Even though for many office workers the aspect of remote management may be temporary during the Covid-19 I can already see that some of these tips and new habits formed could translate into better employee management in the office too.
For me the key takeaways from Forbes’ article are:
- Communications plan needs to be clear on how and when communication takes place, and with what technology, especially if your team is part of a bigger organisation. A lead should be given from the organisation CIO otherwise there will be problems between teams, and possibly with clients as everyone jumps onto something different, some not even being secure. Many teams may want a short scheduled daily video meeting as there is no more “passing each other in the passage” remotely.
- Technology tools needed – apart from the obvious (VC, phone calls, e-mails, SMS, instant message group, file sharing, secure VPN access) if whiteboards are used regularly in face-to-face meetings these also need to be considered for virtual meetings. I’ve seen some teams using Mumble audio group chat throughout the day to emulate them actually sitting next to each other in one office and ask for assistance in real-time. Another important consideration for scanned documents received is what sort of authorisation or digital signatures may be required. In many cases this is not actually required as e-mails and approvals inside of an application system will be sufficient, but for some organisations this may be a deal-breaker.
- Home environment is important as it will be difficult for employees to work if they are sitting in a common room with the family making a noise all around. The same goes for what infrastructure they have available to actually work from home eg. type of Internet and package, laptop, desktop with webcam, scanner (or will they use a phone to scan to PDF), etc.
- Be fair to remote and local workers and treat them the same otherwise local workers could be favoured and this isolates remote workers. Managers are easy to catch in an office or in the passage but this is not so remotely. Many will also require tips on how to manage or partake in effective video meetings eg. background sounds not muted can create chaos, and many tools allow a virtual hand to be raised to speak.
- Setting expectations is important not only around response times to e-mails but also discussing expectations together for the work outputs and progress being made. Managers need to be more active and put more effort in, and evidence of a proper communication plan also demonstrates this. Employees also need to realise they are being paid to work from home and although it may not be 8 hours a day in an office, they do still need to be productive and available. The nature of the work each person does could dictate their availability as some must be available during certain hours, whilst others need to receive and process work in a period of time. Even admin workers can be cleaning up and better arranging the shared file system (like they may do with physical files in an office).
- Many office managers are used to the “fly by the seat of your pants” style as they go along, but better project management is now required for key project activities to measure real progress. Project management (even informally documented) clearly sets out the goals for the team, who is doing what, and what is being achieved. Many do this in an ERP system. But managers also have to account for their team’s achievements. Each team member’s role should be clearly understood – as if the manager had to explain to their own manager what each team member would be doing. Personally I used Trello for a long time and shared my boards with team members. At any point during the day I could answer what tasks I had completed, what I’m planning, what I’m busy with and how is it progressing (or not). Free alternatives such as Kanboard and Wekan can be self-hosted and scale out to more employees without hitting any free user limit. Time sheets are fine to measure hours of “presence” but not for real productivity outputs. Timesheets don’t show activities in a visual way like kanban or project management tools do.
- General tips like this are really not sufficient for distribution as they should be personalised and made to suite a specific company’s circumstances, capabilities, and types of work performed. They ideally need to come from the top and be tailored down to each team level by their managers.
See Forbes’ list at https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/05/30/top-15-tips-to-effectively-manage-remote-employees/
#technology #workfromhome #remoteworking #productivity
