WLP261: What's Going On with the New Way of Working in Belgium
A special bonus episode for you today, with Bart Van Roey and Viviane Kock, who discuss their new book “Beyond New Ways of Working.” As the book is written in Dutch, we hoped that Bart and Viviane could give us an overview in English - but the conversation went far beyond even the promise of the title. Enjoy!
1.39 Beyond New Ways of Working
Bart Van Roey and Viviane Kock both work with management of remote teams, with Bart supporting effective use of collaboration tools like OneNote and Confluence, and Viviane consulting on remote work implementation, focusing on culture, mindset and skills. They both live in Belgium, in different cities, so it is great to bring another geographical perspective to the 21st Century Work Life Podcast.
Their new book had its inception in pre-Covid days, when Bart noticed that people tended to divide into those already on board with new ways of working, versus those clearly being left behind. Bringing those groups together meant they could learn from each other, and address ‘bricks, bytes and behaviour’ classic issues, as well as new dynamics of process and remote work - hence the natural collaboration with Viviane and other specialists, to create a true ‘dialogue book’ incorporating many voices.
Lots of interviews took place, to explore these themes with different interviewees in different organisations, focusing on transparency and learning rather than corporate gloss - because the journey to insight is not always a straight line. Editing many voices into a coherent narrative was challenging, but they focused intently on creating actionable output.
They discovered great diversity in processes and approaches, ranging from organisations still reliant on paper to those truly innovating in the digital workspace. Decisions and choices about how people work together were important across the board, as well as highly individualised, especially in relation to successful implementation of working from home.
The way teams learn and grow together has new attributes specific to remote and hybrid working, so understanding and owning the unique requirements and roadmap for each is essential. Listening to resistance, when it comes to uptake of new tools and practices, is enlightening in itself, and for successful change a real dialogue is vital. Changing a tool is easier than adapting a culture, or a working practice - and avoiding shadow IT and workarounds is important. But people shouldn’t be afraid of embracing bigger changes on principle, because they may have long-term benefits.
Viviane reflected on the interlocking domino systems on which teams depend, and how change in one area - like the physical workspace - has an impact on everything else. External factors also affect things unevenly, especially black swan events like the Covid pandemic - the challenge is to absorb these changes in a sustainable way.
24.50 Beyond the book
The concept of a dialogue book extends beyond the multiple contributing authors, and the conversation continues on a Yammer group, where the authors actively solicit input from readers and other interested parties - find out more at Future of Work in Belgium – Een boek over het nieuwe werken in België (the discussion is presently in Dutch, by the way! But this may change.)
They are also facilitating a way for people to share margin notes and highlights on the book itself, which is fundamentally changing the nature of reading and engaging with a book as a social phenomenon - making reading a collaborative, open-source activity.
Meanwhile the authors are excited about the potential of remote and flexible work for disabled people or people with health conditions, opening up new communities and opportunities. As Viviane stressed the approach to diversity needs to go beyond the present tight focus on recruitment, to embrace the lifetime of the employee relationship and how their needs and preferences may change over time. (Do check out a past podcast Episode 180, where we talk about disability and remote work in detail).
Predicting the future is always challenging, but Bart sees exciting potential to make things better. Preventing burnout, increasing choices, and empowering people are all possibilities, if we make the most of this opportunity to do better.
"Can we predict the future? No, but we can build the future, or create the future together."
Viviane reflects that organisations still have a lot to learn though, and as we emerge from the Covid crisis she hopes for better human-centred decisions, even if they are triggered by the initial pain of factors like legal lockdowns. Giving people choice is what matters:
"In the new ways of working we are in the adult world, where you have the choice if you want to work three times a week at home... it should be possible."
Organisations don’t have to figure out the perfect balance, as this is an individual matter, and we need to get beyond the idea that remote working is a favour or perk.
It is, as the book intends, an ongoing dialogue - and you can be part of it. Contact Viviane via her own website at Formation et consultance en télétravail - NestYourDesk and Bart at ihop : for people and business, as well as Future of Work in Belgium of course.
The authors would be particularly interested in hearing from you if you could help them translate and publish this book in English, incidentally!
That would be an amazing collaboration to initiate, but we love all your communications and comments large and small - so feel free to contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas. Let us know if you have any interesting publications or research to share, or if you’d like to hear more about our training or ‘podcasting for connection’ service, helping remote teams work together better for 2021.
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