Now that we’re in the early stages of COVID-19-inspired working from home, the internet is flush with giddy professionals posting group selfies, like the one above.

It seems that organisations are finally discovering, or at least making use of what were — outside of the startup ecosystem anyway— previously neglected collaboration tools.

Large companies have a way of anchoring to the past, and it has taken a global pandemic to get them to try what are not so new ways of working. It has taken a global pandemic to effectively demonstrate that perhaps the entire notion of everybody going to a central meeting point, every day of the week, is redundant.

Note from the author: Hide your private meeting ID when you’re sharing these selfies online dummies!

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Tools are only as good as how you use them

For some organisations, the transition has been a somewhat seamless one on the back of multi-million dollar investments into mobility and collaboration infrastructure (let’s forego the fact that numerous secure off-the-shelf tools exist for a fraction of the price and in some cases for no cost at all).

But despite all of this, what leaders at these organisations and what a lot of the remote working ideas suddenly flooding the internet seem to forget, is that a tool is only as good as how you use it.

It’s easy to spend your entire work from home day sitting in back-to-back, hour-long and unimportant Zoom calls with a cast of thousands while you respond to non-consequential emails and notifications on your smartphone, and chat with colleagues via Slack — it’s no different to a typical day at the office for many folks!

Some might even be engaging in extra-curricular activities like young Calum here.

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But none of this — especially not the extra-curricular activities — makes you even remotely productive…excuse the pun.