Unfortunately, Taiwan recently got hit by a Covid-19 outbreak. That now forces the entire nation to make some adjustments to life and work. Work from Home (WFH) forcefully came onto the agenda for many organizations: To avoid the further spread of the virus, all work that can be done from home should be considered being done from home. People should be given the opportunity to stay at home, to avoid crowded public transportation as well as offices without windows and many people inside.

So, companies are asked to allow WFH. In different contexts that is more or less difficult. Depending on the kind of work, that can be done very easily, like for most office work. For some work, like in a production facility, it is very difficult if not impossible.

Supportive, trying and sabotaging

The reactions of organizations can be categorized in three ways: 

There are the ones that fully support it and allow their members to WFH. Companies like Bosch Taiwan or Porsche Taiwan and many companies in the offshore wind sector being examples among others. 

Ralph Uhlmann, Director of Business Development for Porsche writes on linkedin: “We introduced WFH last year with the beginning of the pandemic.

When the situation went back to “normal” we kept and even promoted the possibility for WFH and provided the necessary hardware where needed. With the latest developments it was no problem for us to switch to a full WFH mode immediately.” Most foreign companies in Taiwan fall into this category.

Also progressive local companies like Taiwan Home Nursing (THN) embrace it. Because THN provides onsite nursing services, the nurses still have to go to clients’ homes with additional safety precautions in place. “Yet our management and team directors and managers (around 1/4 of our total employees) can choose to work from home. We use online teleconferences for daily operations now,” says Ben Kao, one of the three founders.

The second category are the slightly slow and hesitant organizations. In general, they are (forced into) considering it but so far have never really thought about how to do it. A Taiwanese friend working in a government agency wrote to me in a private message: “They are talking about WFH now but due to lack of experience we know nothing now about how exactly it will be carried out. We are now experiencing what the western world was going through last year.” 

Another acquaintance in the electronics industry reports that they split their team in two halves with rotating shifts in the office and others work from home. They do this because the government enforced level 3 alert and the company follows the regulation.

Some currently still force their employees to come into the office because they won’t allow people to access company data from home and have not created the IT systems that would safely allow this.

Some friends working in Human Resources tell me about Taiwan’s archaic labor law that apparently poses some challenges on how to do it right. However, it is definitely a problem that can be solved.

The third category are organizations who actively, even now, try all they can to avoid WFH and discourage their members in all ways possible. Kathy Cheng is collecting stories on Twitter with people in Taiwan sharing their experiences. 

Taiwanese work culture is incapable of trusting that it’s employees can work effectively from home.

Please DM me with stories from companies explaining why they will or won’t allow work from home. I’ll make a thread.

— Tricky Taipei (@trickytaipei) May 18, 2021

Some of the grim examples: “Management seems to be just ignoring the problem. Two directors requested WFH, either in full or half in half out for employees, but it was denied by the CEO. The directors are foreigners, the CEO is Taiwanese.” 

“The cafeteria is closed, you have to wear a mask all day, no in-person meetings allowed, but they are still making people show up. To sit at a desk and do Zoom meetings, and only take off their mask to eat their take-away lunch.”

“Well. Our HR directly said to us: how do we know you are working at home?”

WFH is just a symptom, not the real issue

The last quote from the HR director points us to the real issue at hand and the great opportunity for organizations in Taiwan.

As I argued in a recent article about the future of work in this magazine: In essence challenges like WFH are in most cases attitude and cultural problems not legal or technical problems (although these might exist as well).

The essence of the challenge is about trusting your people that they want to and will do good work!

In overcoming this problem, a number of organizations have the wonderful opportunity to catch up with global workplace developments and leave behind the 1970s factory mindset that can still be observed in some cases.

Few people wake up in the morning thinking about how to do bad work and how to screw over their company and their colleagues. Regardless of any country's cultural context, people in general want to do good work, show their abilities and engage in something they believe is meaningful. In general, we as human beings are motivated: Unless we get demotivated! 

All the quotes I have shared from the last category, are great ways to demotivate and frustrate people. If managers in an organization openly distrust people working for them, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: Distrust breeds distrust and disengagement. Then work is like having Covid: It probably won’t kill you, but it drains your energy, and the negative vibes easily infect other people.

For some managers change will require first of all unlearning deeply ingrained habits and belief systems. This often means overcoming one’s own fears. I know what I am talking about:

I have transformed my own firm into a fully self-organized company, and I had my share of fears to overcome. What I also learned: Trust breeds trust and responsibility. And this can take an organization to places you can’t even imagine.

Avoid managing for the 3%

At the same time, I am not naïve. There will be some people that will abuse your trust and take advantage of it. Judging from multiple interviews different authors estimate that about 2 – 3 % of people would be part of that illustrious group. Unfortunately, whenever that happens – and it will happen – some managers, especially the ones with a 1970s factory culture mindset, will put in place measures, processes, regulations to make sure that this will never happen again in the future.

This is called managing for the 3%. Because you have 2 – 3% of people that abuse your trust, you make 97% of your people suffer for it, frustrate and demotivate them.

 At first sight it’s understandable, at second sight it will sabotage your efforts. The few people who want to harm you, will find ways to do so, regardless of what measures you put in place.

Let’s use the opportunity WFH presents to us, to start building organizations where people get up after the weekend and say “Thank God it’s Monday”. 

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About the author:

Florian is founder of creaffective Munich and Asia, coach, consultant, trainer and bestselling author of five books on innovation, agility and effective collaboration. He also created the New Work meetup Taiwan that explores new forms of working.

He supports organizations worldwide in German, English and Mandarin to strengthen their capabilities for innovation and agility and helps them to better navigate complexity. He has been working with clients in Taiwan for the last 15 years. In 2020 he relocated with his family to Taipei.

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Have you read?

♦ Can Taiwan companies be innovative?
♦ The future of work – is Taiwan ready for it?
♦ How are these future leaders making Taiwan better?

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