Working From Home

Your Brand Follows the Work – Nilofer Merchant – HBR

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Your Brand Is the Exhaust Fume of the Engine of Your Life – Nilofer Merchant – Harvard Business Review.

Focus on the work.  Your personal brand follows.  Don’t let the goofy title dissuade you from clicking the link and reading the post.  The author is thought provoking and absolutely spot on.

We talk about “reinventing your brand” when in reality the goal is to reinvent what you work on. We talk about the “brand called you” when we talk about being able to do more of the work you love to do. We talk about ways to “deliver on the impact equation” without asking first, “what is it you want to impact?” We are told by marketing gurus that “everyone now owns a media company!” — as if somehow this is, itself, the goal — rather than a means to an end. Marketing has become the default language — the lingua franca of the day — that we use to describe work, and it is distorting how we evaluate what matters.

What is it you care about? It takes courage to find and follow an individual path; finding our own path takes us off the path that others are following, in directions that can seem distinctly alone.

As Telecommuting Debate Rages, Aetna Sticks by Big At-Home Workforce – Insurance & Technology

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In 2012, 63 percent of companies allowed employees to work some hours from home compared with 34 percent in 2005, according to the National Study of Employers, which was produced by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Families and Work Institute.

A 2010 survey by SHRM, the human resources industry’s largest trade group, said that providing flexible work arrangements such as telecommuting, part-time work and phased-in retirement was the best way to attract and retain the best workers. And 20 percent of companies allow workers to work full-time from home.

Of health insurer Aetna’s 35,000 employees, 14,500 do not have a desk at Aetna, a move that the company’s top executives, CEO Mark Bertolini and national business chief Joseph Zubretsky, have said helps cut costs in real estate.

via As Telecommuting Debate Rages, Aetna Sticks by Big At-Home Workforce – Insurance & Technology.

HT – Hank George

Change This – Lay Off Your Buildings, Not Your People!

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Change This – Lay Off Your Buildings, Not Your People!.

It amazes and disappoints me that we treat humans more poorly than we do our buildings.
We treat them as more fungible. Our building leases are for set periods of time, and we can’t
get out of them, so we lay off our people and keep the buildings. There’s always a mismatch
in that businesses are continuously looking for talented people, but in tough times they have too
many people in aggregate, and in boom times they lose a lot of business opportunity because
they don’t have the bodies on hand to capture it. There’s a better way to address this challenge:
being less reliant on physical buildings, which will enable a more elastic workforce.

 

 

New Research: What Yahoo Should Know About Good Managers and Remote Workers – E. Glenn Dutcher – Harvard Business Review

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We found that individual effort was highest in the 100%-in-house teams. The addition of remote workers reduced the in-house workers’ exertion.

And why did the in-house people reduce their effort when a teleworker was added to the team? Because they believed that the teleworkers were less productive. Which wasn’t true, by the way. We found no evidence that the teleworkers were shirking.

The implication is that teams containing teleworkers would benefit from knowing that remote members are working just as hard as everyone else. Managers can play a role in this, providing data about teleworkers’ productivity. Our research indicates that if team members know that all other members are working hard, the negative effect of including teleworkers in teams goes away.

So companies don’t have to get caught in a tug-of-war between letting their employees work remotely or forcing them to come to work and collaborate. Collaboration can happen even among in-house employees and teleworkers. It simply takes a different managerial skill set.

via New Research: What Yahoo Should Know About Good Managers and Remote Workers – E. Glenn Dutcher – Harvard Business Review.

How Self Storage Facilities Are Wooing Business Customers & Why You Should Pay Attention – The Frugal Entrepreneur

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Many assume that the only business use a self-storage facility can offer is storage. But today many of these facilities are now offering a complete range of services such as mail-boxes, office facilities, showers, meeting rooms, and even pick up and delivery that can help numerous businesses on a daily basis. Some self storage companies block off a certain set of the storage units specifically for business use.

via How Self Storage Facilities Are Wooing Business Customers & Why You Should Pay Attention | The Frugal Entrepreneur.

Showers?

5 Reasons To Pick Up The Curator Habit

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One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.

via 5 Reasons To Pick Up The Curator Habit | Small Business Trends.

I’ve been doing this for years.  Now there is a name for what I’ve been doing – content curator.  Kind of sexy, is it not?

Life Underwriting Expert Witness (for now)

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It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years. To do those things well, you’ll need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself—not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.  And we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do.

Peter Drucker

If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be doing expert witness work 10 years in the future I would not have believed you.  Read Drucker’s quote above and read it again.  Let these words sink in, especially the wisdom about knowing how and when to change the work you do.  I’ve changed the work I do multiple times in my life.  I’ll probably change again at some point in the future.  Don’t fool yourself.  Change of this nature is not easy but it will become increasingly necessary for your career.