance.
The multifaceted nature of workplaces today present employees with varied challenges, such as:
- What’s considered best practice in terms of interjecting to raise an issue in a meeting, using AI notetakers, and accommodating those with disabilities?
- How do you go about seeking proactive feedback on a project, if you’re working from home the week your line manager’s in the office?
- How do you manage project deadlines across multiple departments in a global company, when you’re in different time zones and some of you are observing national or religious holidays?
Anyone grappling with the complexities of modern workplaces can stand to benefit from knowing how to apply these best practices in day-to-day situations. We’re also mindful that what’s an area of focus or growth for one company isn’t the same for another, so we’ve designed a Training Workshop to accompany the assessment that can be tailored to an organization’s specific needs.
Completing the Anywherepro situational judgement assessment will take 30 minutes, but will ensure that employees thrive in today’s workplaces long-term - making it an essential part of any company’s L&D roadmap going forward.
Strengthen your workplace culture with Virtual Intelligence - click here to book a demo and find out more.