Considering the acceleration of digital transformation in all industries, innovation is critical to remain competitive. You can bring the most viable and valuable opportunities to fruition by working through these four innovation phases.

Digital transformation projects continue to pick up pace due to the pandemic, especially in the digital business consulting and implementation space. In fact, a recent McKinsey & Co. survey found that companies accelerated the digitization of their internal operations and supply chain and customer interactions by three to four years. Due to compressed timelines, however, the execution of such projects is fraught with risk.

The best way to ensure success is to make sure you are choosing the right projects to spend your limited time and resources on. This is where having a structured innovation process can help. The innovation funnel is a concept commonly used in research and development organizations to question proof of concept and better manage risk, but it can be applied in any environment where you need to pick winning bets.

Defining the Innovation Funnel for Your Operations

A quick search for “innovation funnel” will yield hundreds of different diagrams that grow increasingly narrower. At their core, these funnels have four main phases of innovation, with opportunities to review and reprioritize after each.

1. Ideation

Often tied to strategic goals or known pain points, the ideation phase of innovation is all about capturing innovative solutions and centralizing the information for review. You can solicit ideas companywide through brainstorming sessions, hackathons, customer inquiries, and so on. Employ the five W’s (Who, what, when, where, and why) and use a template to standardize input. As you review, look for which projects could bring the most value — through new revenue streams, better enabling current resources, or other critical innovation criteria.

2. Investigation

Now that you have a shortlist of potential projects, use the investigation phase to conceptualize and compare them. This often means building a more detailed business case, researching alternatives in the market, and laying out the plan to deliver on the potential value. Here, you should consider the time to value, feasibility, and risks of each proof of concept so you can make an informed decision on the positions you select.

3. Testing

The goal of the testing phase is to develop and deploy a lightweight test that will validate assumptions and help determine a heavier investment of time and resources. If you’re considering offering a new service, is there a way to test it with current customers? Are there ads you can run to gauge interest? If you’re developing an internal tool, are there prototypes you can develop through mock-ups or low-code alternatives? When evaluating tests, do you see enough of a benefit to continue? Is it in line with initial assumptions?

4. Implementation

In the last phase of the funnel, you should start on an innovation implementation plan. You’ll need to determine the timeline, resource allocation, responsible parties, success metrics, benchmarks, etc. As with any new project, it’s important to continue to track progress and bring any learnings back into the funnel process.

Remember that the innovation funnel must work for your business and the scale of your organization. Provide clear communication across the company about what you’re looking for. Your goal should be to run the innovation funnel on a regular basis and make it a core practice.

Benefits of the Innovation Funnel

While the ultimate goal of the innovation funnel is to take ideas from concept to reality, working through the various phases of innovation has other organizational benefits. For instance, employing the funnel allows you to:

• Obtain a cross-functional view

It’s common to develop tunnel vision around strategic priorities and operational key performance indicators. By taking a crowdsourcing approach to ideation, you can expand your focus across departments and hierarchies. You may discover unknown pain points, operational vulnerabilities, insufficient resources, or other business obstacles that can be solved through thoughtful proposals. What’s more, collaboration can increase innovation success by 15%.

• See clear project value

Too many digital transformation projects get to the launch planning phase without a discernible business case or measurable KPIs. When putting projects through the innovation funnel, a baseline level of rigor is automatically applied. Why? Because each idea has been considered on its own merit and compared against others. Everyone must acknowledge whether they’ve selected a project for subjective or objective reasons. The funnel also provides a clear project management structure, and businesses with such a structure in place have 38% more successful projects.

• Understand resource project loads

Project overload is real, and it can consume your best people because they’re often tapped to be subject matter experts. Evaluating projects at each phase of innovation lets you review who you’re asking to step up. If it’s the same people over and over, consider whether the project is more important than their day-to-day responsibilities and reprioritize from there.

• Identify engaged employees

Finding your most passionate and engaged team members has never been an exact science. Ideation opportunities and follow-up projects allow for different avenues of engagement and expression that can reveal individuals you might not have come across before. You may also see people self-organize into groups that you wouldn’t have put together. Companies with engaged workforces experience 21% higher profitability, so the innovation funnel can truly impact your bottom line.

Try designing your own short innovation funnel. Take a day to weigh the potential implementation of this against other opportunities in your queue. If it’s worth pursuing, outline your business case and key tenets to shop it among your cohort. See whether there are people in your organization who are interested and have the bandwidth to take on a trial. Learn from this and iterate before generating a larger program.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, we are all familiar with the saying, and many of us have either been on the giving or receiving end of this at some point in our lives. Furthermore, sure, this saying may ring true when someone imitates your style or finds interest in the same hobbies that you have, but it’s meaning does not hold up in business.

Entrepreneurs are so predisposed to imitation that it pervades their ability to become innovative thinkers. No entrepreneur would ever dare call themselves a copycat. Instead, they call themselves disruptors. Nevertheless, I would argue it is the same thing.

Why is this bad for business, exactly? Let us take it back to the late ’90s. When Clayton Christensen first coined the idea of disruptive innovation, it was a novel concept full of promise and the very thing that entrepreneurs chase: power. It described the process of how a product or service would take shape at the bottom of a market and relentlessly work its way up until it eventually displaced the market’s most established competitors. Sounds like every entrepreneur’s dream, right? Except, like what happens with most business concepts, time oversimplified its meaning. 

Today, when we think of disruption, we think of carnage — the weak dethroning the strong, a process that will repeat itself for the rest of history. However, here is the problem: when we focus too much on the idea of disruption, we obsess over the quest to conquer the competition rather than figuring out how to successfully target overlooked segments in a given market to grow our companies while also bringing value to the industry and its consumers.

In other words, we should focus less on destruction and more on evolution. This requires a level of forward-thinkingness and creativity that not many entrepreneurs have, which is why so few actually “make it” big. Southwest Airlines is a perfect example of this. When the airline was starting, society believed that only the well-off wanted to travel by plane. However, Southwest Airlines chose to ignore that perspective and pioneered the first low-cost carrier model, which invited regular people into the skies to travel. As a result, they did not have to drive other airlines out of business to find success; thus, they grew the market, and success followed. Moreover, today, they are among the best-ranked airlines in the world, showing that creativity prevails over disruption. 

IKEA also shares a similar story. After opening their first store in South Korea, the resulting ripple felt throughout the country was not an evaporation of all of South Korea’s furniture stores. Instead, the opposite happened. For the first time in two decades, the market experienced a 7 percent growth rate. Rather than aiming to push out other retail stores, IKEA added something to the market that did not previously exist. Not only did they see a massive spike in sales, but this new retail experience reinvigorated a love for furniture shopping in consumers that spread throughout the area as well. 

In both of these examples, Southwest Airlines and IKEA became giants in their industries on the back of inclusivity. Their goal was not to steal business away from other companies in the market; it was to add value that did not exist at the time. I think that is my biggest issue with disruption. Entrepreneurs who white-knuckle the idea of disruption focus on taking away established products or services because they believe success is only possible when their competitors are destroyed and gone from the market altogether. Instead of innovating, they copy existing business models and aim to do it bigger and better. Sure, sometimes this works, and other times it does not, but I ask: where is the value in this either way?

There is none. By eliminating products and services from a market and replacing them with a rebranded version of the same products and services, you are not benefiting consumers at all, you are just aiding in the problem of market oversaturation. In these instances, it is evident that the end goal is not about reimagining how the market can better serve consumers and change the way they live and think, it is all about the pursuit of money. 

Profitability is one way to measure success, but it should never be the only lure of starting your own company. Instead, entrepreneurs should strive to provide value and solutions that do not already exist in the market. What inspired the foundation of your business? How do you intend to be different from other businesses in the industry? Leaders who thoughtfully and creatively answer these questions ⁠— where financial gain is not the only priority — are the ones who have the best chance of building legendary companies. For example, if Southwest Airlines would have tried to compete with other airlines that catered to wealthier passengers directly, it is very likely we may have never heard of them today. However, because they reimagined the travel industry and saw an opportunity to open up flying to the general public, they have cemented themselves as leaders in the aviation industry and set a new precipice for flying for decades to come.

Do not get me wrong — disruption is not bad in and of itself. However, it is usually never the intention of promising entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs saw the potential in opportunity rather than in destruction. This is not to say that disruption will not inevitably happen as companies expand and markets shift, but it should be a side effect of creativity, not the precursor to carnage.

An emerging commercial seaweed industry is gaining pace in South Australia and it has the methane produced by cows firmly in its sights.

Australian researchers have found red seaweed has the ability to reduce cow and sheep methane production by up to 90 per cent when mixed with stock feed. The findings have led the South Australian Government to recently announce $1.5 million over two years to support the establishment of a commercial seaweed industry in the state.

It says seaweed production could be worth $140 million a year in South Australia with the potential to create 1,200 jobs. This has also prompted the first licences to establish a commercial seaweed farm to be granted and a partnership between seaweed producers and livestock companies.

Two licences were granted in January 2021 to allow a commercial seaweed farm to be established on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. The production leases and licences for 10 hectares within the east Point Pearce intertidal aquaculture zone, and 30 hectares within the west zone have been granted to the Narungga Nation Aboriginal Corporation (NNAC).

NNAC is working in partnership with CH4 Global, a company focused on farming marine seaweeds for commercial purposes to reduce greenhouse emissions in the livestock industry.

Meanwhile, CH4 Global has announced a world-first agreement to supply enough Asparagopsis seaweed supplement for up to 10,000 head of cattle to an agriculture hub near the South Australian city of Port Pirie.

Cattle are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions with every one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet producing about 100kg of methane a year.

Research by Australia’s peak scientific body CSIRO found that the red seaweed Asparagopsis mixed with regular cattle feed at a rate of 100 grams per cow per day reduced methane production by 90 per cent.

CH4 Global has purchased a licence from patent owners CSIRO, Meat & Livestock Australia and James Cook University and gained regulatory approval for the material to be allowed to sell it in Australia.

The red seaweed will be cultivated by CH4 in South Australia where the company has signed a partnership agreement with the NNAC.

“CH4 believes in circular and regenerative economic principles and is extremely excited by our collaboration and partnership with NNAC,” said CH4 Global CEO and co-founder Steve Meller.

“Working with the Narungga Aboriginal Nation to generate maximum sustainable benefit for its people – jobs, training, and a leadership role in climate mitigation is what CH4 is all about.”

The first farm at Point Pearce will produce two species of red algae: the warm water species Asparagopsis taxiformis and a cool water species Asparagopsis armata. This will ensure high growth rates throughout the year.

It takes about 45-60 days for a seaweed seedling from the hatchery to grow into a matured plant ready for harvest and processing.

NNAC Chief Executive Officer Klynton Wanganeen said the algae is native to the Narungga Nation’s traditional waters in Gulf St Vincent, which have the perfect climate to grow both cold and warm water varieties of the seaweed.

“We’re in the process of planning and putting in the infrastructure for two one-hectare leases, so that we can start growing with a view to working out the optimal depth for the warm water species,” he said.

CH4 has also applied for 839 ha of potential aquaculture space across three sites in South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, around Port Lincoln in Boston Bay, Louth Bay and Tumby Bay and is looking to establish further farms.

Beyond South Australia, it is anticipated that seaweed-based stock feed supplements will be in strong demand for improved growing rates, particularly in jurisdictions like California where limits have been imposed on livestock emissions.

South Australian Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development David Basham said the granting of the first licence on Yorke Peninsula was an important first step for the emerging industry.

“These are the first marine algae aquaculture leases and licences issued for South Australia, marking the start of a new sector for our aquaculture industry,” he said.

“This is expected to bring new economic development and employment activity to the Yorke Peninsula region, including local Aboriginal communities.

“This is a great outcome for the social and economic wellbeing of the Narungga people, while also having benefits for the whole state.”

At $3.8 trillion, the cost of healthcare in the US now surpasses federal revenue. It’s a tremendous burden for employers, and with medical debt as the leading cause of bankruptcy, consumers suffer as well.

Goodroot CEO Michael Waterbury (pictured above) says complexity drives up the cost and keeps it high. “I’ve never met an employer who fully understands the healthcare business. But after payroll, it’s often their biggest expense and it’s rising dramatically every year. It’s a black box that allows for excessive profiteering.”

Unlike sweeping initiatives such as Haven, the defunct healthcare partnership between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, Goodroot’s approach to lowering healthcare costs is “reinventing healthcare one system at a time.”

Goodroot has affiliate companies — four new ones in 2021 alone — that disrupt one particular aspect of the healthcare industry. For example, by some estimates 80 percent of medical bills in the US contain errors. Auditing companies catch these errors for health plans, but since they’re paid by volume there’s no incentive to fix the problem. Penstock Group closes the loop with outreach to ensure the same errors don’t reoccur.

In a sense, Waterbury is the “10th man” of healthcare, trying the contrarian approach at every turn. It’s a dogged kind of innovation, and it’s working. Goodroot affiliates have eliminated over $800 million in wasted healthcare spending since 2015, and they’re just getting started.

Misaligned incentives

“We like to ignore that our healthcare system is full of conflicts of interest,” Waterbury says. “I reached a point where I couldn’t pretend the incentive to put profits over patients didn’t exist.”

Before he became an entrepreneur in 2015, Waterbury held a series of coveted healthcare executive jobs, including an executive role at the largest insurer in the US. The seed that grew into Goodroot was planted early in his career.

“In 2006, I was tasked with lowering the cost of chemotherapy in New York,” he explains. “In the data, we could see that patients were receiving chemotherapy right up until their deaths, long after any hope of recovery.

“I’m not a provider, but I know those drugs have horrible side effects and those patients died in pain. I also knew that a round of chemo generated $70,000 worth of billings at the time. Profit simply had to be a factor in some cases in the decision to continue chemo. I learned there was a term for it: ‘pouring chemo into a casket.’”

Waterbury says when he heard that phrase, he knew he had to change the status quo. But he makes it clear that he hates the game, not the players. “Oncologists should make a profit on chemotherapy. But we have to recognize that profit motivations can shape decisions about care and build a system around that.”

Employers have options

Waterbury says that employers, who generally accept 5 or 10 percent annual increases in healthcare expenses as a fact of life, have many levers to pull in order to lower healthcare costs. They just don’t know they exist, or how to pull them.

“Small businesses really get beat up in the healthcare landscape,” says Erik Wallace, president of Goodroot affiliate CoeoRx. The company launched in April of 2021 under Waterbury’s mentorship to help small employers increase their leverage in the healthcare marketplace. Wallace and his team use pre-negotiated pharmacy contracts, drug pricing outside of insurance, international prescription filing and other tactics most employers would never know to try.

Whether they’re working with CoeoRx or not, Waterbury encourages business owners to push back against rate increases. “Once you begin to use the right language and ask the right questions, you’ll find more flexibility,” he says. “Insisting on more info on drug rebates and the total cost of care can open doors.”

Companies should also consider their unique demographics and usage. Goodroot affiliate Famulus Health creates custom prescription cash price networks that provide discounts that are often lower than prescription copays on drugs your employees are most likely to need.

All of the Goodroot affiliates and their different methods of increasing healthcare access and affordability were borne out of other professionals, like Waterbury, who came to know the system so well that they could see a change that would be both feasible and meaningful.

And employers have a unique ability and responsibility to help move things in the right direction, he says. “You’re already in this healthcare fight whether you like it or not. Don’t leave one hand tied behind your back. Demand better and ask the direct questions. You owe it to your employees and their families to source all available options to fight for better care, costs and access on their behalf.”

Despite the ongoing challenges facing the world as it navigates pandemic recovery, businesses across every sector are targeting growth. Having paused to meet the difficulties created by lockdown, organizations are now taking the harsh lessons learned during the past 18 months and using them to build ambitious expansion strategies.

For many, the future lies in going global, and enhanced global reach is the linchpin in the growth strategy of today’s corporations. Moreover, recent technological advances make it possible for virtually any organization to do business globally. 

The widespread adoption of the internet provided a huge catalyst for growth. Investors realized that the U.S. represented about 26 percent of the world’s economy, leaving close to three quarters up for grabs by domestic-focused software companies empowered by ubiquitous digital infrastructure.  

Today, this is reflected in the globalized structure of the world’s biggest and most successful businesses – companies listed on the Fortune 500 operate in an average of 317 international locations. There’s no doubt, therefore, that going global enables organizations to focus on transformational success. The motivation for doing so can vary and may be triggered by a range of opportunities: 

First-mover advantage 

Companies understand the potential beyond their domestic markets and borders, so the push to expand internationally is often fuelled by the transient opportunity to secure a first-mover advantage in their industry or product category. 

This has become particularly important in the digital economy, where the power that comes from being first in a region and a product category has helped many organizations to achieve a significant competitive advantage. This strategy typically sits at the heart of the need to deliver growth and supports a bigger, long-term vision for the company. 

The availability of local talent 

For others, hiring an individual in another country creates the impetus for global growth. In some cases, this is because the organization has successfully hired an established top performer in that territory. Conversely, there may have been a longstanding ambition to establish a local office, but the company has held off until it could locate a qualified employee. Either way, the catalyst is the availability of talent located elsewhere but who is believed to be critical for the company’s future growth. That professional’s geographic location then spawns a larger-scale effort to grow the company from that one location. 

Remote working has reached a tipping point 

As we all know, just over 18 months ago, workplace norms changed overnight as remote work moved from being a preference to a mandate. While millions of people headed home to conduct work from a makeshift home office, some moved out of cities temporarily to more remote locations, but all who could were still working.  

The change in workplace demographics was unprecedented in living memory. As of 2017, only 2.9 percent of the U.S. workforce, or 3.9 million employees, worked from home at least half the time, according to data from FlexJobs. By late 2020, research by Gallup revealed that two-thirds of U.S. workers who had been working remotely during the pandemic expressed interest in continuing to do so. 

Almost simultaneously, many of the traditional barriers to international expansion are quickly disappearing, with digital platforms available that allow organizations to cost-effectively outsource key operational functions, from HR and tax to compliance and payroll.  

Those organizations that embrace the potential in global expansion will be ideally positioned to reap the rewards in the short and long term. 

Brazilian healthtech startup Fix has developed a new cast for fixing broken limbs that is 3D-printed and biodegradable.

Made from environmentally friendly bioplastic — beetroot, sugarcane, and corn pulp — the web-like design lets the skin breathe, meaning less sweating and itching from traditional plaster casts, and it can also get wet without damage.

Once you’re healed and ready to dispose of it, the cast will biodegrade in 9 months and can be used as compost or fertilizer. Plaster casts are made from petroleum products and are tough to dispose of without creating environmental harm. Fix makes 30 different styles for fingers, wrists, and shoulders and has eliminated the need for 2.5 tons of plaster serving more than 4,000 patients.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, hospitals produce 4.4% of global greenhouse emissions. With many seeking to improve their medical waste recycling, this sector is primed for innovation.

In the mountains of western North Carolina, a midsize manufacturer recently faced a major pivot to its longtime product line. The product shift made it necessary to upgrade 500 T12 fluorescent high-bay lights to energy-efficient LEDs, a pretty hefty financial outlay for any company, but especially for one undergoing a large-scale product and plant overhaul.  

After analyzing their options and learning about Duke Energy’s SmartPath™ program, the manufacturer realized they could upgrade their high-bay lights, receive rebates from Duke Energy, and leverage a loan through SmartPath that allowed them to complete the project with no money out of pocket and pay back the upgrade loan within two years. Future energy savings in addition to a lower carbon footprint for the facility were a welcome bonus. 

But first, what will it cost?  

Business owners in every industry are faced with similar questions: How can I upgrade expensive systems – buildings, HVAC, lighting, to name a few examples – and pay for the upfront costs? How can I find a trustworthy contractor? And how am I supposed to figure this out while running a successful business at the same time? 

Energy efficiency upgrades are a huge lift for most business owners. Although they know that improvements to energy efficiency can help reduce operating costs, lower utility bills, reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, and lead to increased revenue, the bottom line is that upgrades can be a costly proposition. 

Where business meets improvements 

The amount of energy that businesses consume is staggering. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), 4.6 million small buildings (which often house small businesses) in the U.S. utilize 44% of the overall commercial building energy use. ENERGY STAR^® estimates industrial plants spend nearly $125 billion on energy every year. Small businesses ring up more than $60 billion in energy bills, mostly in the form of electricity. 

But opportunities to reduce costs through energy efficiency improvements abound in nearly all industries. When looking at industrial plants, as one example, energy powers numerous systems: air conditioning, lighting and appliances. Add to that list furnaces and boilers, motor systems that pump fluids and compress gasses, and machinery driven by compressed air. These systems have been identified by ENERGY STAR as offering sizable potential energy efficiency improvements and energy cost reductions.

Benefits to the business and the planet 

Most business owners know that older equipment and systems cost them in various ways, not the least being higher energy bills. When upgrading to greater energy efficiency, businesses can look forward to increased profits realized through lower operating costs and utility bills. Boosting energy efficiency should also raise overall property value and increase potential rental income. 

The EPA reported the electricity sector was the second-largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, making up 25% of the U.S. total. Improving energy efficiency means that businesses will rely less on carbon-intensive power plants. As demand for electricity falls, less carbon dioxide emissions are released into the environment. For environmentally conscious business owners and plant managers, upgrading to energy-efficient systems, lighting and equipment is a win-win for the planet and the business.

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about sustainability, which can extend to making spending decisions based on a brand or company’s investment in contributing to the health of the environment. By investing in energy efficiency, businesses have an opportunity to increase market share and marketability for this important topic.

Improvements beyond the bottom line  

When considering an investment in energy efficiency, most plant managers and business owners think of system improvements such as heating, ventilation or air conditioning. But upgrades in lighting technology can lead to increased productivity and safety.

A study from the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics compared fluorescent and LED lighting and discovered an 8.3% performance improvement in visual and cognitive assignments. Study volunteers also had quicker response times, less fatigue and elevated activity.  

Imagine a plant running two shifts, with employees crossing a dark parking lot once the sun sets. For these employees, a well-lighted parking lot can lead to fewer workplace accidents and contribute to a valuable sense of safety and security. 

Investing in energy efficiency can affect more than utility expenditures and employee well-being. It can also give a boost to the customer experience through improvements such as air conditioning, heating, lighting or other comforts. Environmentally conscious customers may wish to know that their favorite business is concerned about the health of the planet. Consider updating marketing materials, websites and social media in an effort to burnish the organization’s brand image.

Next steps: forecasting future savings 

The first step most energy efficiency experts agree on is to determine the business’s energy usage with an energy assessment. Many utility companies offer free assessments where they will search for leaks and insulation needs and assess ways to upgrade to more energy-efficient lighting. 

Next, work with a contractor to estimate energy savings. Utility companies may provide a list of vetted contractors who have experience forecasting savings based on energy and cost efficiency targets. Consider involving employees who may wish to lower the business or plant’s carbon footprint. Their creative ideas may benefit the business as well as create a stronger workplace culture as the team works to cut costs, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Explore energy efficiency financing options such as tax credits, loans, grants and leases. Often, these programs have a five-year payback (or less) period to help make the project more affordable. Using projected energy savings, business leaders can clearly see the costs and benefits to these options so they can make a solid business case for the upgrades.  

Taking the SmartPath

Duke Energy knew that business leaders in North Carolina and South Carolina often wanted to improve the energy efficiency of their facilities, buildings and plants but were hesitant due to steep upfront costs. SmartPath,* a new program for business customers in the two states, offers a way to get those energy-efficient upgrades done with little to no upfront investment. 

How it works: SmartPath offers robust rebates based on an energy savings calculation after an initial free assessment and proposal by a trusted contractor. After the customer is accepted into the SmartPath program, the estimated energy savings are calculated and verified by the Duke Energy engineering team. The final rebate amount is paid based on the customer’s actual savings. For qualified customers, upfront costs may be eliminated through the use of financing provided by the National Energy Improvement Fund.**

Duke Energy and climate change 

As one of the nation’s largest electricity providers, Duke Energy is committed to the environment and strives to lower the risk of climate change by reducing carbon emissions and investing in resilient infrastructure. The energy provider aims to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from electricity generation at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 and to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050.

Learn more at duke-energy.com/SmartPath.

*SmartPath is available to all North Carolina and South Carolina business electric customers of Duke Energy and Duke Energy Progress. Companies must also be opted in to the Energy Efficiency (EE) Rider. Customers must choose from a published list of company-authorized trade allies to perform an energy assessment at the eligible customer’s facility at no charge to the customer. Customers are responsible for verifying certifications/licensing, if any, of the trade ally they choose.

**Financing is offered to those who qualify and is not offered by Duke Energy. Financing is solely between the National Energy Improvement Fund and the customer or trade ally.

As many of us rapidly approach our year anniversary of working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jellyfish Training has been reminiscing about office life.

With this in mind, they have teamed up with Jellyfish, a digital transformation agency, and asked Mark Deprose, VP of Real Estate & Facilities, to provide actionable tips and insights. He discusses how employees can improve their at-home setups and gives tips for how employers can adapt their office environments to aid in returning to office life.

In addition, they asked children what they think offices will be like in the future after COVID-19. They were tasked with drawing their own ideal office and brought the designs to life in the drawings below. From breakout beaches to hover robots, the designs show how children think adults deserve some futuristic fun when offices return to normal.

Managing Your Space

As we move into a more hybrid way of working, with staff working more of their year from home, as well as the uncertainty of the pandemic, it’s more important than ever to get control of your real estate. There are now 100’s of tools on the market that enable businesses to manage and measure their space effectively and enable staff to book desks and meeting rooms – all through one platform. With these tools, we can start to understand our staff’s behavior, where they sit, who, and how frequently, which will help inform our future space decisions. Accurate data is also critical in helping us know when to increase or decrease the amount of office space we need, especially when closely linked with a recruitment strategy.

Adapting to a New Way of Working

The way our staff will use the office in the future will change, though we still need the data to back this theory up. Staff will be able to choose to work from home when they need to concentrate, but come to the office to see their colleagues, collaborate on projects, and have fun. Before lockdown, there was already a shift in office design and pushing for different ways of working, with a real emphasis on providing less open-plan desks and more quiet work areas and fun communal space. The data will now be a key decision-maker in designing space going forward and creating environments that will draw staff out of their homes.

Retaining the Culture

Company culture and the people in your business should never be underestimated and make a company unique. Video conferencing is a means to an end — and we’ve proved we can all work effectively from home — but isn’t a substitute for an actual face-to-face meeting. COVID has forced the hand of business owners, making them review their working from home policy, but it shouldn’t mean we turn our back on the office; in fact, the office will now play a more critical role than ever, giving staff a safe environment to go and collaborate with their colleagues and develop their working relationships – something that just cannot be replicated online.

Comfort Should be Your Number One Priority

Ensure you invest in a good chair. There are lots of cheap chairs out there, but you can’t guarantee their comfort. Purchasing a proper branded office task chair will ensure you have a product designed specifically for long periods of use, unlike a dining room chair or stool. Also, ensure you have everything at the correct height – simple modifications can make a big difference to your comfort and reduces the risk of back and neck strain. If you don’t have the budget for expensive furniture, then there are many effective products out there that can help improve your existing furniture.

Create a Nice Environment to Work

Try and position yourself near a natural light source or window, which will help provide a better outlook and a potential fresh air source in the summer. If you don’t have access to natural light, then make sure you have adequate light in the room. Try introducing daylight bulbs and additional lamps if the space is too dark. Keep well organized, and make sure you have plenty of storage around you so you can keep your environment clutter-free. Also, introduce plants to your space as they will help improve air quality and look great. One thing people also forget is what others can see when on video calls. Make sure you keep the room tidy, especially the area that’s in view on video calls. Even put some pictures up if you have blank walls.

Have the Best Possible Technical Setup 

Your internet connection is key to success as pretty much all business is now reliant on the internet and done through a browser. If possible, try and make a hard wired ethernet connection from your PC/laptop to your Wifi router, instead of relying on a wireless connection, which others could share. This will hopefully provide a more reliable connection, saving any embarrassment from poor connection on calls. Also, invest in some good quality Bluetooth headphones with a microphone, so you can switch between calls, video conferencing, and listening to music. Earbuds are great as they are more discrete, just don’t forget to charge them!

Have you or your employees been feeling work-from-home burnout and Zoom fatigue these past months despite the supposed convenience of working from home and using videoconferences to meet?

Unfortunately, the vast majority of efforts to address WFH burnout try to treat the symptoms without addressing the root causes. The fundamental root cause of WFH burnout stems from organizations adapting their existing ways of interacting in “office culture” to remote work. To defeat WFH burnout, organizations need to understand the reality of the problems leading to WFH burnout to survive and thrive in our new world. Otherwise, using office-style culture to conduct virtual work simply forces a square peg into a round hole, leading staff to burn out.

Recognize the 12 Problems Leading to Work-From-Home Burnout

Combining my expertise in emotional and social intelligence with research on the specific problems of working from home during COVID, I’ve untangled these two concepts into a series of factors:

1. Deprivation of our basic human need for meaning and purpose. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the vast majority of us don’t realize we aren’t simply experiencing work-from-home burnout. We’re deprived of the fulfillment of basic human needs of meaning and purpose that we get from work. Our sense of self and identity, personal narratives, and the meaning-making we have in our lives are tied to our work. That’s all severely disrupted by shifting to remote work.
2. Deprivation of our basic human need for connection. Our work community fulfills the need for connection for many of us. Work-from-home cuts us off from much of our ability to connect effectively to our colleagues as human beings, rather than little squares on a screen.
3. Deprivation of building trust. In office settings, it’s easy to build trust through informal interactions. This trust-building doesn’t happen naturally in virtual settings. There’s a reason teams that start virtual but later meet in person work together substantially better after doing so. By contrast, teams that shift from in-person settings to virtual ones gradually lose that sense of shared humanity and trust.
4. Deprivation of mentoring and informal professional development. A critical part of on-the-job learning stems from informal mentoring from senior colleagues. It also comes from the observational professional development you get from seeing how your colleagues do their jobs. Losing this mentoring has proven especially challenging for younger employees.
5. It’s not simply “Zoom fatigue.” It’s a real experience, but it’s not about Zoom or any other videoconference software. The big challenge stems from our intuitive expectations about virtual meetings bringing us energy through connecting to people but failing to get our basic need for connection met. Even if they’re strictly professional, in-person meetings still get us to connect on a human-to-human level. By contrast, our emotions just don’t process videoconference meetings as truly connecting us on a human-to-human gut level.
6. Forcing a square peg into a round hole. Many companies try to replace the office culture glue of social and emotional connection through Zoom happy hours and similar activities that transpose in-person bonding events into virtual formats. Unfortunately, such activities don’t work well. Similar to other videoconferences, we have intuitively elevated expectations. We end up disappointed and frustrated by failing to have our needs met.
7. Lack of skills in virtual work technology tools. This problem leads to lowered productivity and frustrating experiences for those who need to collaborate.
8. Lack of skills in effective virtual communication. It’s notoriously hard to communicate effectively, even in-person. Effective communication becomes much more difficult when in-office teams become virtual teams.
9. Lack of skills in effective virtual collaboration. There’s no natural way to have the needed casual interactions vital to effective collaboration and teamwork. Body language and voice tone are important to noticing brewing people problems, and virtual communication provides us fewer opportunities to detect such issues.
10. Lack of accountability. In-office environments allow for natural ways to hold employees accountable. Leaders can easily walk around the office, visually observing what’s going on and checking in with their direct reports on their projects. The same applies to peer-to-peer accountability: it’s much easier to ignore an email with that question than someone stopping you in the hallway or standing in the doorway to your office. You’ll need to replace that accountability with a different structure for remote work.
11. Poor work-from-home environments. Some employees might have access to quiet spaces and a stable internet connection, while others may not. Given the restrictions brought about by the pandemic, overhauling workspaces will take significant time and resources not available to many.
12. Poor work/life boundaries. Ineffective separation of work and life stems from both employer and employee actions. In the long term, doing so causes lowered productivity, increased errors, and eventual burnout.

Conclusion

Work-from-home burnout and Zoom fatigue are much more complex than they appear. You need to implement a wholesale strategic shift to reframe your company culture and policies from the “emergency mode” of working from home to remote work being the new normal.