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Steve’s Work From Home Findings: Workplace Social Events

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

There’s also social events at workplaces. Some of us enjoy them, some of us hate them, but they’re a reality. If we work from home, these are going to change.

Now before I go on, this is colored by personal opinions. I’m not a fan of “work socializing” as I’ve usually seen it done wrong – contrived, forced, and unsocial. However when it’s done right, as part of a functional culture, it’s pretty beneficial. My take is that when you do it, it should come OUT of work time – don’t take time out of people’s non-work time, and don’t force it.

So, part of this post is going to be colored by those opinions. Fortuantely, I think I’m right.

So here’s a few things we need to do with workplace socialization in Work From Home (WFH).

TAKE WORK EVENTS OUT OF WORK TIME:
I know I said this above, but let me reiterate it – if you throw work social events, they should usually come out of work time. WFH makes time, schedules, and travels unclear – so make sure to preserve the work/life distinction by not chipping into “life” time.

However beyond healthy work/life balance, this provides another advantage – having workplace social events come out of work time allows for clear planning and scheduling. You know when something is happening, its work impacts, and can plan for them. This clarity helps the whole WFH things.

SET REAL GOALS:
Don’t just throw a party because you always have. Don’t just do a conference because you always have.

Ask what your goals are for these new events. You may find your goals don’t align with what you do now. You may find they’re quite worthy. You may find they have purpose and cancel them.

The best way to set goals is to talk to people and figure what they want. Don’t just enforce things or assume you know best. Instead try to find what helps people you work with.

Sure you never thought a company RPG session was a thing you needed, but it may well be.

CHOOSE APPROPRIATE METHODS:
WFH and having work social events also requires you to choose appropriate methods. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Do you do a virtual event? Those are easy to set up and don’t require travel. They also can be hard to run when you have 100 people and add to online meeting fatigue.

Do you do in-person? That can be great especially with WFH – it’s a chance to get out of the house or your office! It’s also a chance to do something different. But that requires scheduling, planning, and possibly excluding people who can’t make it.

Do you do a mixed in-person and virtual? That’s great but requires good planning and coordinating.

There is no ideal method. It depends on your goals and situation, so be open to it.

TRY NEW THINGS:
You’ve probably seen the same Christmas party, birthday party, and classes at work. Well if we’re going to WFH more why not try something new? This is a chance to do work events that are different.

A few things I’ve seen:

  • Virtual happy hours. All you need is Zoom and a beer.
  • Virtual meals. Like the above but w=probably with less alcohol.
  • Movie and TV watching. Be it streaming or just running the same film and chatting it can be a lot of fun.
  • Virtual games. There’s plenty of options for virtual gaming.
  • Mini-outings. Having time for small social events among teams, not one unified one, allows for more personal focus. I’ve had fond times going to restaurants with my teams.

This a chance to experiment!

SHARE INFORMATION:
I repeat this in many a blog post, but trust me – share ideas for how to do work social events in these times of WFH. We’re all kind of trying to figure what to do right now, so swapping ideas is necessary.

At some point we’ll probably have all sorts of scholarly papers and advice books on what to do and what works. We’re just now there now – but by swapping ideas we can build a body of knowledge. In fact, your efforts might lead to help people handle WFH and work events better.

You might even become the expert on the subject.

MOVING ONWARD:
As I said I’m not always a fan from work social events, but that’s as I’ve seen them done poorly. Right now in the age of the Pandemic, of WFH and enforced WFH, we can change things for the better. We might as well anyway, we’re sort of stuck here.

But we don’t have to be alone.

Steven Savage

Organization Is Inspiration

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

This is a bit of a personal take on things, not advice or anything. But I was talking with a friend about organization and planning and wanted to share something.

I find Organization inspires me.

Planning, scheduling, breaking work down, and so on gets me going. There’s something about it that gets my imagination going and gets me inspired. So yes, I preach a lot about organizing and Agile and the rest, but I want to note how it helps me imagine.

I realized in that talk that sometimes when I’m down, planning gets me going again.

For instance, recently I was feeling uninspired and didn’t have a sense of what I was doing. So I made some finer-grained plans on my major projects – in fact, I felt driven to do it. It made me a lot more aware, a lot more organized, and a lot more “into” what I was doing.

I think there’s two parts of this.

First, when you plan and organize projects, you get into them. You feel what made you want to do them. You imagine ways to do them. You become aware of them and experience them more intimately.

Secondly, when you plan and organize projects, you can see how to get them done. You see the end goals, you see the path, you know your challenges and your workarounds. You know how to get them done – which probably energizes you as well.

So ironically, now I the planning and organizing guy, realize I may need to do it a little more now and then. That’s a useful realization – sometimes even I need to do a little more work breakdown for reasons over work breakdown.

But that’s why I share these things. Putting it into words makes me think, feedback from you the readers helps me process, and we learn together.

So let’s get organized – in an inspiring way.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Work From Home Findings: Tracking Tools

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I wanted to expand on some past thoughts here on working from home. For those of you new here, I’m compiling my Work From Home findings during the Pandemic.

And that’s the importance of some form of Tracking Tools. You know Jira, Rally, ticketing systems, etc. The things that let us create, assign, and check on work.

They should be important period, but they’re extremely important with Work From Home (WFH).

Imagine if you will you manage support tickets, say for a sales department. You’re always checking where things are, whats delivered, what’s late, etc. That thing is vital to your job.

It’s also vital to work from home.

Imagine what a good tracking tool does. You create work so you’re sure something’s being done. You assign work so you know someone’s doing it. You report on work so you know where things are. You may even get alerts.

That also means you don’t have to be in the same space as others to cooperate – the tool is your virtual whiteboard, notecards, etc. A good tracking system makes working from home much easier.

So sure, you want one, right? And that’ll solve all your problems? Nope.

WFH is also a great way to test out your work tracking systems, be they Jira, or Rally, or whatever. A good tracking system should let you work remotely just like in person, or close. If you can’t, then you have to ask if you have the right tool, or if you’re using it right.

This Pandemic specifically and WFH in general is a great test. It will point out flaws – or has. And those flaws aren’t because you’re home – it’s because your tool, or how you use it, or how you work are flawed.

Going forward, in supporting WFH, we should think WFH is worth doing – and make sure our tools are used so that’s supported. It’ll help us take advantage of all the other benefits of WFH, with less stress.

(Also I imagine, consultant that can set up tracking tools and processes are going to have a big role in the future . . .)

Steven Savage