Season 2 | Episode 3
How To Do Work-From-Home The Right Way
An Interview With
Melanie Drouin
Regional Director & Senior Consultant
Great Place to Work ® Canada
This week’s guest is Melanie Drouin, the Regional Director and a Senior Consultant at Great Place to Work® Canada. She joined GPTW following a successful 20-year career in Marketing Research. Having personally managed, coached & grown people in fast-paced, high-stress, multicultural environments while working with clients from all industries, Melanie learned first-hand the value of people-centered leadership.
She believes “that the success of an organization is based on its culture and leader’s ability to elicit the best out of people” and she has had the opportunity to train, coach, and mentor a wide variety of people from around the globe.
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Overview:
As a result of the pandemic, many of us have been working-from-home instead of commuting to the office or a space outside of the home. And as a result, many of us have been struggling to find a healthy work-life balance amongst the emerging “new normal” workplace culture. Want to work “better?” Be a better leader? Elicit better results from your employees?
In this week’s episode, Jon and Melanie discuss the importance of quality leadership in terms of creating environments where employees want to and can bring their best selves to produce and innovate. Creating strong employer-employee relationships involves many things, most prominently: trust, flexibility, and transparency.
Topics Discussed in this Episode:
[01:23] Stress and anxiety levels have increased during the pandemic. Jon suggests that we are not “doing working from home right” and asks Melanie how she feels about that?
[06:33] What do you think about leaders in the workplace implementing more frequent check-ins with their employees working from home?
[09:20] There is much debate about the next subject. Cameras on or off during meetings?
[12:32] What are some tools or tips you have – in terms of breaking away from the webcam or desk – to make working from home a better experience?
[16:15] For listeners who are in leadership positions that wish to hit reset on their approach to creating a productive workplace culture, what kinds of questions should they ask their selves?
[18:26] For those in leadership positions that have committed to making a change, how can they get their employees to give helpful input?
[21:49] What are your thoughts on the future of working-from-home?
[23:33] What is the year ahead looking like for you at Great Place to Work Canada?
Resource Links
Great Place to Work (Canada)
https://www.greatplacetowork.ca/en/
Great Place to Work (USA)
https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/reports
“Trust Rules” by Bob Lee