Q. What has changed for me at work since COVID?
Five years on, and work has changed dramatically for many, since we were forced to go remote during the pandemic. What has changed for you since then?
Every week, we suggest a new question you can include in your Manual of Me.
Keeping your Manual of Me regularly updated helps you continue to explore and communicate how you work well with others.
And remember, you don’t need to share your Manual of Me to benefit - even just taking time to discover these insights about your way of working, helps you become more aware of your needs, preferences and motivations at work, so you’re able to build stronger working relationships with others.
Manual of Me Plus Edition members can add this as custom question, and Manual of Me Teams Edition allows team leaders to add this question too. If you don’t already have a Manual of Me - sign up for free.
Q. What has changed for me at work since COVID?
Without question, the pandemic changed work for millions of people - some would say forever. Remote work became the default for many, and collaboration with others changed overnight. Zoom calls and digital whiteboards became the place we spent our time, rather than meeting rooms.
But five years on, with some reports showing around 50% of people feel things have ‘returned to normal’ and another half feeling like things have changed forever - how was work continued to change for you?
Use this entry in your Manual of Me to reflect on the challenges you’ve experienced, the frustrations you face, but also the benefits and opportunities which remote and hybrid provides.
How to find your answer:
Think back over the past five years - did work change dramatically for you during the pandemic, or were you already working in this way? Has work continued to change as people have moved to hybrid ways of working?
Think about your frustrations - How have the challenges and hurdles changed over that time? Have things gotten better, worse or just different over the past few years? What hangovers of pandemic-working are we still facing?
Think about the benefits - What are the positives you’re experiencing now, have things developed to support you to work better, are you able to collaborate with people in different places and spaces more effectively? Do new tools allow you to work better together now?
What would your answer be?
Leave a comment, so others can see how others might approach this question.
For team leaders
We were all forced to radically redesign what work looked like when the pandemic hit - but continual improvement for our ways of working are often neglected.
Use this as an opportunity to ask your team about how thing are working now, look for the positives to celebrate, but also opportunities to continue learning and growing as a team. Use the anniversary of the pandemic to think about how your work could be redesigned again, rather than letting it just “happen”.
Further discussion questions might include:
What might our working practises look like in another ten years?
Has technology improved our ways of working, or made some things harder?
Do we feel the past five years has focused on the right things?
What things did we have in the pandemic, which we no longer have?
Manual of Me is a living document - introducing new questions regularly helps your team embed the framework in your ways of working, and creates an opportunity to spend time as a team discussing how to work together effectively, and builds stronger internal relationships.
Share this question with your team, and encourage them to share their answers in the comments, or in your next upcoming team session.
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