(Editor’s note: This is the 10th installment in a weekly series on how Cooley Group is managing the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of its CEO and president. See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8 and part 9 here.)
Joining Cooley Group 10 years ago as the first nonfamily member to be president and CEO, I undertook a total operational transformation to establish a collaborative culture that would drive long-term, sustainable growth. Forging a culture of collaboration required replacing functional silos with diverse and cross-functional teams. Until now, the effectiveness of these teams revolved around face-to-face communication.
With the rapid, global spread of COVID-19, Cooley transitioned to a safer hybrid of working from home and from the office. (At Cooley, the COVID-19 protocol is manufacturing personnel work from the factory floor every day with strict social-distancing requirements, while sales, customer service, finance and research and development staff alternate days working from home to minimize risk of the contagion spreading through the office.) Three months into the work-from-home program, I asked the team for feedback.
For most, the response was an overwhelmingly, “I am more productive working from home.” Reducing time spent in meetings, office chitchat and commuting left team members feeling more productive and engaged during their working hours. While it may increase individual productivity, is working from home undercutting our efforts to build a collaborative culture?
At Cooley, communication takes multiple forms. Regardless of whether you are at work or at home, the nature of phone calls, videoconferencing and emails with customers or vendors continue uninterrupted. However, we accelerated the implementation of effective digital tools into our daily routines to maintain pre-pandemic levels of productivity despite having off-site staff. The positive results, as demonstrated by a growing pipeline of innovative projects and other global market opportunities, suggest these digital collaboration tools are effective. If anything, digital meetings are more focused (and shorter) than the traditional in-person meetings, and projects are progressing with more urgency.
Not having a dedicated workspace can generate undo stress.
However, I’ve also noticed negative impacts that working from home induces on work-life separation. Not having a dedicated workspace can generate undo stress. How do you relax after-hours streaming Netflix when you are sitting on your “office couch”? Do workers feel as if they are “always on” because they have lost the office-home boundary? The work-life separation challenge even led some employees to ask if they could return to the office this week.
For others, the hybrid approach works well as employees gain the flexibility and efficiency benefits of working from home alongside the traditional office workdays that offer a clearer delineation between working hours and relaxing hours. Working every other day in the office provides a small dose of the social environment critical to fostering employee satisfaction and team loyalty that comes when people work together in person. Going to the office a few days per week also provides the comfort of a more traditional setting necessary for the flow of information that comes naturally through “water cooler chats” or between meetings.
The need for information-sharing and collaboration is critical to Cooley’s success as a leader in innovating geomembrane solutions. How we maintain our social capital along with our business capital will ultimately determine the success of institutionalizing our work-from-home program. As the pandemic outlook remains uncertain, Cooley will continue its work-from-home program through the summer.
My thinking is to continue the hybrid approach with the caveat that, by fall, everyone would be in the office each Wednesday. This will allow for one day when larger team meetings can be scheduled and social interactions and casual conversations between team members who work from home on opposite days can take place. But as with everything during this pandemic, this type of decision is a work in progress as we constantly adjust to the unknown.
Daniel Dwight is CEO and president of Pawtucket-based Cooley Group.
