These are unprecedented times we’re living in and with that comes uncertainty. With what has been coined “the new normal”, more people have found themselves working from home, and some are finding it increasingly challenging. Non-profits and associations are finding this new way of working challenging also because when you’re ‘being virtual’ it’s difficult to be in front of your donors and members with why they should contribute or why they need to continue to be a member.
In my 17 years of providing remote support to non-profits and associations, I’ve seen many changes and upheavals in the past year because of the pandemic. For me and my team, not much has changed operationally and because we operate the way we do, we were able to provide advice to our clients to help them change and adapt their operations helped them work remotely. The interesting thing is that because they were up and running again quickly, they were able to focus on new ways to stay in front of their donors and members. I have stepped back from time to time amid all the ‘chaos’ and thought, ‘aren’t we lucky that we have the technology to manage everything we need to manage? ‘
There is always a human side to that ‘remoteness’ regardless of what sector your organization is in. In my view, we really do need to take care of ourselves in these times of upheaval and uncertainty. We need to stay in top form so that we can help others around us but also to be more resilient to change. Take care of you. You’re important.
Remember cramming for that exam in university, or pushing yourself in order to meet a deadline at work, only to feel mentally exhausted the next day? Today’s podcast looks at why that is and offers a few tips and strategies to help you and your brain work smarter, not harder.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is Humans Working Remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high value growth activities.
The brain is usually seen as an ethereal realm that exists apart from the body and the laws of physiology. But did you know that grey matter tires well before the body does? Since almost all of us are doing metal work these days, likely more than we usually do trying to cope with everything, managing cognitive resources is not just a nice thing our body does for us; it’s absolutely essential to our wellbeing.
The brain is like a muscle: you can strengthen it or deplete it. If you let this muscle recharge and replenish, you’ll feel better mentally and see improvements in your performance. Regular refueling, or input, is a prerequisite for quality output because the brain is an energy machine consuming 20% of the body’s calories, even though it comprises only 2% of total body mass
Just like your heart, your brain gets fatigued from too much time-on-task. One study found that mental fatigue takes hold after three hours of continuous time-on-task, while other scientists say the brain needs a break after 90 minutes, the length of the “basic rest-activity cycle”.
In the course of staying focused on a task, we use key cognitive resources: self-control. Studies show that regulating our emotions is taxing, known in research circles as “ego depletion”. This holds that every time we exercise self-regulation, when we’re paying attention or suppressing emotions or managing how we act in social situations, we use up limited regulatory resources, which leads to depleted energy and increased fatigue.
So, give yourself permission to take that mental break. When you’re working, set the timer on your phone for 75 minutes and diligently go about working at your task. When the timer goes off, reset for 15 minutes and then get up, stretch, walk around, make a cup of tea, or whatever feels good for you to take your brain away from the task. When you’re on a lunch break or a longer break, get outside for a walk as possible, or do some stretches or yoga poses to get your blood moving, and give your brain a break from the tasks you’re working on. I get to bring my dog to work so I get out for walks periodically throughout the day, and what a difference it makes in my productivity! Every time I get back to my desk, I feel refreshed and ready to start the next thing on my list.
Another tip is to give your brain a new thing to do. I recently discovered the joy of working on a Lego Architecture project. I never had Lego as a child, so when I received the London Skyline kit as a gift, it didn’t take me long to get into it and I quickly realized how calming this type of project was to work on and my brain was actually refreshed! The key point here is to find you and your brain something new to do; learn a new language, learn how to make pottery, try an escape room with your friends, whatever it is.
Remember the saying “a change is as good as a rest” and it’s true for your brain as well!
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best CEO of Virtual Works, Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
Please feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
If you’d like to be considered for a future podcast, please drop me a line at info@virtualworks.ca
How Humans Work Has Been Turned Upside Down – Podcast Transcript
Barbara: How humans work around the world has been turned upside down this year, with a dramatic and sudden shift to remote work. Some of us have grown to love it; some of us have grown to dislike it immensely. Today’s podcast offers a few productivity strategies and a lot of practical advice on how remote operations now and in the future can be conducted.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is Humans Working Remotely. A podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing, through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals. We’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high value growth activities.
My guest today is Karen Brownrigg, Founder and CEO of iHR Advisory Services. Karen is an accomplished senior human resources leader, certified executive coach and business strategist, with more than two decades of experience leading transformational mission critical, security, sensitive and crisis management issues and initiatives.
Welcome Karen. Thank you for joining me on today’s podcast.
Karen: Thanks so much for having me on the show Barbara, I really appreciate it.
Barbara: So, HR is definitely a hot topic these days with everything going on many twists and turns and folks trying to just cope and navigate with their new working reality their new normal. So, let’s just dive right in. We’re no longer in a controlled or in-person environment and workplaces. That is forprofit and nonprofit organizations are impacted. They’re in turn upside down and have had to take many different forms. How do these new work environments impact on company process and policy in your view?
Karen: Well, I think first and foremost, companies really need to be focusing on an open dialogue with their employees about what their telework policy looks like. Like how we used to call it telework.
Barbara: I remember…
Karen: Right? Yeah. There’s some longevity to that now it seems, and also pleasant discoveries that perhaps the jobs that we thought needed to be performed in an office environment can be highly productive in an off-site format. And now that people are working within the home environment, we need to be looking at what it means to support them in that new workplace. So remote work, off-site work policies need to be updated to reflect that and also to ensure that employees understand what supports are available to them from an ergonomic sense. So how are we setting up the work environment? What are the costs associated with that? Who’s responsible for those costs for workplaces that the employees are working in. I’m saying “workplaces” because I know we’ll get into it a little bit later.
Barbara, though some people love the ability to work from their home office, and some people really don’t love that at all. So, I’m saying “workplaces” because people are looking for alternative options in cases where they’re not able to go back to the office environment that existed previously. So, safety considerations: what’s the ergonomic setup? How do people feel about that, and designing the policy around that, so that managers have the tools and support that they need to be able to apply those practices in a consistent way so that we’re not seeing one team doing one thing and other team is doing another. So, for sure, looking at the policies and looking at a process for ensuring that there is that touch point. So, when we have a mixed workplace now where some people are working part of the time at the office, other people are still working remotely and may do that indefinitely. How do we make sure that we have the team connected with and across those various platforms work/workplace platforms that we find them working in? So, making sure we’ve got a process for that, and making sure that managers are trained on how to use that process.
Barbara: And would you suggest that it’s a collaborative process, developing a remote work policy, that is, managers talking to employees and collaborating? What’s great, what works well for everyone involved? Or is it just, you know, an “us and them” kind of thing?
Karen: Absolutely. I think the best way to do it is a collaborative approach. A lot of our clients have called us, and what we do is we have a confidential conversation with the team. So, we’ll set up a zoom meeting with the team and say, “Hey, (privately without any managers present), what worked, what didn’t work? And, you know, how could this be co-created? And so we get some really honest feedback around what’s working, and what are some of the challenges for people, and then we bring that back to the leadership team so that they can then engage with their team members, and they could do this on their own too. They could engage with the team members and really design something for the hear and now that’s going to sustain into this transition phase because we are a long way away of understanding what the new normal is going to be. We may be two years away from that.
Barbara: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I bet you’ve got some good stories to tell!
Getting back to the seriousness of this interview: what are a few productivity strategies for people who work remotely and totally love it and for those who work remotely and totally dislike it?
Karen: Well, interestingly enough for the people who are working remotely, who totally love it, when we’re helping them design strategies around productivity, it’s to really help them focus on giving themselves permission to take a break, right?
Barbara: Yes, of course, because they can just run away with it, right?
Karen: Yeah, they get in the flow, and before they know it, their backside has been melded to their chair and can’t remember the last time they got up to take a break. They don’t even know what it looks like outside and so we are helping them be deliberate around setting some time aside to actually leave that particular work environment. So whatever that means, maybe a different location in that workplace, the remote workplace, home in this case, or you know, getting outside, getting some fresh air, going to do something because there’s this interesting sense of guilt for taking that time, feeling like they’re sloughing off and we try and help them understand, when you were in the office, and you walk down the hallway to make yourself a cup of tea or get yourself water, whatever, that was a break. Sometimes to a colleague in the hallway, you might take an extra 5-10 minutes to talk, that was okay then. Yeah, so what’s it going to be that makes it okay now for you to take those breaks away and continue to be okay about that. So, strategies around blocking time, letting people know that they’re blocking time to do that; getting validation that it’s okay to do that.
In many cases, people say, of course, like you’ve got to be taking a break, because we’re spending longer periods of time for those of us who are quite comfortable working remotely like that, longer periods of time focusing and being present in a Zoom meeting or working on an activity online and so on. So, the “for” working remotely people, yes, strategies around taking breaks. And the folks who really don’t love being away from the office, it’s helping them design a strategy around, obviously, where possible, we look forward to helping them be some of the first people to put their hands up to go back to the workplace, if that’s in the cards for them. If not, then we help them recreate another workplace elsewhere. Sometimes it’s because it’s at home. So, there’s something distracting me at the home; it may be that there are other people in the house, their children or other people that live in the same household. It could be “I don’t like my work environment because I’m in the middle of my living room”, and so that makes me not want to be relaxing in my living room anymore because it’s now a workplace, or I can’t concentrate because I need to physically displace myself and flip that switch where I’m getting in my car or getting on public transit, (or maybe not so much these days), but I’m going somewhere for the purpose of work. So, we help them strategize around different options of what it means to go somewhere for the purpose of work. And it may be that a friend has a really nice home office they’re not using, that they can go and work out of that location. It may be that they’re working out of a collaborative workspace, of which we have many now that employers are often subsidizing for employees who are not finding it super fantastic to be working from home. They’re subsidizing collaborative workplaces where their employees can go and work out of an office and close the door and flip that switch. To help them be in the moment or in the zone of work, rather than being in the zone of home. Some people really do have that. And I think it’s wonderful, completely segregated in their mind. So, they’re in constant dissonance about working at home, it’s just not computing for them.
Barbara: And following on that, are there any trends that you’re seeing with these two groups, those who are “for” and those who are “against”? Are there any cool trends that you haven’t seen before that are coming up for you?
Karen: Yeah, for sure. I think the pendulum can’t swing too far in one direction. You know, we hear about Spotify this “Hey, you know, we’re banishing offices, everybody’s going to work remotely” and doesn’t. It’s not a one size fits all, that’s really problematic.
Barbara: Yeah, I agree.
Karen: Nobody wins and somebody loses, and I think the trend that we’re seeing is, and I’m in strong favor of this trend, that leaders in organizations are really stepping up and engaging their team members in a dialogue around what the art of the possible is. So, individual circumstances are different. We’ve got school looming on the horizon. Parents have been homeschooling and trying to navigate working when there’s kids at home and that kind of stuff. So these things need to be taken into consideration, personal circumstances needs to be taken into consideration. And I think the organizations that are doing that, that are engaging in that dialogue to say, “what is our mix based on the members of our team today”? How can we design the work around the personal circumstances, the professional engagement that people want to have? How do we do that? And it really is a co-creation model to get it right. And it’s an ongoing fine tuning. So, it’s not a one and done kind of thing. It’s a monthly check-in at first and then probably a quarterly check-in once people have found their groove in that, just to see, you know, do we need to make any adjustments, but I think, work that we didn’t think would work remotely, works.
So, and it’s more commonly accepted now to have Zoom meetings or Team meetings and so on. People that didn’t use technology at all for their work in this way, are now very comfortable doing it. So, what I’m seeing is a trend on people moving out of town. They’re moving further out, because they can. So, they’re actually changing their location. And because there’s more flexibility, and they’re spending a little bit more time doing things that were important to them, spending time with important people in their lives, spending time focusing on their hobbies, because they’re not spending time commuting to and from work. And the folks who really love the whole going to the office, for them, life is copacetic, and probably slightly more improved because we have less people on the roads. So, it’s not taking as much time to get to the office as it as it did previously. So, it’s really an interesting dynamic where the set time of day we’re seeing used to be like eight to four, or nine to five, and now what we’re seeing is more flexibility in terms of when the work gets done. And a shortened window within which people need to be available for collaborative discussions, whether in person or via technology, like, everybody in the workplace needs to be available between ten and two, because that’s when we’re going to have our collaborative meetings scheduled. Outside of that manage max-flex however, you want to be scheduling your work day as long as client calls are responded to or whatever the nature of the business is. It’s an interesting change in perspective around, you know, the old term ‘presenteeism’.
Barbara: Yeah, it is. I think there’s a whole general shift, whether on purpose or just because we’re dealing with a pandemic, there’s a huge shift on work life balance across the board. I think it’s all good, too. I really do.
Karen: Yeah, I do. And I think, to some degree, we may have lost the balance.
Barbara: Yes, I would agree with that.
Karen: And yeah, but I do think we are winning on choice. So, people have more options available to them about work location, about the time of day to perform the work that might be more conducive to their own personal circadian rhythm. I think there are more choices available. I think it’s just getting comfortable with making those choices.
Barbara: Yeah, I agree. I think as a society, we’ve realized, “yeah, this really is okay”. You know, this remote working thing, this can really work because we have to do it, but also it’s coming to our advantage as well. So, we’ve demonstrated to ourselves that yes, we can have a more balanced life, and things are possible and everything’s good. Absolutely.
Do you have any suggestions, Karen, to help manage distractions during the day? Those distractions that come up for employees, and also maybe ones that come up for the employer from an operations perspective?
Karen:Yeah, absolutely. I think in terms of the employee perspective, managing distractions is really about, you know how you’ve created your own, like people who struggle with sleep. They say create your own sleep ritual before bed; create your own ritual, whatever that’s going to work for you, that gets you into that relaxed mode where you’re slowly, you know, turning off all of the distractions that will have a negative, same kind of thing. Create your own anti-distraction strategy. Right? So, for some people, having background noise is important. So, you know, do you have headphones on? Are you listening to music to kind of tune out the world around? How do you tune out the world around you? Does that mean that you’re behind a closed door with absolute silence? Does that mean you can be in a very noisy environment because that works for you? Some people work really well out of a coffee shop. Or, you know, you put headphones on, and then engage in a dialogue with your employer around how to support that. So, like we spoke about earlier, is it a collaborative workspace where you can actually go into a closed office and do that work in a collaborative workspace because you don’t have that quiet, no distraction at home. What other equipment might you need, like headphones or whatever, that you can listen to music and tune that out. Maybe you’re finding an open environment in your home, but all you need is just that, you know, block out the noise, but you’re okay with visual distractions. It’s really personal. And it’s important that people spend the time sitting down and actually writing out what it is that is causing the distractions. And then on the counterbalance of that, identify what it is that’s going to protect them from those distractions and apply it. Right? And engage in a dialogue with other team members. Most organizations are having coffee check-ins online or whatever.
It’s really interesting to hear other people talk about what their personal strategies are. You can get tips and tricks from people on your team who have come up with some pretty cool strategies. You know, I know a friend of mine has set up kind of like a little space in their open concept living room where she can pull a curtain closed. It’s kind of like a work tent and the kids know not come anywhere near the work tent.
Barbara: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Really a good idea.
Karen: She needed to block out the visual distractions because she was tempted to kind of look in and see what was going on. But it’s very personal.
Barbara: And anything for the employer from an operations thing, I mean? It must be disruptive from an operations perspective as well, because all of a sudden your entire workforce is no longer in the building, and they’ve been remote for the last five months. Is there anything you can suggest to keep the employer, or even indeed the management team, on track and being productive all the time as well?
Karen: I think it’s really, really important with a team that’s now working virtually to have very efficient and deliberate check-ins so you know, it’s kind of like the equivalent of a stand up meeting, but on technology, whatever technology they’re using, is an agenda about what are we talking about? What do we need to get through this check-in? How’s everybody doing? Are we working to our objectives? You know, what are the barriers? And how are we navigating those. It’s going to take much more time to stay connected than one would realize. And there’s some, you know, very efficient meetings that need to happen. And you need to be deliberate about it. Like we can’t, you know, today we can just say, hey, how’s it going? And we’re right into work because we’ve got just a half hour for this stand up meeting, we make sure work deliverables are good, but also to have some, you know, check-in time where it’s just personal. We’re just connecting like we would in the hallway when we ran into each other or casually if we decide to sit down and have lunch together. We’re not getting that in person “Hey”, you know ‘How was yourvacation?’ or ‘what’s going on with the fam?’ and ‘how are how are things there?’ Making sure you’ve got that time scheduled in is super important. And then also, operationally making sure that people understand when there’s going to be a meeting blackout. It is so critical when we’re spending so much time being “on” if you will, or incredibly present in these online meetings to make it okay for whatever, a half day or full day every week where there are no meetings to be scheduled ,because we need more meetings now to stay connected.
Barbara: Yes.
Karen: We need to be protecting some head down work time or even just mental health break time like “I’m not going to be able to work.” Like just where you know protected time where we’re not having any meetings? I’m absolutely fried. I’m checking out, I’m going to go for a run or I’m going to go and spend time with a good friend and laugh and make that okay.
Barbara: So, my last thing Karen today is we’re at the end of August already. And the back to school is, I’ve written here coming up fast, I want to say looming up fast. So do you have any thoughts on how we can help prepare for a new school year. When September comes, it’s all hustle and bustle, everybody’s back to work and school. But this year, it’s a little bit different. How can we prepare for our new way of working? Whether it’s if we’re working remotely if we’re going to the office or maybe a hybrid of the two? Are there things that can help us prepare for the near future in our new way of working?
Karen: Well, I think that we have some important learnings now from what we’ve experienced with parents who are at home. Single parents, dual parents, who have been some degree in the early days at least doing some homeschooling while trying to work and taking turns, you know, who’s on duty to make sure the kids are okay or the kid is okay and who’s able to focus on work and so on. And then also on the reverse side, we have employers who are transitioning folks back to the workplace, either full time or on a part time basis. And we still have this parent, this situation where parents are, you know, trying to navigate. You know, whether they have children in primary school or children in high school. Primary school kids right now are going back to full classes. full time, whereas high school kids are doing a mixture of in-class, very little in-class and more online stuff. So, we still have parental supervision requirement in the home, which is also the workplace. And I think that this may create a tremendous amount of anxiety for parents whose employers are saying, we need you back and they’ve got kids still at home. So that dialogue needs to start happening now around how that transition might look for those individuals in those workplaces, to ensure that we’re not in a situation where we’ve got, you know, exorbitant amounts of anxiety unnecessarily when things could be navigated around. I mean, there are some circumstances where it is what it is, right, that there may be that the nature of the job, just cannot be, you know, those folks were laid off. And now that they’ve returned back to work, this is not a job that that is doable from a remote perspective, that’s kind of the exception to the rule. But really considering that you can’t just flick a switch. And we’ve got, you know, this transition plan, and this is how this is going to go and so on and so forth. We still have some external input now, and in this case, the school system is trying to build its airplane while it’s flying. And parents are now trying to navigate Okay, ‘what does my work schedule look like? And how do I plan for that with my employer?’ I think we’ve got a number of weeks over the next, you know, period of time where there’s going to need to be some tweaks as this changes, so parents who selected a certain option between now, and I think November, was kind of the commitment that they had to make, might not select that option in the next semester. So, employers will be doing the right thing, I think, if they’re engaging in that dialogue and trying to customize this around their employees, rather than having their employees kind of being forced to fit into a transition plan.
Barbara: Excellent advice. Thank you.
Barbara: So that’s it for us today. Karen, if you’d like to provide a little more about you just an impromptu blurb, so that our listeners know more about you and where to contact you, that would be awesome.
Karen: For sure. Thank you. iHR Advisory Services: we’re a team of certified HR professionals. Most people don’t know that HR is in fact a regulated profession, much like the legal profession and the accounting profession. So, the folks on my team are certified HR professionals and also certified executive coaches at the Masters level. So, businesses outsource all or portions of their human resources requirements to us and we become an extension of their team and we co-create the HR program that’s suited to that workplace to ensure that it really does support the culture and the people and allows them to grow and build on their existing HR program. We’re located in Ottawa, and we have clients across Canada. So, I guess what separates us, is that we have expert knowledge on the operational application of employment law in the various provinces and certainly in different workplaces.
Barbara: Where can our listeners reach you?
Karen: If you want to visit our website, you can find us at www.ihradvisoryservices.ca and you can connect with us through the website or you can contact us at our office line 613-686-6364.
Barbara: Wonderful. Thanks very much Karen, very, very interesting stuff. Thanks for joining me today.
Karen: Thanks for having me on the podcast, Barbara. Appreciate it.
Barbara: In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information is helpful and I look forward to providing you more. I’m Barbara Best, CEO of Virtual Works Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
Please feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
You can always drop me a line if you’d like to be considered for a future podcast at info@virtualworks.ca.
You can also visit us online at www.virtualworks.ca.
Delegation is an extremely important aspect of business leadership, and when executed correctly, it’s a practice that should be used whenever possible. Here’s my best tips to help you get more done through effective delegation.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is Humans Working Remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high value growth activities.
Did you know that there are many people out there that would rather overwork themselves than delegate a task? Either it’s just easier or they don’t trust someone else to do it right or they plain just don’t feel like doing it; they have to end up fixing someone else’s work anyway. These are just excuses. As a business owner or association executive, you cannot do it all and you shouldn’t even contemplate it.
1. Make sure you plan ahead
There is nothing more annoying than a team member waiting until the day before a deadline to flag that they need help on a task. Everyone on the team suddenly finds themselves in an awkward position and sometimes there just isn’t the time to get everyone caught up on what needs to get done. It’s stressful, it’s aggravating, and sometimes can make you that person. Please don’t be that person.
The key is to never get to the point where you are that person. Always examine tasks ahead of time and consider if you will need help for any part of it. If you do need help, give your resources a head’s up so they know that a delegated task may be on its way to them.
2. Delegate the right tasks
There are some tasks that simply cannot be delegated to others. They’re either too variable, too high value to you, or you need lots of training or background info to do them. These are the tasks that you need to hold on to, while letting other tasks be delegated. Recurring tasks that are simple in nature are great to delegate because once you’ve trained someone, they can always take that task from you on a more permanent basis.
3. Give examples of completed work
One of the best ways to help someone succeed at a delegated task is to show them the end result you want to have. It’s easier to problem solve if you provide a framework for reference, or something you can try to emulate. Sometimes it’s more effective to share details visually.
If there’s no previous example of the work you’re delegating, you can always share videos, drawings, sketches, rough drafts, or mock ups. Anything that can give perspective to someone new to the task will be helpful in getting them to the end result.
4. Don’t delegate at random
This is a big one. Every person on your team virtual or in house has different strengths. They will be most productive if you assign tasks to them that match those strengths. Avoid delegating work that doesn’t fit the skill sets of your team members. Good leaders find positive ways to develop their team ways that don’t include stressing them out by asking them to do something they don’t have an aptitude for. Remember that if a team member is really good at what they do, and they enjoy it, the task will be done efficiently and effectively.
5. Manage expectations.
When delegating a task be extremely clear on what you expect, and what the finished product should look like. You must give people details when assigning them a task, or you might find that they’re on a totally different page than you are. By then it might be too late to fix the problem and a deadline may get missed. If you delegate a task to someone and they come back to you with the completely wrong design or idea, it’s not necessarily their fault; it maybe a communications disconnect. Having someone verbally confirm the details of a task back to you is a great way to make sure that everyone is on the same page. If the task has a long duration, it will be worthwhile to create an implement a periodic check in, something like once or twice a week.
My sixth and final tip: is to please don’t “Delegate Dump”.
This is where you send out a large quantity of tasks all at once with little or no direction. This does no one any good and generally stresses everyone out. (Remember what I said in tip one, don’t be that person). At best, it may initially alleviate your stress to get everything off your desk. However, as the many questions for each task come in, you will be inundated and stressed out all over again. Instead, delegate a small amount of tasks to begin with; plan to have questions come back to you, plan to have time to answer those questions or provide training and plan time to review the work that’s been completed. It’s not just about getting it done. It’s about getting it done right.
If you remember these six tips, you should hopefully avoid unnecessary stress and disappointment when you delegate. Delegation is an important teaching tool as well as a good time management tool. It should not be avoided or deemed “too hard”. As with all things worth doing well, it takes time and patience.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best, CEO of Virtual Works, Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
Please feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
If you’d like to be considered for a future podcast, please drop me a line at info@virtualworks.ca
This week’s guest podcast provides a real life example of how humans have had to learn and evolve in order to serve their community in these unprecedented times.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is Humans Working Remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high-value growth activities.
Jennifer burns is the coordinator of both the homebound outreach and social media ministries at Asbury, United Methodist Church in Smyrna, Delaware. She is a certified local lay servant with the peninsula Delaware Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Jennifer typically works out in the field in connection with the community, but has had to shift her ministry due to COVID-19 and is currently working from home for the foreseeable future, using a phone and a virtual connection to continue to serve her congregation and the community. Welcome, Jennifer. Thank you for joining me.
So Jennifer, your ministry has moved from in-person to remote community outreach. How did that evolve for you?
Jennifer: I had actually just come back from a work trip and I had probably two or three normal-ish days where we kind of knew that something was coming related to COVID. Seeing the reality of quarantine rearing its ugly head, and when the shutdown happened, it was pretty immediate, and it really left me, “okay, what do you do now?” So a lot of it was really on the fly.
Barbara: Yeah, good for you. So, what were what were some of the things that you had to do on the fly that you hope to God would work at the time?
Jennifer: So, first and foremost, we were not allowed to have our normal Sunday worship service because of the limitation on numbers of gatherings. The church I serve has three services on Sunday, and they range in attendance from 30 people to upwards of 100 and in it. I’m in Delaware, we were not allowed to have any gatherings of more than 10 people. So that left us completely unable to have any kind of service. It even left us, we had to make some choices about staffing and even just the people that you have to put on a service. So we did have one week where, like I said, we knew that a full quarantine was coming. But we had one service where we had kind of opened it up ‘to make the decision that’s right for you – if you’re going to come out or stay home’. But we knew that that Sunday was going to be the only Sunday that we were going to be able to have an optional service.
So the biggest hurdle was, you know, how do people worship if they can’t come to church? And the answer to the question was live streaming. We had been talking about a live stream for a while, but it was kind of a six month, year five year process, and we came down to basically me getting out my iPhone and literally propping it up on a on a book. And you know what we’re going to go live and we’re going to hope that the internet holds out. Our church is an over 170 year old building so internet connectivity and bandwidth is a concern. So we literally Facebook lived off of my phone with no lead and no advertising and I was like hopefully people will see it. And that kind of developed, you know, once we knew that, or once the lockdown was a reality. It’s kind of you know, the next week I had a camcorder and a tripod. And next week I learned that I needed a wireless mouse so that people don’t hear my track-pad clicking. And it’s kind of every week, there’s another piece of the puzzle that’s been coming along.
Barbara: Yeah, so it’s definitely evolution for sure. Have you had any hiccups with technology that you’d like to share? Maybe a funny thing that happened somewhere along the way?
Jennifer: We have had some technical difficulties with sound. And you really just have to, you know, sort of pick up where you left off. And, you know, people were ‘we all know we’re human’, and, you know, we just carry on, right, yeah.
Barbara: Because of this new technology that you’ve developed, and you’ve done things on the fly, you’re what is now a new online ministry that has gained in popularity. How has this opened up opportunities to reach more people for you?
Jennifer: So, the internet, I mean, especially YouTube is a new opportunity in that it’s fully public, and it doesn’t require, the proximity to be in the central Delaware area or anything. YouTube, the way the algorithms work where you’re watching certain videos, and it’ll do the ‘if you watched this, then you might enjoy this…’. We’ve picked up, there’s actually a man in Namibia, Africa for the last I think it’s 10-12 weeks at this point, that has been watching almost all of the content we put out on YouTube. It was completely random because you go look at the analytics and where are your watchers coming from? It’s Smyrna, Delaware, Clayton Delaware, which is five minutes down the road and Dover, so everybody was in about a half an hour radius of the church, and then ‘Namibia, Africa’ (!). After I had kept seeing and seeing comments that he was engaging with the content. I did send him a message and I was like, ‘I’m happy to have you, but how in God’s name did you find us?’ It was the YouTube rabbit holes, so that’s been interesting to see who else. The other thing too that has been nice to see is that we’ve seen people who’ve moved away. Dover has an Air Force base, so you know, we have people that are military affiliated, that have moved out of the area. We have kids who, well, adult children who were raised in the church that are now out of the area, and they’re able to come back and watch the same church service that their parents are watching, even if they’re not doing it at the same time, they’re going back and seeing the sanctuary that they grew up in a lot. That’s really nice. It used to be their Sunday school teacher and stuff, and they’ve been detached from that, a lot of them for years.
Barbara: I take it, then, Jennifer you’re not necessarily used to working from home. So, what’s it been like for you? I’m sure it’s been challenging. What kind of things have been going on for you adjusting to working from home?
Jennifer: So, to answer the question, no, I’m not used to working great.
My ministry was really so I felt, you know, to work. With the homebound outreach which before quarantine was probably 80% of my time, and that entailed visiting nursing homes, visiting our senior citizens who live alone. Some of them do come to church and you know, they’re fairly active but they live alone during the week. Yeah, and obviously because of quarantine, the nursing homes are not accepting visitors at all; essential travel doesn’t even permit visiting people in their homes. So that part of the ministry has moved to over the phone. Unfortunately, some of my nursing home residents are either for hearing issues or different levels of dementia, are not able to have a phone conversation. So unfortunately, they are kind of left in the lurch right now where I can’t really get to them until the nursing homes start allowing visitors again.
But my senior citizens who live alone, and really just other people in the church, that connection has moved to over the phone. So we have a church directory that is really just a phonebook of people in the church, and I really just started finger walking the directory and calling pretty much everybody, and, you know, ‘how are you doing?’, and I kind of rotate, you know, one day, I’ll start at the front of the book one day or see back of the book and try as many people as I can.
So that’s been interesting. And then the other part with the [ministry] I mean, obviously, we have the live stream that happens on Sunday, but during the week, we’ve been doing Bible studies over Zoom, we’ve been doing all of our church council meetings over Zoom. We were trying a conference call option which we had some issues, but trying to find different ways to include, you know, not everybody’s on social media and not everybody is internet savvy. Trying to find different methods to give people a choice of how they’re going to connect and trying to offer that to as many people as we can.
Barbara: So no, that’s wonderful. Really, that’s, that’s wonderful that you’re doing all that and learning as you go and doing things on the fly, which is great. So we’ve been in a pandemic situation for just over two months now. Can you tell me Jennifer, what have you learned from this experience?
Jennifer: First and foremost, I think that the pandemic situation taught me that God gives you everything that you need. And, you know, I’m a believer in, you know, God gave us the ability to invent the technologies that we’re using. So, you know, some of them are not necessarily, you know, organic, given blessings, but they’re things that, you know, we’ve been able to create for ourselves. But if you sit back and ask the question, okay, God, what are you asking me to do? And how do I do it? It’s possible. It’s not easy, and some of it is not the way we would like for it to be, but it’s possible. And I think the other aspect of it is the resilience people have.
Barbara: Yes, I’ve noticed that as well.
Jennifer: Yeah. And, you know, it’s I think that people are learning the difference between you know, nobody has to pretend that this is fun or that we like this because the fact of the matter is, nobody does and it’s okay to say, this sucks, and I want it to go back to normal. But in the moment, it is what it is. I’m going to do what I can do, right here, because, you know, like I said, the alternative is: does that mean that you don’t worship until I can come back to the church building and I’m just going to give up for two and a half months? So that’s been interesting to see kind of how people make different decisions that are right for them in the middle of it. But still being resolute to, ‘okay, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it as well as I can’ instead of just sitting back and kind of throwing in the towel, you know?
Barbara: It’s easy to do, because we’ve not experienced this kind of thing, not in this generation anyway, we did 100 years ago, pandemic, but for hear and now, none of us have experienced this kind of thing. So it’s like you say it’s ‘fight or flight’, really and we are given the tools and we learn, we have to, you know, to move forward and provide services to those in our community. So good for you. Rock on! That’s just great.
So just in closing, Jennifer, I’ve realized that I’ve already stated who you are, what you do and who you do it for. Perhaps you could give our listeners some information, how they can contact you, if you wish to be contacted, how they can contact you. Maybe a website, whatever you’d like to put out there, that would be awesome.
Jennifer: So, my congregation is Asbury, United Methodist Church. We’re in Smyrna, Delaware, which is about 15-20 minutes north of Dover. All our services for the foreseeable future are still going to be online. The church website is www.asburyumcsmyrna.org. We’re also on Facebook at the same, Asbury Smyrna. If you want to get in touch with me, my email is media. asbury@gmail.com and you can also send a message through the Facebook page, all those messages go to me.
Barbara: So wonderful, thank you so much for your time, Jennifer. Very interesting.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best CEO of Virtual Works, Inc.
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