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Even in the best of times, finding a healthy life/work balance can be a difficult task. But finding that elusive balance in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and a serious economic collapse has proven to be especially challenging.  

It has now been one year that we have been living with the COVID-19 virus. It has been a year marked by the loss of more than 500,000 deaths and more than 22 million jobs.

The effects are felt in almost every aspect of our lives, and largely for so many, in the way we work and where we work. Prior to the pandemic, only one-in-five said they worked from home all, or most of the time. Now, 71 percent of those are working, at least part-time, from home. And, according to a Pew Research Center survey, more than half say that if given a choice, they would want to keep working from home even after there is a return to some form of normalcy.

They may get their wish. A Gartner survey of company leaders found that 80 percent plan to allow employees the option to work remotely at least part of the time after the pandemic. Meanwhile, 47 percent of those leaders say they will allow employees to work full-time from home. It seems to go without saying, working remotely is one side-effect of COVID-19 that is here to stay.  

Another truism resulting from COVID is that boundaries between life and work have become blurred. For many, the home has also become the office, but it is not a normal “office.” Instead, it is an office filled with a multitude of distractions, such as children vying for your attention, dogs needing to be walked, lunches needing to be made, to name a few of the myriad tasks that were invisible to those of us who would get up and drive into work every day.

For those with school-age children, the challenge became even greater, as parents are now asked to take on full- or part-time teaching roles. Women in particular have borne a large part the COVID burden, as evidenced by the fact that there were 2.2 million fewer women in the labor force in October 2020 than in October 2019.

While there has been much focus on ways to make a remote workforce more productive and efficient, too often, it seems, utilizing creativity is not part of that conversation.  

There is a dated assumption that creativity is solely the result of in-person brainstorming sessions, best measured by the number of Post-It notes on meeting room walls. But an article by Darren Menabney on fastcompany.com rightly takes issue with that assumption. “By leveraging what’s unique about remote work – working from home in particular – we can boost our creativity, both individually and collectively,” Menabney said.

The creative process does not exist in vacuum. It is not just about the “end result.” Instead, it involves the who, the why, and the how. Shifting, pivoting, and adapting to new working situations and finding ways to make those situations work for everyone, is creativity. Yes, it’s that fundamental and that simple. After all, it is all about finding creative solutions.

As Menabney points out, you are no longer limited to the brainpower and creativity of the people in the room, when you work remotely. Indeed, you can bring a more diverse range of voices into any conversation, from all over the world. “More diverse teams lead to more creativity, so remote work lets us tap into a new pool of expertise and creativity which we couldn’t access when collaborating in person,” he said.

Emily Wilcox, head of account management at Johannes Leonardo, agrees that remote work has some added and unexpected benefits. After all, remote work does allow us to have a bit of distance that may offer time to actually contemplate and think about more that just what is happening in our office. It might even lead us to connect with more people other than our office mates and make even more meaningful and real connections.

I think Ben Crudo said it best in his article written for Business Insider: “The COVID crisis has proven how a company’s ability to adapt and innovate can predict its success – and survival. It’s time we stop treating creativity like an afterthought and get disciplined about cultivating it instead. Our future depends on it.”

Still, even with some of the advantages remote work can offer, I also yearn for the day when we can all come back together and meet in person, and garner each other’s creativity once again. In the end, the way we work does not need to be a binary decision. It can be both remote in part and in person in part, so we have the best of both worlds.

Dr. Larry Thompson is president of Ringling College of Art & Design.

Image from Pixabay