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Is the Five-Day Office Week Over?

The data on what distributed teams have learned about how work gets done.

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What you'll learn

  • What distributed teams have learned about output when location requirements change
  • How output-based measurement replaces time-based attendance tracking
  • What you lose (and gain) by moving away from the 5-day office week
  • A framework for evaluating what your specific team actually needs from in-person time

Video transcript

Auto-generated from the video. Watch on YouTube ↗

- Question, do you want to go to the office five days a week again? If you're watching this video, then the answer most probably is nope. And you're not alone, because several studies show that a majority of employees want flexible remote work options to stay. You can be productive and collaborate with your team without being at the office.

It's simply just not necessary to lose the flexibility and the freedom that you now have. However, it's also clear that most of the employees want to work more in person or collaborate more in person and to find a hybrid way of working remote and working in an office. And this is basically defining a complete new way of working.

Now, I've been working on a new training program called Future Proof, that helps teams to define their new way of working for themselves. Every week has its own team, week one is "working from home life balance," week two is, "remote communication and collaboration," week three is, "turning meetings into workshops," week four is, "creating your remote first playbook," and finally, in the last week, we're gonna inspect on the progress made so far and adapt by setting goals for the coming period.

I've been working super hard in the last couple of weeks to create a lot of videos for the Future Proof training program and I want to give you a sneak peek of what the training see in the preparation week before we actually start the program. By the way, the Future Proof training program is also the reason why I haven't been posting to YouTube the last couple of weeks, but from now on, you can expect a video again, every Wednesday to help you run high energy and results driven workshops.

But let's have a look at the welcome video of the training program which gives you a solid idea of what to expect. It's clear that most knowledge workers don't want to work at an office five days a week anymore. And why would we? If there's only one good thing coming out of 2020, is that it has made crystal clear that you don't need an office to be productive.

And having less need for offices will have a positive impact on both our personal lives, as well as our climate. Studies show that people feel more connected with their kids and partners in the last year. And if you go to the office less, than the need to live nearby also reduces and this will open up a lot of new opportunities for example, to maybe even redesign our cities.

However, this way of working is new for the most of us and can be challenging at times. Before it showed that people feel less part of their team, are having trouble to maintain their wellbeing, and are missing social connections. The first time I worked remotely was 15 years ago and I've learned to love it and also work around these issues by trial and error.

For me, the answer is to take back control over your workweek. Hey, what's up? My name is Arthur Von Kriegenbergh, aka Agile Arthur. I make YouTube videos that help you to run iEnergy and resilient driven workshops so that you can take back control over your workweek. I'm excited that you joined the Future Proof program which I have been working on for almost a year now quickly off the start of the pandemic.

It's a combination of all the things I've learned about teamwork, online communication, productivity and setting sustainable goals over the last two decades, combined with in-depth studies of successful remote companies. Before we start to be one of these training program, I want to ask you to do some preparation by completing the lessons that are part of the next section.

That means you will watch some quick videos, do a quiz about remote work and share with me what you hope to learn from this program. That's it for the preparation, so you should be able to do it pretty quickly and be ready for week one. You should have received a calendar invite for when we will be doing our first live workshop in week one.

And actually we're going to do a couple of live workshops every week of the program, and to be able to get the most out of the live workshops with each other, I have prepared physios and assignments for you, just like the ones that you will see in the preparation section. And these videos and assignments will help you to reflect on how you want to work and also to think about the topics we will be discussing before we actually discuss them with the whole team.

As you can guess, it's important to have watched the videos and to do the assignments, otherwise you will most probably feel lost in the live workshops. But don't worry, I've designed the training program so that it fits your current priorities as much as possible and I've built in some quick wins that should help you to save time right away.

So without any further ado, let's get started. You can click the Complete and Continue button in the top-right corner, so that your progress is saved. (speaks in foreign language) (upbeat music) I must admit I'm a bit proud at creating a program like this and at the same time, when the first people are actually going through the program, then you see a lot of opportunities to improve and you also get tons of feedback of things that can be improved.

And the great part about a setup like this is that you can actually do that. You can constantly improve and add things and remove things to make it a better experience. One thing, for example, that I will be improving is the onboarding with the quiz. People really like that, but they also want even more personal recommendations and also getting an idea of how you're standing as a team.

So maybe you already learned some things out of this video to improve your own way of working, but if you want to define a new hybrid way of working with your team, then join the Future Proof program. You can find the link down below in the description. That's it for now, thank you for watching and see you in the next one.

Peace. (upbeat music)

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