WLP265: What’s Going On: The View from Guatemala

Today’s guest is Francisco Corzo, consultant and director of SMART, where he helps organisations adopt remote work, in Guatemala.

Francisco has noticed that many companies have started to move back to the office, gradually, in groups of employees, with the focus is still on COVID prevention and spread. There is little focus on how to design the workplace of the future.

It also seems that there have been few developments in helping employees work properly from home, and providing the proper support. Francisco (and other colleagues) think that the reason for this lack of evolution is that, as an external, unwanted change it has taken leaders by surprise - when they are usually the ones to drive change in their organisations. Maybe they’re still in the early changes of the change curve.

Or maybe uncertainty is also playing a role. Many organisations have been impacted economically and are still dealing with budget constraints. It’s not the best moment to invest and redesign the workplace… They’re also not sure whether the current setup (even one that has worked), might not be the future.

Francisco reckons there is a lot of change that needs to happen to reinvent the workplace, seeing as we're still stuck in traditional ways of working, like the length of the working week, the dominance of synchronous communication, a central office building… It’s comparable to the e-commerce revolution, where consumers drove the change and those companies that resisted have fallen behind.

Employees are also at risk of burning out if they don’t have proper working conditions. This is particularly relevant in Guatemala, where environments are noisy, with a less than ideal set-up. These people might end up leaving the companies they don’t feel have looked after them. Now is the time to move from an emergency plan to a planned transition.

Organisations might be trapped in their current buildings and will need to redesign the workplace, even if it’s to comply with pandemic restrictions. There’s no return to the “chicken farm”.

Francisco currently sees two challenges that need to be addressed at the same time: preserving employee and community health, and designing the new work ecosystem. In order to do this, employers need to understand the working conditions of each individual - the time to do is is not tomorrow, but today.

In order to show business leaders the conditions that some of their employees are living in, Francisco has developed a tool where people can upload pictures of their work set-up at home. In this way business leaders can see directly what the conditions are. It’s been useful for Francisco to show these pictures directly to his clients, to prompt them to take action.

“Not every home, nor every family is the same and the time to assess this is not tomorrow, it’s today.”

After understanding individual needs, we need to consider the needs of the organisation. It helps to separate what people need to do their individual tasks, and their collaborative tasks, as well as social needs. Different tasks need different environments and structures. The office is a place where people can come physically together (once a year/month/weekly etc) and viewing it in this way (as opposed as the only place where people work) is a new approach.

19.00 mins
Pilar and Francisco talk about the recent Forbes article: From Work from Home to Work Near Home, the beginning of a new office trend. For Francisco, the Work Near Home option is a great alternative to working from home in difficult conditions, and having to commute for hours to get to the workplace. The Near Home office can be the regular workplace, and headquarters can be used to bring people together when needed. This concept seems to be taking off in Guatemala, so Francisco is very excited about this!

There are a few ways in which to implement Near Home offices. Larger organisations can have their own, but smaller ones can clump together having private office spaces, while sharing areas like reception, dining areas, etc. Similar to co-working spaces. (For more on how this could work, read Pilar’s article on LinkedIn from a few years ago called Sharing Office Spaces across Organisations…)

We cannot be caught in the dilemma of whether to work uncomfortably at home or face a long commute… we need to be smart and find new solutions (remember that Francisco’s company is called SMART!). Pilar agrees: let’s not go back, and let’s not get stuck in “remote work = working from home”.

Francisco ends the interview with an inspiring quote:

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new - Socrates”

You can connect with Francisco on LinkedIn, and visit his website www.smart.com.gt