Most companies and their employees have adapted to changes in the working regime introduced during the pandemic. But what if your company is not one of them? What if it gets stuck or completely fails in the worldwide experiment of working from home? Problems may be due to several causes.
Do you listen to your staff?
Employees need a "safe space" to communicate their needs. This means leaders should spend time listening to employees and practising more empathy. Even small gestures such as the question "Is now a good time for this discussion?" or "Should we take a five-minute break?" help build a sense of trust and gain the respect of employees.
If you opt for anonymous surveys, only collect data. Ensure the results are properly visible to senior managers and that they can work with them.
Is your communication organised and consistent?
Over time, your employees may develop a number of paths and ways to communicate with one another at different levels and remotely. This can result in countless chats, sms texts, messages on Slack and video calls. Without synchronised priorities or well coordinated functional efforts, such communication might reduce their productivity. Give preference to one strategic channel above others to help maintain the strategic line of communication.
TIPS:
- Make sure each manager sets priorities for the week and communicates them to the appropriate employees.
- Consider a regular weekly video report from the CEO to all employees, explaining the goals for the coming week.
- On Fridays send a summary report highlighting that week's achievements, perhaps mentioning one or two employees who have had great success or impact.
Lack of responsibility?
If you have misconfigured responsibilities for team tasks, here are some suggestions on how to fix things:
- Find an effective tool of responsibility (Slack is potentially an excellent tool for agility).
- Coach employees to include high-performance, results-oriented activities in their calendars.
- Help managers prioritise initiatives.
- Improve follow-up accountability by providing timely feedback and creating a single source of truth and knowledge that all employees have access to.
- Start building a culture of coaching.
Do you support the limits of productivity?
When everyone works from home, it is easy to lose track of work and personal life. In the end, there is no difference and everything is mixed together. This is neither healthy nor sustainable. Consider setting up a company policy that teaches employees communicating at the end of the business day to add the proviso that they do not expect a response until normal business hours. This is especially important for globally distributed teams. In this way, people will remain productive with a reasonable work-life balance.
Barriers to teleworking often have little to do with where employees actually work. In other words, it's not about where the employees are working from, but rather their own work and its settings.
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