Return-to-Office, but Make it Digital-First

KEEP THAT DIGITAL-FIRST ENERGY

Just a year ago we said we’d never go back. Not that we’d all never work in a common office again, but that we had seen all of the ridiculous inefficiencies that came with blindly trudging into a centralized location 5 days a week.

Remember that before COVID, even simple things that we now count as table stakes, like video meetings, were not common. I recall anticipating some executive education and a bit of last-minute tech support crisis with nearly every video conference that we scheduled in 2019.

And yet, it seems that we’re now returning. As of July, 59% of full-time employees in the US are back to being 100% on-site, and in the last couple of months, the following “tech”companies had issues some form of mandatory return-to-office (RTO) order: Amazon, Apple, BlackRock, Chipotle, Citigroup, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, JP Morgan, Meta, Redfin, Salesforce, Snap, Starbucks, Tesla, Twitter & Uber.

Even the virtual meeting company itself, Zoom, has called its people back, so what hope is there for the rest of us?

Just because we’re heading back to IRL spaces doesn’t mean that we have to lose all progress.

First, there are a lot of benefits to being in the same space as the people that we work with. I have recently done a few days on-site at client offices and I forgot just how easy it was to get things done when checking in with someone didn’t require a calendar invitation.

We can also carry forward the same digital-first mentality that the pandemic forced on us, and marry it with the reality of office life.

Here are a few digital-first practices that we’ve helped our clients adapt to that should absolutely be maintained:

• Centralized Digital Communication — In 2019, internal digital comms were a mess. We’d email some of our colleagues, use Messenger for others, and some of the more tech-forward teams may have adopted Slack, but it had less than 25% as many users back then, so very few offices had a single, centralized place to go. The right answer will be different for every office, but the wrong answer will always be a chaotic mess of channels.
• Consistent, Interactive Training — When managers could no longer start a new employee with a tour of the office, then hand them off to a co-worker to “show them the ropes,” we were forced to look much more closely at how we onboard our staff. Today, nearly every team has some combination of recorded videos, online checklists, and shared documents that new team members can peruse. All of that takes maintenance and commitment to keep it current and make sure that every hire gets the same high quality experience.
• Shared Project Management Software — When we couldn’t see what each other was doing every minute of the day, it became necessary to share what we’re all up to in collaborative spaces like Asana, Monday, Wrike, etc. Use of project management software spiked — where it had previously been used extensively by development and project-based teams, it now seems that nearly everyone’s work is represented on a Kanban board somewhere. There’s a real risk that as we get comfortable in our offices again, we lose the benefits of being able to see what everyone else is working on, and how our tasks are contributing to the bigger picture.
• Managing to Outcomes, not Hours — This one is more of a personal rant, but when we could no longer take mental attendance of our team’s presence in the office and peer over their shoulders to make sure that they weren’t scrolling newsfeeds, we were forced to shift our management to outcomes instead of hours. Yes, some companies implemented draconian screen- and even mouse-tracking software, but the majority of us realized that we care much less about how long it takes our people to get work done, than we do about they’re able to produce. This may not have a snappy software solution, but it’s the one that I’d most like to see maintained as we return to some version of office life.

SUPPORT NWT & THE OKANAGAN

HOW TO HELP

Right now, fires are raging across many parts of North America, causing evacuations, destroying homes, and creating environmental devastation.

Here in Canada, two regions have been hit particularly hard, so if you are in a position to offer some support, here are a few organizations that are worth checking out:

Okanagan

• Central Okanagan Food Bank
• Mamas for Mamas
• BC SPCA

Northwest Territories

• Yellowknife Community Foundation
• Canada Red Cross Northwest Fires Appeal
• Veterinarians Without Borders

Nationwide

• Disaster Aid Canada

WANNA COLLAB?

NEW IG FEATURE MAKES IT EASIER FOR A VARIETY OF ACCOUNTS TO CONTRIBUTE TO A SINGLE POST

Sharp-eyed X user @Alex193a spotted this new feature coming to an Instagram account near you. According to his findings, we’re going to be able to publish posts that others can then jump into with their own photos and videos. The original creator will be notified when media is added, and it will only appear to everyone else if they choose to approve it.

This will have benefits for vacations, weddings, and other group events, and it will also open up creative possibilities for brands looking to collect user-generated content and/or invite influencers to co-create content.

One fairly obvious idea is to ask an audience to contribute their favourite use of a product and be rewarded when their contributions are selected, but what’s going to be most interesting is all of the non-obvious ways that people use the new collab feature.

SHORTS ARE THE NEW TRAILER

NEW FEATURE LINKS YOUTUBE SHORTS TO FULL VIDEOS

On the same day that we learned YouTube would be blocking links from being added to Shorts (their TikTok-style video format), they’ve added a similar feature that will open up a lot of creative options.

YouTube Shorts are now going to be able to link directly to full YouTube videos, meaning that they can operate like a trailer for the longer format. It’s safe to assume that we’ll also be able to use the timestamp link feature, which will mean that you could create a series of Shorts that take the viewer directly to a relevant part of the video.

I’ll share an example of where my mind goes, because we publish a lot of educational content: You could publish a 1-hour training video, then accompany that with a series of 10-second Shorts, teasing different topics and concepts that you cover in the video. You could then embed those Shorts on a webpage, effectively creating an interactive menu that your visitors could use to navigate through your video.

Of course, that’s just one idea for a very specific use case. I’m sure that you can think of many more.

A FEW MORE STORIES WORTH A CLICK

STUFF THAT WILL MAKE YOU JUST A BIT SMARTER THIS WEEK

• New social platform Fizz pops onto 80+ campuses, allowing anonymous conversations about anything & everything
• TikTok is embracing its impact on travel, and published its insights in a digital playbook meant to help tourism marketers take advantage of its tools
• Pretty much everyone in marketing has at least dabbled with AI tools so far, and almost half aren’t impressed, according to a new study
• Still interested in AI? Check out this ChatGPT cheat sheet

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting