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How to Make A Hybrid Work Situation More Efficient

Kat — Mon, 09 May 2022 17:25:00 +0000

A few weeks ago readers had a mini-discussion on how to make a hybrid work situation more efficient, which I think is a great topic for this day and age. Those of you who are in the office 2-4 days a week and allowed to work from home on other days, what are your best tips to making the hybrid work, work?

Here’s the reader question:

For those of you who do a hybrid WFH situation, where you are in the office 2-3 days and home 2-3 days, do you have any tips for handling not being in the same place everyday? I really thrive on routine, and not having that makes me feel weird. I also have FOMO on what my coworkers get up to, and a brand new associate who I want to be available for. Maybe that’s ok and a hybrid thing isn’t for me, but I am really trying to wrap my head around what I know to be true – being able to work from home a couple days a week can be really great, if you make it great. And being gone a couple days a week isn’t really going to make me miss out on anything or harm my associate.

(First, a fun fact: as reported by the WSJ, a new study suggests that 2 in-office days a week, not 3, is the sweet spot for hybrid work.)

One reader noted the key to her success is a predictable schedule where she’s WFH on certain, preplanned days. “It’s too stressful for my brain to have to consider options and reconsider options all the time. I also try to schedule meetings for the days I’m in the office. I haven’t yet figured out what to do with things like paper files and records, which are currently all at home.”

Another reader echoed her sentiments, noting

I think it’s ideal if you have predictable days in office, and use them differently-more meetings, mentoring, and small tasks/email in the office and then use home days for focused work on bigger projects.

Readers also noted that for supervisor/mentoring type roles you could do telephone check-ins regularly on WFH days so they know they don’t need to save up their questions for formal meetings or in-the-office days.

Over at CorporetteMoms, we’ve rounded up advice from moms who work at home frequently, and one noted that she especially loves working from home on Thursday/Friday: “[I]t’s a nice way to start wrapping up the week, particularly when combined with ‘summer hours,’ (which run from the end of May—Sept.) that allow us to work only a half-day on Fridays.”

Similarly, when we’ve discussed how to make the most of face time at the office, we’ve shared tips such as visiting people’s desks, cubicles or offices just to check in, as well as lingering after meetings and showing up for happy hour when you can. (This is probably the one downside for choosing Friday as your WFH day!)

We’ve also rounded up mistakes to avoid when working from home over at CorporetteMoms, in part inspired by reader threads here on Corporette about things people hate about WFH culture — one of the biggest mistakes people make personally is not keeping an eye on career growth. As we noted there:

Not growing enough in your profession [is a big pitfall to avoid when WFH sometimes or always] — I recently heard a speech about how most women “fail” in their careers at least once because they turn into one-trick ponies, and I think it’s doubly hard to push for new skills or “growth” work you’re not ready for if you’re off people’s radars.

Readers, what are your thoughts — those of you who are in the office 2-4 days a week, what are your best tips to make the hybrid work situation more efficient and predictable? What are the major struggles you’re coming up against as you try to make it work, and what gaffes are you seeing colleagues and subordinates make?

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How Important is Work-From-Home Flexibility To You, Going Forward?

Kat — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 18:07:33 +0000

Let’s have an open thread today, readers — how important is work-from-home flexibility to you, going forward? I know I’ve seen a lot of readers commenting on both sides of this issue — that WFH is NOT for them, while others don’t miss their commute and time in-office. It sounds like some companies are going to offer work-from-home flexibility as a regular perk, while other companies can’t wait to get back to the office.

So let’s discuss: how important is work-from-home flexibility to you going forward? If you’re looking for a new job, is the flexibility to work from home sometimes a must-have for you? Do you like some balance between remote work and being required to be in the office sometimes? For those of you who think a mix of the two is best, do you prefer if the majority of your colleagues are back in the office on the same days (i.e., everyone shows up on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, while everyone works from home Monday/Friday) — or do you feel like some other equation is better?

For my own $.02 – I’ve obviously been working from home for a LONG time (wow, ten years at this point). I have always felt that there is room for improvement in my personal productivity, focus and attention, whether in office or at home — but I can also say that for me, in general, I vastly prefer working from home.

I wrote before about how 2020/2021 have not been truly representative of the remote work experience — a high proportion of households were home, people couldn’t work somewhere other than home due to social distancing and shutdowns, and entire offices needed to adapt to what was maybe new technology and methods if they didn’t have many staffers working remotely prior to the pandemic. It’s been a rocky road for sure!

Over to you, readers — what are your thoughts on WFH versus going to the office? How important is work-from-home flexibility to you going forward?

Stock photo via Stencil (woman wearing pink pants working with laptop on her lap while drinking a fancy coffee).

Workwear sales of note for 1.21.24

Our favorites are in bold!

Amour Vert – End of season clearance: up to 70% off (readers love this short-sleeved silk blouse, some colors down to $59)
Ann Taylor – 25% off full-price purchase, and extra 60% off 2+ sale styles (ends 1/22)
Banana Republic – Up to 60% off sale styles plus an extra 25% off sale styles (ends 1/23)
Banana Republic Factory – 40% off everything plus extra 20% off purchase
Club Monaco – Extra 60% off all sale
Eloquii – $19+ select styles; 40% off everything else
Everlane – Up to 70% off sale; reader favorites include the Dream Pant, their ReNew Transit backpack, silk blouses and their oversized blazers!
J.Crew – Winter layers $24.50+; select cashmere from $49.50; up to extra 60% sale styles — readers love this blazer, this blazer, these pants, and their sweater blazers
J.Crew Factory – Extra 70% off clearance; up to 60% off everything; readers love the schoolboy sweater blazer
Lands’ End – Sleepwear from $19; 60% off everything else plus free shipping
Nordstrom – 5x the points on beauty; sale, new markdowns added
Reiss – Up to 60% off
Talbots – Extra 60% off markdown sweaters, coats, scarves, and shoes; 50% off all other markdowns (here are all the reader favorites at Talbots)

Some of our latest posts here at Corporette…

And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!

Stay tuned for a list of our latest threadjacks!

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How to Work from Home Efficiently

Kat — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 18:01:07 +0000

2018 Update: We still love this discussion on how to work from home efficiently — you may also want to check out our more recent discussions on flexible work arrangements here or at CorporetteMoms. What are the best ways to work from home efficiently? One of the main takeaways I took from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece in The Atlantic* is that businesses should really accept that the concept of “work” is changing from an office-centric, time-macho, “face-time” culture to a more flexible “work from home, sometimes” culture. So I thought we’d explore some of the best ways to work from home effectively, whether part time or full time. This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

Have a dedicated home office

Have a dedicated space if you work from home regularly — and if you live with others, make sure this space is secluded from the rest of the apartment or house. A good desk (that isn’t piled high with other stuff — I always used to use mine as a makeup vanity/desk until I started seriously working from home), drawers, folders, a file cabinet, a printer… even creature comforts like artwork, framed pictures, and more, help you get into the right mentality. If you Skype with colleagues, invest in a good setup — ditto for your phone. My cell phone is my primary phone, and I find the quality (on both ends) to be tremendously better with an earpiece. {related: do you prefer to stay late or work from home?}

2020 Update: Pictured above, some of the best office chairs for working from home: brown / white & purple / black / blue / black — don’t forget a floor mat!

Stick to regular working hours if you work from home

Expect to answer to regular working hours. When you work from home you often find huge pockets of time to work that are not normal working hours (mornings, nights, weekends), and it’s great to use those times. But you should still think of your “core” hours as being 9-5, M-F. By this I mean that you should think twice before you send an email at two in the morning, and be available to put out fires that crop up during the normal workday, even if it interferes with your “ideal” work from home schedule. Along these lines, limit domestic duties from 9-5. You have no idea how attractive your dirty dishes look as a procrastination tool! (Plus, you feel like you’ve accomplished something afterwards, which makes it doubly dangerous.) At the beginning of each day, I like to set the timer on the kitchen microwave to 20 minutes, and every time I do something domestic — the laundry, prepping dinner, washing dishes, cleaning the toilet, etc — I push the timer on. Sometimes I’ll use the time spread throughout the day; sometimes in one big chunk.

How to take efficient breaks when you work from home

Take breaks differently than you did in the office. In the office, I always used to take a 10-minute “Internet break” during lunch or after I finished a big task — and far too often I would look up and realize an hour or more had passed. When I’m working from home, I’m not allowed to take too many Internet breaks. (In fact I don’t even let myself read articles at my desk; I just put them in my “Read It Later” queue.) Instead, if I’m eating my sandwich or whatnot, I’ll sit down and watch one segment (from one commercial break to the next) of one of my silly reality TV shows. I get a mental break, but it’s much easier to limit it in time, even though it sounds much more decadent.

Why you need childcare if you work from home

If you have children, you still need childcare. One of the worst pieces of advice I got was that I could easily work from home with my son until he was one year old. And maybe with some babies, you can. But not only did my son suffer from colic (where he pretty much cried unless we were holding him), for the first five months of his life he really only slept on us. Once he started to get more personality, I felt guilty trying to work in the corner while he played on his mat or in his bouncer chair. And after he started crawling… forget about it. I’m told it’s harder to work in the same apartment or house once the baby becomes a toddler (and you either need to send him to daycare or get an office space close to home), but I’m hoping that an office that is tucked well out of sight is an acceptable compromise. We’ll see, I guess. Change out of your bedclothes, and wear shoes. I’m not going to say “change out of your pajamas” because one theory of working from home is that you should deliberately wear things you will not wear in the outside world, which may mean you have a set of “working pajamas” or “work yoga pants.” I usually just wear regular clothes, but I have noticed that if I’m wearing a sloppy maxi skirt I’ll change into something a bit more chic before I leave the house, whereas if I’m wearing jeans I just leave the house as-is. As for shoes, it’s recommended by podiatrists to wear shoes around the house (I’ve heard two podiatrists say Crocs are ideal house shoes, but I just can’t do it), and getting “dressed to your shoes” really does make a difference in outlook. As far as makeup and jewelry, I think it really depends what you have going on — if there’s a Skype call or you’re meeting clients, you obviously want to look your best. Readers, what are your best “work from home” tips? Do you work from home as often as you’d like — and when you do, are you productive? * For today’s post I actually wanted to go through Slaughter’s piece in The Atlantic, “Women Can’t Have it All,” and add my thoughts… but really, I agree with so much of what she says that it doesn’t seem very productive. I completely agree that the culture of work needs to change significantly before we can make progress. My three favorite points:

The “time-macho” attitude — “a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you” — needs to go.
“While employers shouldn’t privilege parents over other workers, too often they end up doing the opposite, usually subtly, and usually in ways that make it harder for a primary caregiver to get ahead.” Yep.
“The American definition of a successful professional is someone who can climb the ladder the furthest in the shortest time, generally peaking between ages 45 and 55. . . . [This definition] makes far less sense today. . . . Peaking in your late 50s and early 60s rather than your late 40s and early 50s makes particular sense for women, who live longer than men.” I particularly love this point (says the 35-year-old).

Pictured at top: Home Office, originally uploaded to Flickr by Sean MacEntee.

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How to Set Up the Best Home Office

Kat — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 18:46:56 +0000

2019 Update: We still love this discussion on how to set up the best home office, but you may want to check out our more recent discussions on how to work from home efficiently or some of our thoughts on flexible work arrangements here or on CorporetteMoms. I’ve recently gotten a few requests on how to set up a home office. For example, from reader B:

I work part of the week out of my law firm’s office and part of the week from home. I would love to hear ideas for organizing a home office that isn’t just boring filing cabinets (but I need somewhere to stash files – points for nontraditional filing cabinet ideas).

Great topic, particularly as more and more employers offer tech budgets and other accommodations to make working from home easier. (Originally pictured, at right: New Home Office, originally uploaded to Flickr by TypeFiend. 2019 image update (at top and on pin) via Stencil.) Some must-haves: – A good Internet connection. I always take my Internet connection for granted until I visit friends or family with a slow connection, and I marvel at how they get any work done at home at all. (I think “a fast enough computer” goes without saying.) {related: how to work from home after your kids go to bed} – A good monitor. If you have a tech stipend from your employer, this is the first place I’d spend it. One for your home, and if the one at your office isn’t good enough, one for your office as well. – A printer and scanner. As we discussed the other day, I do my best editing when I do it on paper; I also scan things frequently. Even though I have a good filing system at home, I still am more likely to check my computer for old but important documents. {related: do you prefer to stay late or work from home?} – A system to keep your work files separate from your personal files. While I did a lot of work at home when I worked as a lawyer (mornings, nights, weekends), I never really had to keep documents at home — everything was accessible online. (The firm had its own secure system; when I worked at the nonprofit we used the program Log Me In, which allows remote access to a computer that is turned on and connected to the Internet.) That said, when I brought papers home, I always brought them in a folder or redweld, and was careful to keep things together. I frequently worked with bound volumes of exhibits; instead of throwing away older versions of the volume I would bring the volume home if I thought the docs therein would be helpful. However, if I were your employer, to be honest, I would prefer that things be filed at the office — if you quit or leave, the employer is the one who will need those files. And I’ll bet that the odds of having something last-minute and urgent come up that requires checking the files are going to be minimal enough that you can either consent to go to the office on those rare occasions, or direct your secretary to look something up and scan it for you or messenger it to your home. That said, if you’re looking for fun filing ideas, Jeri’s Organizing & Decluttering News has a number of fun options — my favorite is the stunning filing bench, pictured at right.

2020 Update: Pictured above, some of the best office chairs for working from home: brown / white & purple / black / blue / black — don’t forget a floor mat!

– I think even a home office benefits from personalizing touches such as pictures of your family. Because it’s in your home, you can consider going a bit more sentimental, pricey, or even inappropriate. For example, I would display pictures on my desk at home that I wouldn’t at the office (such as pictures of me in a hospital gown holding my son), or keep things out that I wouldn’t at the office for fear of them being stolen, such as a small malachite box that was the first gift my husband ever gave me, or my collection of pennies from that j-school professor who gave a penny to whoever turned in the best story for an assignment.

Another great source for this is The Office Stylist, who frequently features fun and creative offices. Lifehacker often covers home offices, as well. Readers, what are your tips for how to set up the best home office? How often do you work from home? This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

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