9 Tips for Effectively Managing Remote Work

With the Coronavirus, more and more organizations’ workers are working remotely. Fortunately, remote work has been around for decades, so there is a lot of information about making it work. Today, however, many organizations are being immersed in remote work unexpectedly, and they may not be ready.

During 9 years of my career, I was a remote employee, and there were some high points and some low points.  Based on that employee experience and on my consulting experience in creating, implementing and supporting virtual teams, I offer a few tips on making remote work “work” for your organization.

1. First of all, if you have a good hiring process, your workers are strong, and just because they are now working remotely does not mean that they need to be micromanaged. In recent years, your organization has fought hard to gain and keep good employees. They will get the work done. Trust them. Some may need more direction than others, especially if they are new to the organization and their workstyle prefers on-site work, but many of your employees work well independently, especially if they have the resources for remote work.  In fact, you may find that employees can get more done in less time at home because they can secure focused time.  On-site work can be full of distractions, interruptions, and unplanned, ad hoc meetings.
2. Don’t be tempted to add meetings. The only meetings that might be necessary to add are departmental meetings to coordinate work sequence and assignments. Adding meetings give remote employees less time to do the work you need to have done. If meetings MUST be added, ask yourself first: what is the purpose for this meeting?  What is the agenda for this meeting?  Can this purpose be accomplished in another way? If you have set up the remote work effectively, additional meetings may not be needed. If remote work was not well planned, an additional meeting for executives to do this kind of planning may be called for. Try to avoid the types of status meetings where very little new ground is covered. You want the organization’s work to get done. Keep in mind, employees have their kids at home, and they may be arranging blocks of time with friends or family members to watch their kids, and getting the work done may not come in traditional blocks of time.
3. Be realistic about time. Because schools are closed, the work will not be done between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. but it will get done because you have the right people. I used to get a lot of my work done after the kids went to bed, before they got up, and in any hours when they were out of the house. If you were recording my time back then, I got more done at home than in the workplace and often worked extra hours. I worked various blocks of time and typically got more hours in than the perquisite 40. With family members at home, your employees may not get in the traditional blocks of time, but they will get the work done.
4. Executives should collaborate with IT and get some collaboration tools available for employees ASAP.
5. Don’t be tempted to micromanage. Set clear goals for work that needs to be done. Define what tasks or projects need to be done. Put timelines and/or measurements in place to ensure they get done. Your employees should already have a sense of their standard work and what needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Give them the space to get it done. If you do not have standard work and clear measures, now is the time to set them and then coach to the desired result.
6. Create some kind of mechanism for collecting feedback from employees working from home. Use surveys, or quick touch-base calls or other technologies to find out: What do they need that they are not getting?  Once you get the feedback, do something about it quickly, and communicate to all employees about the improvements you are putting in place. As a management team, solve any problems and address gaps.
7. Improve your communication processes. Clarity is always a key leadership responsibility. If any employees are being left out of key communications, it will harm productivity and cause resentment. Use communication tools that are not long, droning meetings. Use technologies creatively so that employees can check for important communications that are being pushed out from the executive group. In a crisis like this one, some employees will be able to catch up on communications at different times, so using a method that is not “same time” is helpful.
8. Once remote work is in place, executives should use their remote work time to do all the things that have been falling through the cracks in recent months and to plan the strategy for coming out of this “Coronavirus recession.” During times of emergency remote work, perhaps the people most at a loss for what to do are executives. If your organization has a fire-fighting, “hero” culture, executives may spend a lot of time rescuing and firefighting. What are better things executives can do with remote work time?  Improve detailed communication processes, develop a strategic IT plan for supporting remote work, setting a strategy for recovering from this current difficult time, and solve problems that are uncovered when you get feedback from employees.  More important:  This current time of upheaval is an ideal time to re-think your business. How should it be different or better? Another key leadership task is to document the remote work lessons learned.  These learnings will allow you do this better in the future. This current challenge is a unique experience for learning.
9. Last, make time for some fun. Not all employees want to spend time on fun during remote work, but you could offer some fun activities to do remotely. One employer had a drawing each day. Another asked employees to take pictures of funny remote work experiences or offer some remote work tips and best practices.

These nine tips probably sound like common sense, but we’ve all seen examples this week where common sense is not so common, and in emergency situations, it can be easy to lose focus. You never know, eight weeks from now, you may have found the remote work so profitable that you want to keep it and the work life balance it can bring.