When we experience anxiety and burnout in our professions, it’s easy to convince ourselves that the stress is necessary, or even a productive mechanism for achieving our goals. We suppress and even rationalize stress by imagining an ideal future when the dust settles, and our hard work propels itself with its own momentum. Then, it will all have been worth it, right? The problem with this train of thought is that burnout and bad habits are hard to unlearn. This is especially true when these habits are fostered by company policies that can compound the ordinary stressors of daily life.
What if an investment in employee trust and flexibility could mitigate these stressors? When life circumstances collide – say, a DMV visit, a sick child, or even a chance to spend extra family time over breakfast instead of attempting to beat the morning rush hour –stress can be exacerbated in ways that have nothing to do with your team optimizing their performance in the office.
This is why here at Plative, we are laser-focused on building a company culture that supports peace of mind wherever possible. We are well-aware of the fact that our team is constantly faced with client deadlines, rigorous travel, technical problem-solving, and other high pressure challenges. In our continued effort to improve well-being, we created our #WorkFromAnywhere initiative, which encourages our employees to set up shop from anywhere they are able to work effectively. No commuting or micromanagement required, just complete trust for our people and their commitment to do the best work of their lives.
Here are some positive impacts of the #WorkFromAnywhere policy that we’ve seen since implementing it:
- More mindful time in the office: As it turns out, when office attendance is a choice, employees plan their days to include deliberate face-to-face time with their colleagues, whether for collaborative problem solving or just the social time.
- Improved timeliness to all meetings: This one is easy to conceptualize: no more running around an office building in search of an open conference room—or awkwardly waiting to kick someone out of the room you booked.
- Increased engagement with company communications: How many of your company’s emails sent to “everyone@company.com” actually get read, rather than skimmed? When the office is made virtual, high performing employees make sure they take the time to demonstrate their visibility and accessibility to each other.
- Increased participation in company meetings of all types: When face-time is an opportunity instead of an assumption, our employees took proactive measures to collaborate and exhibit helpfulness whenever possible.
If you’re an employee of a company that you wish would demonstrate deeper trust in their employees by implementing policies like #WorkFromAnywhere, I’d urge you to take a look at our open roles!