Remote working for managers
The given orthodoxy is that remote working or working from home is okay for developers, designers, and marketing people, but if you have a management role you need to be onsite to manage people. COVID-19 has changed all that.
The rapid change of events has upended the policies and conventions, the whole company now works remotely.
So why were managers required to work onsite? How are they going to manage in a remote setting?
The requirement for managers to work onsite was the thinking that if they can see people they know what is going on and they have an overview of what everyone is doing. The exception is the odd person who works from home from time to time, and the manager could always be reassured by regular messaging on Slack or Teams.
How does a manager really know what people are doing? Someone may be putting the hours in and seem busy, but confusing busy with being productive is a trap that is easy to fall into.
If the manager has a grip on what people are achieving and can keep the team aligned to the goals then the setting of the office or working remotely should be an academic question.
It could be argued that remote working enforces a greater discipline in communication. This could improve communication between the manager and the team, as in an office setting there are big blocks of time the manager is tied up in meetings and thus not available to the team, moving the meetings to video calls can reduce the time of meetings as they tend to become more business-like.
Effective communication becomes important in a remote setting, but coming back to why managers were so reluctant to work remotely is not answered by improving communication. What is a stake is trust. Does the manager trust the team is doing the work that is asked of them?
We know when the manager does not trust the team. “Can you check in every hour to let me know what you are up to?”. The manager is terrified that someone will be binging a series on Netflix while keeping an eye on their email inbox or that they are doing some house work. For the team being managed by someone who has no trust in them it is a big challenge. How often can you reassure the manager that you are really getting things done? Do you need to put time aside for “upward management” to let the manager know of achievements?
The trick in making things work is to have a clear schedule of meetings for the team as a whole. A weekly to let the team know what is going on in the company, a planning meeting to clearly set out the work and ensure that everyone is clear what needs to be done, and a short meeting for lessons learned (what do we continue doing?, what do we stop doing? and what do we need to start doing?) long with action points from the previous meeting.
A daily status can be written in the team channel to give an at-a-glance summary of what people did the previous day and what they are planning on working on. The discipline of doing this acts as a good reminder to the individual on what they worked on and think about planning their day.
There is an art to communication with the team, and this is a “Goldilocks” approach, not too little and not too often, but about right. As a manager you know what is right, your team are engaged and you have a meaningful dialogue.
There are no real barriers to teams being fully remote, and that includes the management. The is some adaptation needed as an office setting is easy to see if someone is around or busy with someone, but that is a luxury and often in offices teams are not on the same floor. The team need to adjust to more structured communication, asynchronous communication, and above all they need to trust each other.
There are anecdotal claims that remote working is more productive as people in general have less distractions than in the office, however, this is not conclusive as in theory there are just as many distractions at home.
If you want to learn more the book “The Remote working Handbook : A guide for companies and remote workers” will be published soon and to register your interest please register on www.goingremote.work for updates.
