Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to set common hours. If you and
Speaker 1: your team are working from home, all of you can
Speaker 1: have a lot more scheduled flexibility than you could in
Speaker 1: the past, but you probably still need to do some
Speaker 1: work together in real time. By setting a few common
Speaker 1: hours and then letting the rest be more flexible, you
Speaker 1: can get the best of both worlds, cohesion and freedom.
Speaker 1: Many folks have been working from home for a full
Speaker 1: year now in the wake of the coronavirus. Working from
Speaker 1: home is a skill, and fortunately in a year's time
Speaker 1: we've gotten a lot better at it, but there is
Speaker 1: always room for improvement. One of the biggest challenges is
Speaker 1: figuring out how to still work closely as a team.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of COVID, many companies were requiring people
Speaker 1: to check in precisely at nine am. Oddly enough, many
Speaker 1: of these places didn't require people to check out precisely
Speaker 1: at five pm. You don't really need to think too
Speaker 1: hard to figure that one out. Fortunately, most people are
Speaker 1: moving away from strict time guidelines like that, which is
Speaker 1: good because one of the major upsides of working from
Speaker 1: home is the freedom to set your own schedule. If
Speaker 1: you work best early in the morning and then want
Speaker 1: to take a long midday break to go for a
Speaker 1: run or take a nap, and then work some more
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, well this is hard to pull off
Speaker 1: if you are commuting somewhere. If you're working from home,
Speaker 1: well why not. Some people are useless before ten am,
Speaker 1: Yet office culture has long dick tated showing up and
Speaker 1: pretending to be bright eyed and bushey tailed at eight am.
Speaker 1: Without a commute, you can escape most of this. Of course,
Speaker 1: none of this changes that we do need to work
Speaker 1: closely with our colleagues. Email is an extraordinarily inefficient method
Speaker 1: for close collaboration because it drives people to check email
Speaker 1: constantly and never do anything else. Yet, when we are
Speaker 1: staffed in teams, we do want to know that we
Speaker 1: can reach people and get a swift response. The solution
Speaker 1: set common hours. Teams that do this well set some
Speaker 1: sort of core hours like eleven am to three pm,
Speaker 1: or maybe ten am to two pm, or maybe even
Speaker 1: noon to four pm Eastern time. If there's a large
Speaker 1: contingent on the West coast that then needs to clock
Speaker 1: in from nine to one. The point is that everyone
Speaker 1: agrees to be available during these times for near real
Speaker 1: time collaboration. You can call, you can video chat. I
Speaker 1: guess you can email, although it's still a horrible medium
Speaker 1: for that sort of thing. Anyway, you know that you
Speaker 1: are all on together during these hours, and then for
Speaker 1: the rest of the work day, people can choose whatever
Speaker 1: works best for them. Some folks might want to get
Speaker 1: up early and work from five am to nine am,
Speaker 1: sign off until the eleven am start of common hours,
Speaker 1: work until three pm, and then be done for the day.
Speaker 1: Some night owl types might start at eleven am with
Speaker 1: the common hours and then do their other four hours
Speaker 1: from eight pm to midnight. The upside of this is
Speaker 1: that when you know there are hours you can reach
Speaker 1: your colleagues, then nobody needs to be pinging people during
Speaker 1: non core hours, and that means you can really focus
Speaker 1: on your individual deliverables without checking Slack or email every
Speaker 1: six minutes. Such core hours could also work well for
Speaker 1: families that are sharing childcare these days. If you can
Speaker 1: arrange for different party is to have different core hours
Speaker 1: than you can cover for each other and do the
Speaker 1: flexible hours whenever it happens to work for your family. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, there will always be emergencies outside of core hours,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people won't be able to be available during
Speaker 1: core hours. Developing a culture where you only contact people
Speaker 1: during certain hours is really tough. It requires advanced planning
Speaker 1: and making sure when you are about to sign off
Speaker 1: from your core hours that you have whatever you need
Speaker 1: until the next day. I note that if you are
Speaker 1: a manager, you also need to trust that your employees
Speaker 1: will log the other half of the work day, even
Speaker 1: if you are not actively observing it happened. However, I
Speaker 1: am guessing that you didn't hire people who are trying
Speaker 1: to slack off on the job. And if you can
Speaker 1: make the core hours concept work, you'll be able to
Speaker 1: work together closely and enjoy the flexibility inherent in working
Speaker 1: from home. You might be so thrilled with the results
Speaker 1: that you'll keep working this way even when you can
Speaker 1: go back to the office. After all, being together forty
Speaker 1: hours a week is probably overkill. People need time to
Speaker 1: do their own work too, and it's best if they
Speaker 1: can do it whenever they work best. So today, think
Speaker 1: about whether the core hours concept might work for you
Speaker 1: and your team. Which hours would work, and if you
Speaker 1: have something like this running right now, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about it. You can reach me at Laura at
Speaker 1: Laura Vanderkam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
Speaker 1: Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast Pod. That's B the number four, then Breakfast
Speaker 1: p o D. You can also shoot me an email
Speaker 1: at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com.
Speaker 1: That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.
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