It seems like ages ago when we were contemplating having everyone work from home. In Seattle we’re finishing month three! No complaints mind you, our family has been personally impacted by the virus and we see the unprecedented challenges that we’re facing globally and locally.
Now we’re all working from home (WFH). What’s your plan going forward?
My wife works in Pharma and they’ve categorized their staff as Red, Orange, and Yellow. The Red team members are critical and will be first back in the office due to those critical roles. Followed by Orange and finally Yellow (support staff that can work from home). They don’t expect the Yellow team until after Labor Day. That’s coming off of a project where they “densified” their working space at the beginning of the year, putting everyone closer together. Now everyone needs to be moved apart.
Jack Dorsey has told the Twitter team that they can feel free to work from home indefinitely. For Salesforce.com and Zillow, they aren’t expecting the broader teams to return until the end of the year. Nadella, in the article below doesn’t see a complete shift in Microsoft’s workforce.
What are you doing to keep you workforce motivated and engaged? I’d love to hear back from you and write up some of your best practices. The big companies get the press, but we still have to figure out what we’re going to do!
You’re ability to retain key staff, revenue and profits in the midst of uncertainty will help retain enterprise value.