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Webinar Recap: Distributed Teams and Open Workspaces

  • Publish Date: Posted almost 4 years ago
  • Author: Brenda Murray

Webinar Recap: Distributed Teams and Open Workspaces

The COVID-19 pandemic has infiltrated every sector of our world in March 2020, and it's creating new challenges in uncharted territories. One of the primary consequences of the coronavirus is the mandated "social distancing" and self-quarantines from the government. With offices shut down, employees are forced to work from home and employers are scrambling to figure out how to manage distributed teams.

Webinar Recap: Distributed Teams and Open Workspaces

​I recently facilitated a webinar with tips on how to successfully navigate challenging workforce trends like remote workers and distributed teams - as well as nontraditional workspaces, flex hours, and flex vacation time. I discuss these obstacles and best practices to overcome them in a recording that you can watch here.

During the webinar, we polled participants to find out the top challenges that their organizations face related to remote teams and open workspaces, and these were the results.

Top challenges remote or distributed teams present to organizations:

  • Lack of communication (59%)

  • Lack of collaboration (58%)

  • Misunderstanding of work challenges (55%)

Top challenges open workspaces present to organizations:

  • Lack of focus (77%)

  • Lack of “think time” for innovation (57%)

  • Loss of productivity (52%)

I have a lot of experience in these environments and have learned practices that work well and ways to adapt when faced with these challenges. But at the end of the day, there is no set solution for one person or organization. A lot of these issues come down to the company’s culture and how they are flexible in the face of difficult work dynamics.

At the end of the webinar, we had a Q&A session where participants asked for advice on their biggest hurdles related to these workplace trends. Questions included how to thrive in an extremely open workspace, how to make working remote succeed for contractors, and addressing cultural differences with offshore teams who have different holidays and vacation time than the U.S.

Watch here and let us know if you have more questions that didn’t get answered.