Remote working and the importance of connection

Since Covid, the amount of hours you work is much less important, as is the location where you open your laptop. Output-driven working it is. You work with your team towards a concrete goal. And whether you do that on a Sunday afternoon from a terrace in Italy, or Tuesday afternoon at the office in Amstelveen, it doesn’t matter. This way of working, remote working, bears fruit, as research shows that it produces better results.

Eric van der Linden is former HR director at Ctac. He found it amazing to see how quickly working from home was accepted during Covid. Eric: “Now we can’t and don’t want to go back to the old model. But we do want to apply elements from the old working model in modern working. Like meeting people. So it’s important to keep providing facilities for people who still want to work in the office.”

Modern working is also changing the role of the manager, Eric notes: “It’s much more about connecting with people. How do you keep them involved? The soft side of the manager has become much more important. Things like intuition, empathy and trust, play a bigger role than measuring and controlling. Less managing, more coaching.”

Whether you work remotely or in the office, it is important to keep the connection with each other and with the company, Michel believes: “You can go on workation, or organise something weekly with all the people in a team to make sure that that connection remains. For example, we had digital cooking lessons last from a Surinamese colleague and really tasty Surinamese roti to make.”

“Exactly. You have to be careful that it is not just efficient and maximal,” Patricia believes. “An informal chat and office fun remain important. We went through training for that to apply that digitally as well. We benefited a lot from that.”