They’re talking about going back.
To the office. The real office.
As in, work with other people.
In the same space.
Probably by midsummer.
While your employer’s HR and facilities departments figure out who will sit where and how to enforce mask mandates and all that other good stuff, you have a few months to decide if and how you want to return. Here are three ways to use the “we’re going back” process to negotiate the kind of work arrangement you really want.
First, run a self-evaluation. How has working from home worked out for your career? How have you made the most of time freed up by not commuting? Have you learned new skills? Made new relationships? Figured out better ways to accomplish some ongoing responsibilities, such as, communicating with clients or managing customer orders?
Next, document your self-improvements with a spreadsheet that shows problem/solution/location.
Now you’ve got a summary of how you’re doing your current job better, from your home office.
You can use this information in several ways:
- If you want to continue working from home: Negotiate an ongoing remote work arrangement, either part time or full time. Use your spreadsheet to prove to your supervisor that you’ve continued to improve results regardless of location. And as location doesn’t matter, you’d like to decide where you work.
- If you want to win a promotion and don’t care where you work: Add a last column to the spreadsheet that shows how you will build on your productivity improvements. Make the case that you are the person to take the lead with these changes and develop your pitch for a promotion. If you don’t care where you work – office or remote – only reference location if it is relevant to the new job you want to win.
- If you want to transition to self-employment: Analyze your spreadsheet wins to detect exactly how you made them happen. What abilities did you use that you haven’t previously used? How did you win buy-in from others to make those changes come to fruition? Exactly what kind of a difference did the changes make to customer or clients? To your employer? To you? These are the dynamics that help you drill down to the services or tools that you can sell when you become self-employed.
Career Lattice courses equip you with an arsenal of tools to propel your career to the next level, through both self-employment and through traditional employment. Check out our menu of courses and choose the one that best fits your goals for continued career success!
