Remote teams
fromwww.theguardian.com
19 hours agoFrom microshifting to coffee badging: whatever happened to just doing your job?
Microshifting revolutionizes work by promoting flexible, non-linear work patterns for better work-life balance.
What started as a casual indulgence became a shared ritual. And without intending to, Grease Wednesdays began to change our department culture. We all began to get to know each other as individuals, with pets and families and hobbies. The ritual also smoothed tensions between departments, built friendships between unfamiliar teammates, and helped us realize we hadn't felt all that connected before.
Across practitioner reports and peer-reviewed research, including a new report from the Institute for Corporate Productivity, organizations that commit to highly flexible models, including remote-first, report strong output, healthier engagement, and faster growth than mandate-driven peers.
Workplace noise isn't just a nuisance. It's also a stressor and productivity killer, according to a Jabra study from 2024. As someone who likes working in quiet zones, I understand. That's why I recommend leaders spend time considering how their workspace design affects the noise level for their employees.
My new team has a completely flexible work-location approach. There is an office, and we can come in if we want to. But there's no requirement or badge-swiping. Those of us who are local also collaborate daily with colleagues in drastically different time zones-Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC). So our overall team is distributed enough that in-person work can't be our organizing religion.