-: Thank you guys so much for choosing our speed round today
at NU Amplify 2021,
Alyssa, Danielle and I are so excited to shed some light
on how to manage work from home teams
when work from home seems unmanageable.
So we're gonna go ahead and get started.
In the spring of 2020,
75% of people said they feel more socially isolated,
67% of people reported a higher stress rate,
57% are feeling greater anxiety,
and 53% are more emotionally exhausted.
So what does isolation, stress, anxiety
and emotional exhaustion all have in common?
Well, they seem to creep up when remote work is involved.
What if I told you
that you can work from home without those things
and still live a healthy, balanced life.
2020 was a year of growth,
navigating uncharted waters
and becoming comfortable in a virtual setting
that would otherwise be face to face.
Today, we are going to navigate the many roadblocks
that employees and managers alike
face in the remote work world.
We will help you create tools to manage projects
as an individual or as a team
and then we will share with you what works best for us
and maybe that will spark some ideas
to take those tools back to the office wherever that may be.
We need to first identify some challenges
or what I like to call roadblocks
that you and your managers have probably faced
while working from home.
We will break these off into three sections.
Those are, challenges with yourself,
challenges with coworkers or outside entities
and then challenges with the work itself.
Challenges with yourself while working from home
are things like lack of motivation,
fear of missing out,
finding a creative outlet,
finding work-life balance,
maintaining focus and managing distractions.
It's extremely easy when working from home
to just work all the time.
We also find ourselves having challenges
with our co-workers or outside entities
like caring for our employees
when others in their family are sick
or when the mental health is declining
because of disasters like COVID.
The last challenge is that we see our work declining
because of the lack of motivation
that we would otherwise see in the office space
or when we're around our co-workers.
Whether we've realize it or not,
we push each other when in a physical setting
to get things done and be productive.
-: Now that we've outlined the roadblocks
that often appear on a team's path to success,
let's talk about the role communication plays
in a team success
and some tools that can help you and your team
achieve a balanced level of communication.
Because remote teams work in a variety of environments,
members should be highly aware
of two forms of communication.
The first form is asynchronous.
This includes any form of communication
that doesn't happen in real time
where responses can occur intermittently.
The best example of this type of communication is email.
The second form is synchronous.
This is the most common form of communication
in a traditional workplace
where the communication happens in real time
with immediate responses.
The best example of this type of communication
would be in-person meetings.
As companies and organizations have evolved,
our communication patterns have become more hybrid
where asynchronous and synchronous communication
co-exist within teams.
Managers should be the ones to determine the type
and blend of communication
that will work best for their team.
It's also important to note
that there should be a comfortable balance between the two.
Last year our team navigated a fully remote work environment
as well as a flexible work environment.
While we had tools in place
that provided a foundation for success,
we found additional tools and resources
that allowed us to further our goals,
both individually and as a team.
The image on this slide provides a quick glance
of these tools and where they fall on the synchronous,
asynchronous communication map.
So first we have our synchronous tools that were used
and this includes Zoom meetings.
Then we have semi-synchronous tools
which included our Outlook Calendar and email,
and also Calendly which we'll touch on in a little bit.
And finally, asynchronous tools
which included the Zoom chat
where members of our team
would drop a line throughout the day
as they're working on projects
and Trello which was our project management system.
Now, Alyssa will describe each tool that I introduced
to give you a better idea of how they function.
-: Yeah, thanks Danielle.
As Danielle mentioned, my name's Alyssa Wyant.
During this time during the pandemic,
I took over as the interim director of eCampus at UNK
and at the time we had 15 employees
that were sent to work from home
without any tools or resources
that we didn't have in the face-to-face setting already,
so we're gonna walk through several different tools
that work from home teams might utilize.
We'll take an in-depth look at four
and show you exactly how we utilize these
to manage our team
all while working either entirely remotely
or in some kind of a flexible format.
So Trello is the first platform that we're gonna look at,
and Trello is a web based project management system
that utilizes lists to execute your tasks.
So we'll break this down in more detail
in the slides to come,
but Trello really helps to provide
the virtual workplace environment
by really enhancing flexibility,
project management, accessibility,
communication, accountability,
and it of course reduces email.
So on the current slide,
you can see a general demo setup
of what a project management word
could potentially look like,
you can completely customize it
to whatever your needs are as a business
and institution, whatever you're running.
So this helps our team to really create
their initial to-do task,
hold themselves and each other accountable
and create that hands-off approach
while still enabling a high level view
of where projects were at
and an overall progression to the completion point.
So each column is customized list
that allows for endless possibilities of organization
and each column has cards
that can be customized into projects or tasks.
So those cards can be actively
traveling throughout the platform
by simply clicking and dragging,
and each action taken on the card
is tracked throughout the notifications manager
as kind of a document piece.
So this slide is gonna demonstrate
the enhanced communication
that Trello brought to our team's virtual environment.
So instead of clogging up our emails
with maybe some pointless,
this looks good or okay,
these cards provided communication
that was back and forth
regarding a specific project or topic
and people could respond when it was convenient for them
instead of interrupting their day in and out.
This eliminated that back and forth with your team,
it allowed the team to focus on projects when they chose to
and it allowed for cross team communication
enhancing that overall team environment
from a virtual standpoint.
So communications are stamped with the time and date
and then logged in the notification manager
which you can see on this slide.
So while our team saw several benefits from this tool,
highlights from it included the flexibility,
you can view Trello in a calendar look,
you can view it in cards
that are assigned to each individual,
you can even look at it from an overall standpoint
from a projects.
So the other part is just
the general project management,
it's accessible.
This can actually be access to via a computer,
it can be accessed via cell phone or an iPad,
whatever device you have at the time
that you're thinking of that specific project,
you can access it.
It also, like I said, provided enhanced communication.
Our team was communicating more on those projects,
we saw cross team communication,
teams were working together
that typically wouldn't work together,
and we also saw a really good supervisor
to employee communication.
I know for me going home in that remote environment,
trying to manage 15 new employees,
some of which I had never managed was a challenge
and having something that was a little bit
more of a hands-off approach
while still allowing me to be involved
and engaged as a manager
was very, very helpful to know and understand where
those projects were at and understanding
what work was being completed in a remote environment.
So another one of the things
that we noticed during the height of the pandemic
was suddenly we were having even more meetings
than we've ever had before,
it seemed like everybody wanted to Zoom
at any time of the day, any given night.
So to eliminate that back and forth
of scheduling the meetings
and spending time looking through our calendars
to fine those convenient times to meet,
our team implemented a tool called Calendly.
And what Calendly is,
is it serves as an online scheduling assistant,
so a great way to think of this is an office associate
that maybe would be scheduling your appointments for you,
but this is all done virtually,
it's done in this cool platform that we have.
So Calendly serves, it's where you can sync your calendar
and it allows your meeting attendees
to really select the time that works best for them
within an available time that you're setting for them.
They can identify how long of a meeting they need with you,
and when students or colleagues click in your Calendly link,
they're gonna see this screen right here.
And with this,
this image shows the time duration options
available that would be on my calendar.
So here I'm allowing for 15, 30 and an hour long meetings.
So this is really nice,
they can go in and just click whatever works best for them.
To access this, I just need to give them my link for
a secure time to meet with me
and our team put these links and our signatures
to eliminate even more back and forth,
allowing faculty, other staff members,
and even students to schedule appointments
when it was most convenient for them
and to meet them where they were at.
So once your attendees selects a date
that they're wanting to meet,
Calendly looks at what time slots you have available
within that given timeframe on your calendar
and when you're allowing meetings,
so if you don't want a meeting from
noon to 1:00 because you're gonna go lunch
or you have another event planned or an appointment,
you can block that out
and it's only gonna show up what
you're telling your calendar is available for meetings.
Once an attendee selects that appointment time,
you and the attendee will get email notifications,
and it's automatically added to both of your calendars
as a calendar invite.
So a really nice smooth thing here.
Overall are benefits,
it's really simple.
It provided the pain of scheduling meetings
that went away for us but it also provided
us to have several types of different meetings
including those times that I mentioned,
various topics,
we're able to set up things with vendors
or students or faculty, whatever that may look like.
And of course, more importantly,
it eliminated the need for multiple emails back and forth,
trying to figure out what actually works for people to me.
So our team was also one of the millions
throughout the pandemic that utilized Zoom for meetings,
we've said this several times,
I feel like many of us are experts in Zoom now,
but we took things one step further
utilizing the Zoom chat feature.
Our associate director for digital learning spaces helped
our group gets set up with small teams
as well as one big overall arching team channels
and these channels are made for chats.
This helped develop a sense of community
with those real time discussions
and it allowed for easy access to team members
and the ability to keep everybody informed at the same time.
So everybody's receiving information simultaneously,
nobody's feeling left out
and still creating those communications between one another.
So in this slide,
the image on the left is gonna demonstrate
how that chat function works,
allowing for direct communication.
It allows for you to do quick replies, drop emojis,
you can see on this chat we've thumbs uped something.
You can also drop in certain files,
so you can attach a file to that chat
allowing for those files to get there quicker
and several other things,
but Zoom provided that sense of accountability
for us as well.
And on the right side of the screen, by each contact,
you can see if your coworkers are online,
if there away,
if there may be accessing it from a cell phone,
or if they're in a meeting which was really nice,
it kind of made a sense of like
we're all in the office together.
So overall we saw several benefits from the Zoom channel,
but it enhanced communication,
and that I feel like
was one of the biggest benefits for our team,
especially being in a remote environment
where we're missing some of those coffee conversations or
around the water cooler, whatever the case may be.
Other benefits included,
that it allowed for obviously the sense of the community,
real time discussions,
we were able to talk about things in real time
instead of waiting back and forth for an email,
if you just had a quick question,
it was something easy to send out,
quick and easy access to keep all team members informed,
if there was something really urgent,
it was easy to drop in the chat
and let everybody know at the same time,
oftentimes we saw things like new programs being developed
or something that happened with a course
if maybe a course wasn't open
or didn't move online correctly,
whatever the case is we were able to drop it there.
It also provided that accountability aspect
that I mentioned and of course, again, less email,
we all love that.
That was another big benefit for us.
The easiest form of communication
that maybe you've thought about before
and that you probably actively used to schedule appointments
but maybe just haven't used it to a maximum,
I guess size or really expanded on it
is that traditional Outlook Calendar.
So other platforms would work like if you wanted to use
Gmail or Yahoo,
whatever calendar could be utilized,
but our team has been using Outlook
in a face to face workplace,
so it was a one less
technology challenge for us to learn going forward.
Outlook has the capability to really go in
and share your calendar with your colleagues
and they can see full details
so they can see what's on your calendar,
you can see what's on theirs.
In this slide,
you can see how I've been able to bring up my calendar
and my colleagues to see what appointments we both had.
Items in this slide have obviously been blacked out
to protect the student's privacy
because we do have some students that are listed on there,
but you can understand what that concept looks like.
So what does this do?
It creates that sense of trust and accountability,
we all know what we're working on,
what we're meeting with people on,
and we can see when we're meeting with people.
It provides that sense of transparency within the team.
Our team utilized this prior to this pandemic
but this easily integrated too with Calendly,
so then we're going back to that other tool,
it reads your calendar what's already scheduled
so you can see.
So it provides that ease of scheduling.
I'm gonna pass this back off to Danielle.
Danielle is gonna give you just kind of a short recap
of what we've covered today
and really review with you
how you can take it back to the workplace and apply it.
-: At this time, organizations are shifting back
into a more traditional work environment
or determining what type of hybrid model
will work best for productivity.
For some the opportunity to try fully remote work,
increased trust and comfort
between supervisors and employees
allowing for an extension over remote work environment.
For those who can not sustain a remote work environment
or those who believe
that in-office work is the best choice moving forward,
I hope you will consider the following lessons
that we gained from our time at home.
For our team, a variety of tools
truly provided enhanced overall communication.
This allowed us to create and work in an environment
where each member felt valued and encouraged.
Understanding overall team strengths
is crucial to success.
For our team,
having a broad view of our team's strengths
allowed individuals within our team to thrive.
If you're a manager,
take the time to enhance
each of your team members technology proficiency
early and often,
this will allow your team to be nimble
if you need to transition back
into a work from home environment.
The final takeaway I'd like to share today
is the importance of team adaptability,
and it is perhaps the most important.
Embracing an environment
with enhanced and welcomed adaptability
will empower your team to accomplish tasks
in a more effective and efficient manner
regardless of the circumstance.
Thank you for attending our session today.
If you have questions,
feel free to drop them in the chat or send us an email.
We'd love to talk with you more about our experience
and what has worked for us
in the work from home environment.
-: Thank you so much for your presentation.
If you have a question,
you can either put it in the chat
or if you click the reaction button along the bottom,
you can raise your hand and ask the question live.
Yes, this was a lot of info, this is really great
for using a lot of tools for your work from home teams.
I'll ask a question
while everyone else is formulating theirs.
What do you think will change as people come back to campus?
-: Yeah, Grace, thank you, I can take that question.
We've obviously already seen a lot of changes but,
one thing we have noticed is a lot of the tools that we
took into the remote environment,
we still continue to use because of the convenience
and ease that we saw from it.
Several times in that I know,
I'm sure everybody heard us mention,
it eliminates email and I think we're all always looking
for less and less emails so we can focus on the meat
of the email that really matters,
not just the simple ones
and those things that are
you know, ones that we'll take with us so,
we still have Calendly implemented,
we still use the zoom chat to an extent,
probably not as much,
that's probably the one that we haven't used as much,
Trello we were using in
the face-to-face environment prior to the pandemic
but we have still heavily utilized that
and I think in fact, we're bringing on more teams into that,
you know, I don't know if there will be a lot that changes,
if anything, I think we'll bring in more technology
that we have practiced during the pandemic.
-: Thank you, and Mark, did I see you raise your hand?
Okay, it looks like,
what are the advantages of Calendly
over Outlook Scheduling Assistant from Linda?
-: That's a good idea.
I haven't used the Outlook Scheduling Assistant as much,
Calendly, I like it because we can share our link with
each individual that wants it,
we can also put it on student emails,
so if students are wanting or our advisors,
any of our advisors or online coordinators
is what we call them at UNK,
if they are wanting to schedule advising appointments,
they can just send them out and whenever the student
sees that and it's convenient for them,
they can click to go ahead and schedule.
I don't know if Outlook Scheduling Assistant
has that capability.
The other piece of Calendly that we haven't tapped into yet
is customized responses.
Calendly does have the capability
once a meeting is scheduled,
they will get that email invite,
but then there could also be a customized response to that,
so for example if you wanted to
have an advising session with a student
and you wanted them to prepare three different things,
you could put that in the email,
a really specific thing
of what you're wanting them to complete
in different action items so
that would I think be one benefit that we see with Calendly
versus Outlook Scheduling Assistant.