Here are 3 tips for using empathy and emotional intelligence to create remote work policies – for you, your organization, or your clients – that prioritize people and create a new normal that’s even better than pre-pandemic norms.

byMichael Miller

我的一个朋友莎拉（Sarah）在中西部一所大型大学工作。像大多数人一样，她总是按照典型的时间表 - 星期一至周五，9至5 - 直到大流行于2020年3月开始。然后，她完全远程工作了一年多。自2021年6月以来，她全职回来了 - 她对此不满意。

她最近告诉我：“这实际上是两全其最差的世界。”“根据大学的政策，我的大多数会议太大了，无法亲自举行，所以我实际上是去办公室整天参加缩放会议。我要为停车场，Petcare，放学后的托儿服务，每天坐两次。他们甚至不能给我一个很好的理由。”她正在考虑退出，并承认最近在LinkedIn上寻找具有更灵活的工作的类似工作。

当员工和公司努力应对我们一生中看到的工作文化和期望的最大变化时，此类情况正在全球范围内发挥作用。赌注很高：根据微软的研究，全球40％的全球劳动力正在考虑今年离开雇主。而且，如果美国的就业市场有任何迹象，每月有创纪录的人辞职，那么员工就不会在虚张声势。“The game has changed,” says Derek Thompson, staff writer at大西洋组织。“很大一部分白领工人再也不会像2019年那样想到办公室。他们会认为这是在混合基础上做的可选的兼职。”

作为领导者，这让您感觉如何？您准备好应对混合工作提出的情绪复杂性的增强，并且是否有可能尊重员工对自主权的愿望，同时还可以保持凝聚力的公司文化？这是有关员工和组织的混合工作的利弊的数据，以及使用情商来制定满足员工需求和组织目标的同理心政策的技巧。

首先，让我们从雇员和雇主之间潜在冲突的根源开始。

员工比以往任何时候都更渴望灵活性

甚至在大流行之前，公司价值观与其员工的价值观之间的最大差距归结为自治权，per research by Slack。Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and many knowledge workers experienced near total autonomy for the first time. Most realized they could do jobs just as well – or even better – at home. And they liked it more. “There were a lot of things in place that were totally arbitrary,” says Ann Helen Peterson, coauthor of辞职：在家工作的最大问题和更大的希望。“就像当您不得不离开房子时一样，恰好是其他所有人都离开房子的时候，您必须坐在交通中。或者，当您可以接孩子时，这会产生育儿差距。人们出于习惯或强迫而做这些事情，但他们并不一定是那样。向遥远的转变是使人们能够以适合他们并为家人工作的方式使他们的时间表灵活地灵活……使工作围绕生活旋转，而不是您的生活在工作周围旋转。”

The data suggests that, having experienced this autonomy, employees aren’t eager to go back to the way things were: A LinkedIn study found that applications for flexible jobs get 2.5x as many applications on average as jobs without flexibility, fueled by frustrated employees like my friend Sarah who’s sick of her university’s WFH policy. Even more wildly, a来自盲人的应用程序的调查发现来自45多家顶级公司（例如苹果，Twitter，Salesforce，Visa，Capitaone）的3,000名员工中有64％的员工宁愿拥有灵活的工作，也不愿增加3万美元的工资。“员工要求它。”汤普森说。“我们应该为远程工作是景观更大的未来做好准备。”

但是，这个故事并不像员工只是想在家工作的那么简单。他们也错过了办公室 - 在领导者驾驶这一新地形时增加了复杂性。

伟大的悖论：员工也想要联系

莎拉告诉我：“这并不是我反对进去。”“我喜欢去校园。看到我的同事和学生，感受到精力。我不想一直在家工作。不可能。”

大多数员工同意，根据微软的工作趋势指数报告。While over 70% of employees want flexible remote work options to continue, over 65 percent are craving more in-person time with their teams。微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉（Satya Nadella）称这些竞争性的冲动是巨大的悖论。

公司如何制定尊重这两个员工愿望的WFH政策，同时还要牢记最适合组织的政策？这是情绪智力技巧，用于导航充满挑战和机遇的变化景观。

使用同理心和情商创造的3个提示远程工作政策

领导者如何将情绪智力应用于混合工作政策的创建和演变？

1没有一件大小的解决方案：自定义人们的远程工作政策

最具创新性的公司将竭尽所能，为个人团队和员工定制混合工作政策，因为某人的完美时间表取决于个性，工作类型，职业阶段等复杂的组合。

“First of all, people are psychologically diverse,” says Thompson. “Some people are more productive, and more psychologically healthy, when working remotely.” Other people, however, would struggle with loneliness and disconnection working remotely, with negative consequences both personally and professionally.

In addition to people’s unique psychological makeup, different jobs lend themselves to varying amounts of remote vs. in person time. My friend who works as an IT security analyst has no practical reason to ever set foot in the office ever again. My other friend who manages accounts and client relations for a major bank has to be in at least 3 days per week. Interestingly, though, they both recently expressed a desire for a hybrid schedule, albeit in different ratios. The security analyst wants to go to the office once or twice a week to catch up and get out of the house, while the account manager wants to work from home once a week so he can power through emails and sales reports without getting interrupted, break up the monotony of the daily commute, and maybe sneak in a midday workout.

最后，员工对远程工作的态度将根据他们的职业生涯和生活中的位置而改变。对于刚开始职业或公司的人来说，他们可能想要更多的面对面时间。微软的产品营销经理汉娜·麦康纳（Hannah McConnaughey）说：“没有走廊的对话，机会遇到的机会和对咖啡的小谈话，也很难与我的直接团队保持联系，更不用说整个公司建立有意义的联系了。”另一方面，许多新父母会更加珍惜灵活性，而提供的可能是看着他们燃烧和过渡相对平稳的区别。

与其开始专注于政策，不如关注人们，并基于以下方式制定政策：

人们做得如何，他们需要什么？谁将能够远程工作，谁必须进来？多常？我们如何利用远程工作来照顾员工的情绪健康？

Leaders must have the empathy and emotional intelligence skills necessary to ask these questions and craft policies to match.

2当心孤岛：优先在远程设置中协作

微软的一个有趣的发现工作趋势报告is about how remote work impacted the way we communicate at work. In short, the shift to remote shrunk our networks. While total communication remained the same, silos deepened. Teams talked more amongst themselves, but far less with other teams across the organization. This could, of course, have negative consequences.微软高级研究员南希·贝姆（Nancy Baym）博士说：“当您失去联系时，您就停止创新了，新想法很难进入，并且GroupThink成为一种严重的可能性。Leaders must look for ways to foster the social capital, cross-team collaboration, and spontaneous idea-sharing that’s been driving workplace innovation for decades.”

作为领导者，问问自己：对于那些全职或兼职的人来说，与直接团队以外的人交流是优先事项吗？您将如何做或鼓励？

3共享脆弱性：利用家里的工作真实性

While the Microsoft research revealed a deepening of silos, it also found that remote work increased the authenticity of team’s interactions. With pets, children and people’s homes suddenly on Zoom calls, employees became… people.“Before the pandemic, we encouraged people to ‘bring their whole self to work,’ but it was tough to truly empower them to do that,” says Jared Spataro, CVP at Microsoft 365. “The shared vulnerability of this time has given us a huge opportunity to bring real authenticity to company culture and transform work for the better.”

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