Remote Workers Succeed, When Managers Lead
- Rudy Melendez
- Aug 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 15, 2020
Distributed work economy being expedited by Covid-19 pandemic.
"Where are my employees?", shouted the manager from the office down the hall.
Covid-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of our communities, businesses, and economy. If you are waiting for things to get back to normal, my advice, “Don’t.”
Companies must embrace the new reality, look to the future and reexamine their business model for the good of the business, customers, employees, partners, suppliers. The new normal mandates companies to evaluate their operational processes and technology needs to support today’s work from home employees and tomorrow’s distributed work economy.
Working Remotely is Optional
Prior to the pandemic, work from home (i.e. telecommuting, remote worker, flexible schedule) policies and practices existed at companies to serve as a perk for employees to work offsite when needed.
Driving factors that led to work from home schedules include:
Accommodate employees
Retain in-house talent
Improve employee morale
Hire top candidates
Reduce operating cost
A 2016 Gallup survey highlighted that 43% of US employees were already working remotely on a regular basis. With national Covid-19 cases continuing to rise, 46% of organizations are establishing remote work policies to protect employees and keep the business functioning.
Employees and physical space expenses are two big company expenses.
Working Remotely is Necessary
Covid-19 pandemic generated massive tidal waves across every industry disrupting the global economy. Companies charged forward to establish and expand remote work policies to include employees who generally work onsite, and temporarily instituted 100% work from home practice for employees able to work remotely.
To mitigate negative impact from the pandemic, unprepared companies accelerated their work from home programs lacking:
Appropriate or sufficient technology
Existing or detailed work from home policy
Remote worker training for employees
Processes designed to support remote work
Pandemic uncertainty and long-term effects on employees will drive companies to join the distributed work economy sooner than later. Strong leadership across the company will be key in the company’s survival or demise. Ready or not – companies must conform to the new reality.
Distributed Work Economy Obstacles
Transitioning to a distributed workforce comes with new challenges. Fast-tracking the move amplified the risk of front-line managers derailing the program. Management of a remote workforce requires additional skills and experience to efficiently and effectively manage remote workers.
If management team practiced a micromanagement philosophy, the company requires additional time to cure specific conditions.
Micromanagement weakened trust
Direct reports dependent on manager direction
Employees not clear of expectations
Employee creativity is stifled
Managers Must Lead
The pandemic created new opportunity for company managers experienced with only managing onsite employees. Tainted by the pandemic, in countless situations, their employees are now 100% offsite or in a combination of having onsite and offsite workers.
When realizing the change, the manager in the office down the hall asked, “How do you want me to measure and track my employees’ productivity?”
In traditional work environments, the majority of employees work onsite, and a few work remotely on occasion. Accustomed to managing onsite employees, it is common for managers to become complacent on measuring employee productivity. For example, a manager’s perception of an employee’s productivity, for exempt and non-exempt employees, can be heavily influenced by:
Number of sick days taken
Time spent at their workstation
Time Clocked-in, Clocked-out
Time spent at lunch or breaks
Answer to manager’s question above, “How were you tracking it prior to the pandemic?”
Conclusion
To succeed with a distributed workforce, managers need to transition to a results management philosophy, identify tools and skills needed to manage and support their offsite teams. Responsible for securing a return-on-investment for resources assigned to them, managers are accountable for their employees' productivity and contributions; no excuses.
To succeed in supporting a productive distributed workforce, managers must define, document, implement, and communicate key performance measurements that highlight employee contributions, results, productivity, and identify opportunities for improvement. Managers must cultivate transparency, trust, support, communication, collaboration, and practice situational leadership to keep employees engaged and productive.
Distributed work economy success is the responsibility of leaders.
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