Main problems

1. Feeling isolated
a. “colleagues are my friends”
2. Lack of human interactions
a. While it’s great to not worry about time wasted while traveling or getting ready
for work, the downside is the isolation that you can experience.
b. Working remotely gets lonely as you don’t get to meet and interact with people as
a part of the job. 
3. Lack of a proper routine: While you can limit your working hours when working from an
office, it takes a lot of self-discipline to make sure you’re not working all the time when
working from home.
a. no clear distinction between work and home.
b. negative impact on my lifestyle and well-being.

22% of people struggle to get a good life/remote work balance

19% of remote work employees find working from home to be lonely
17% of people who remotely work struggle with collaboration or communication
10% of home workers find it very difficult to avoid distractions
8% simply struggle to stay motivated
 
https://buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2019

Solution:

- “missed water-cooler moments”

 o “Week Preview Meetings,” which are Monday meetings where people discuss
work plans for the week, and are also allowed to talk about weekend events and
other non-work-related things

o “Happy Fun Time,” which includes fun activities curated by a company’s HR

team such as answering workplace trivia and posting fun throwback images. 
o The point is to make sure to take the time while you’re working remotely to
socially connect with others. This is more important now than ever, with so many
people alone, working from home.
- Virtual birthday/ anniversary celebrations

 99% of workers would like to work remotely for at least some of the time – for the
rest of their career
 40% of remote workers considered having a flexible schedule the biggest benefit of
remote work
 84% of people said ‘home’ was their primary work location
 30% of people enjoyed the ability to work from any location they wish
 14% of people said remote work increased their time with family
 

As COVID-19 continues to change how companies operate, many employers have

greatly expanded remote work opportunities for employees. Plenty of employees who previously
worked standard 9-to-5 jobs at the office now work those jobs at home, either until it’s safe to
return to the office or permanently in some cases.
companies should think about changing benefits to accommodate remote workers. For
example, if a company’s benefits included a catered lunch during select days of the week, then it
would make more sense to replace this with something more relevant for at-home workers.

Child care assistance

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, parents who work remotely are struggling to do their
jobs, watch their kids and, in some cases, help teach their children if they are participating in
online learning. Companies can help parents alleviate the load somewhat with child care
assistance. This can be in the form of offering a stipend to parents who either have a child who is
either too young to go to school, has had their school closed or is immunocompromised and can’t
return to school yet. Some notable companies that have added child care has a benefit during
COVID-19 include Amazon, Netflix and Nvidia. These tech giants pay for their employees to be
members to services like Care.com, which uses its Care@Work program to help parents with
backup child care.

Digital wellness services 

The transition from office work to remote work has not been an easy one for many employees
and, as such, offering mental health and wellness benefits may help those who are still adjusting
to the remote work lifestyle. Several large U.S.-based companies including PwC, Salesforce and
Target began offering new or expanded mental health benefits to help those adjusting to life in
the coronavirus era, and this is something smaller companies can add to their benefits portfolio
as well. Additionally, companies may also encourage wellness by offering a stipend that can be
applied toward a gym membership, online yoga courses, workout apps and more.With many
workers not planning to be remote employees when 2020 started, there’s no question a lot of
them did not have dedicated home offices. 

Food delivery
Companies that previously offered free food in the office — whether it’s catered lunches or free
snacks — no longer have office workers to feed. However, with so many workers doing their
jobs remotely, companies can shift from office food to food delivery. Workers can be given a
stipend that can be used for grocery delivery or restaurant delivery services. Alternatively,
businesses can offer a free subscription to a meal kit delivery service in order to help workers
make quick meals at home.

One such company making this transition is New York-based business app Teampay. “Instead of
us bringing a catered lunch into the office, we used our product to give every employee a $20-a-
week delivery stipend so they could order lunch,” Teampay CEO Andrew Hoag told Fast
Company.

Home office allowances

With many workers not planning to be remote employees when 2020 started, there’s no question
a lot of them did not have dedicated home offices. To help workers adjusting to working from
home, companies including Google, Shopify and Basecamp have offered workers a stipend to
pay for home office furniture including desks, chairs and accessories that can help workers be
more comfortable and productive. Some companies are paying for new equipment such as
laptops or desktops for newly home-based employees as well.

Noise-canceling headphones
Some offices offered noise-canceling headphones to workers to help minimize distractions. But
in some ways, it may be even better for companies to offer this for at-home workers. Those at
home may have to contend with distractions from family or neighbors, so headphones can help
bring more focus to work. While free headphones may seem like a small benefit, it can be a great
help in the long term.

https://www.uschamber.com/co/run/human-resources/changing-benefits-to-accommodate-
remote-employees

interview

https://www.simon-kucher.com/de/people-stories/women-simon-kucher-working-consulting-
highly-motivating

BCG

1. Coaching and development

 Frequent coaching and feedback system to interact with colleagues
 Ensure equal development of every employee
 Listen constantly to colleagues’ concerns and voice
 Informal coaching moments that might have happened at the end of
meetings have given way to quick transitions from one call to the next.
Teams and leaders need to make time to give feedback for the sake of
coaching and development. They need to find moments of spontaneity to
check in with colleagues.
 Leaders must also ensure that they dedicate comparable attention to onsite
and remote employees.
  There is also a clear need to ensure that teams continue to grow and learn
during these times, given the rapid-fire rate of change and the focus on
execution. It is important that leaders adjust their thinking and be
deliberate and thoughtful when coaching their staff and each other.

2. Senior leadership & culture

 Commited to vision, sulture, affliation and dya-to day remote mgmt.
  find new ways to connect and build virtual social intimacy. Those efforts
have paid off. COVID-19 has leveled the playing field for remote and flex
workers. They no longer struggle to have their voices heard in a meeting
or miss out on hallway chatter and the social bonding that happens before
and after meetings. The relationship between company leaders and the
workforce is different now too. Leaders are no longer in their intimidating
executive suites. They are on screen from home, with kids and pets in the
background and needing haircuts just like everyone else.
 To reap the benefits of remote work, leaders must take action to maintain
and even improve the positive culture. They should model the change and
work remotely as well, using a hybrid model. For instance, they might
work remotely for two days a week. Organizations are looking to the C-
suite more than ever.  


 Productivity and Performance Management. Being present is not the

same as being effective and productive. Companies may have implicitly
married presence to performance in the past, but they have been forced to
change this notion in the new remote environment. Remote work has
helped move performance metrics from inputs to outputs. For roles that do
not have quantitative output measures, companies like Apple and USAA
have leveraged net promoter scores from internal customers to serve as
important measures of productivity.
  Effectively measuring productivity is just a single piece in the broader
performance management puzzle. Companies must recognize that the
daily tasks and performance targets of many roles have changed
dramatically as a result of the pandemic-induced workplace shifts. One
key to performance management will be adjusting productivity and
performance expectations to align with changing roles and updated
company performance goals that come with the shifting economic and
social environment.
 Leaders must also institute a process for reviewing how promotions,
bonuses, and overall performance scores compare across remote and
onsite employees. Introducing this process will ensure that employees are
evaluated and rewarded in a comparable manner.

Simon Kucher : Virgin Pulse Global Challenge

- Work Hard, Play Hard: Our Associates Get Moving for the Global Challenge
- Engage and connect associated from all over the world to maintain a positive
commitment to personal health. Making everyone has a more healthy, positive attitude.
- Team batteles for triggering motivation and competition: 400 Simon-Kucher associates
formed 56 teams to practice all kinds of sports in a global challenge
- London office competed against hundreds of thousands of people
worldwide in measuring our physical activity. As each team records its
step count (which can come from more than 50 different sports), you’re
taken on a 100-day virtual journey around the globe. The aim is to
improve the physical and psychological health of employees by
encouraging them to take part in a wide range of daily activities.
- Team spirit:  The reality of consulting is it is demanding and often requires
long hours in the office, making it quite hard to develop a routine of
exercising and keeping your health in good shape. Work colleagues are
people you see every day and spend most of your time with. So when
you hear that one or more of them are starting to take part in some
physical activity, especially as part of a challenge, you just want to join
 them. The element of competition not only among teams but also within
the team (with your peers), was a great motivator and even more a
source of satisfaction! It was just nice to see that I actually moved more
than I used to, and sometimes even got better scores than my
colleagues.
-

https://www.simon-kucher.com/pt-br/people-stories/work-hard-play-hard-our-
associates-get-moving-global-challenge

McKinsey

1. Set up covid-19 learning response team

a. Provide comprehensive picture of learning offerings and strategies to help the
company better adapt to the new environment
b. Build cross-functional response team that consists of all relevant stakeholder
(learning-delivery, IT, HR, platform technologists and vendors)
c. Set priorities to decide what will be necessary to digital format
2. Creating enegagement and community feel
a. through virtual live meetings that has daily agenda. meeting planning and follow
up
b. Creating “in person”, make participation easy , setting goals
https://www.simon-kucher.com/de/people-stories/women-simon-kucher-working-consulting-
highly-motivating

c. https://sbi.sydney.edu.au/resetting-the-leadership-agenda-post-covid-19/
3. https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/347416/The%20Impact%20of
%20Remote%20Working%20on%20Employees’%20Work%20Motivation
%20%26%20Ability%20to%20Work_Bachelor%27s%20Thesis_Milana
%20Virtanen.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/whats-next-for-remote-work-an-
analysis-of-2000-tasks-800-jobs-and-nine-countries

https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-keep-your-team-motivated-remotely
official work
https://www.gensler.com/research-insight/blog/how-companies-can-support-work-from-home-
best-practices-in

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/25/how-companies-are-supporting-work-from-home-until-
2021or-forever.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/07/06/how-to-support-employees-while-
they-work-from-home/?sh=1a8df4f27d94

https://web-assets.bcg.com/80/e1/8db524dc4b80abf09f0575cd0eea/bcg-remote-working-and-
the-platform-of-the-future-oct-2020.pdf

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/virtual-workplace-work-life-balance

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/remote-work-works-so-where-do-we-go-from-here

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/seven-people-priorities-in-reponse-to-covid