Instructions
In your role as a consultant for Workplace Solutions Consulting, yo
Instructions
In your role as a consultant for Workplace Solutions Consulting, you are typically working at customer sites and from a home office when not on travel. You take advantage of technology to stay connected to your team and management to keep current on your project and developments at company headquarters.
Discussion Prompt
What are the advantages in this arrangement for you as an individual?
What are the challenges?
How do these advantages and disadvantages potentially impact the company?
Reflecting on week 1, what elements of your individual personality potentially benefit the company? Grading
Grading Rubric for DiscussionCriteriaRatings
Initial Post(15 pts) Response goes beyond simply answering the prompt; attempts to stimulate further thought & discussion.
(10 pts) Response provides obvious information without further analysis of the concept; lacks depth of knowledge or reasoning.(5 pts) Response does not accurately address the prompt or all parts of the prompt.(0 pts) No response provided to the prompt within the associated time frame.
Reply to Peer(5 pts) Response is substantive and attempts to stimulate further thought & discussion.
(3 pts) Response provides obvious information without further analysis of the concept.(1 pts) Response is very brief and does not add new content or depth.(0 pts) No response provided within the associated time frame.
Total Points: 20
Reply 1 : Alex
Advantages and Challenges of a Remote Working Environment The advantage of the arrangement of working from home or a customer site is the comfort of not working at a designated place every day, which makes it an enjoyable change of routine. One might say that an employee being comfortable is bad, but instead, the fact that the employee is comfortable helps him to “reach success and meet expectations”(Organizational Behavior and Human Relations, Lumen Learning). Employees who are allowed to choose what hours they work or what to wear to work allow the employee to be comfortable and therefore more efficient in terms of productivity. Lastly, the advantage of technology is a great one, since communication will be much faster than before with the use of email, and Zoom-like applications to communicate with others who are far away. But as there are advantages there are also challenges to this commodity. The predicting of an employee’s behavior and personality will be harder to detect by a manager since the only communication the manager will have with the employee is via online resources. Such resources can easily hide the physiological, psychological, and emotional qualities of the employee from the manager, leaving the manager with not a complete understanding of the employee. This is bound to affect the company indirectly, since the following are being compromised communication, efficiency, milestones setting and achievement, understanding of the employee’s needs, and others. Reflecting on week one, with my clear bias toward the online meetings, I believe that under this kind of working environment, working from home and working at customer sites. My communication with the manager would be affected and therefore affect the company. I am not very good at communicating using online resources. I do not like to spend time on the phone or in a meeting using online resources because I feel like it can be very misleading. On the other hand, in person, I am very talkative and I like to pick up on physical cues that the person or persons that I am addressing give in order to evaluate them accordingly. Such things are very hard to do while communicating using online resources. Reply 2 : Shann For me as an individual, the advantages in this arrangement are flexibility, less commuting time, exposure to diverse environments, and utilizing technology. I would be able to set my own hours and have flexibility in both my personal and professional lives. You can save time and gas by working from home instead of commuting to client locations. Nonetheless, I could improve my professional expertise by working in a variety of industries, cultures, and work situations while on site. Finally, communication and collaboration are made possible regardless of physical location by the technology that keeps you in touch with the team and management.
The challenges would be communication barriers, isolation, work-life balance, and technical issues. There may be communication lapses or miscommunications due to distance between the team and management headquarters, which must be carefully managed. It can be difficult to stay in touch with coworkers when working remotely, so it takes conscious effort to keep such ties going. Setting limits and stepping away from work can be difficult while working from home because it can be difficult to distinguish between work and personal life. Because communication and collaboration rely heavily on technology, errors in operation or poor connectivity can cause productivity and workflow to be disrupted.