Fortunately, there are many proven best practices related to remote work, since it has been around for decades. In our current situation, however, many organizations have been thrown into remote work and were not ready. From the documentation related to remote work, we know it has the potential to greatly lower costs for your business while increasing employee happiness and productivity, and you may be seeing stark advantages already!
There are also significant risks to the organization that need to be considered as you plan the future of remote work. They cannot all be addressed in one article. Future articles will draw a more complete picture. For example, how virtual teams should be structured and supported for optimal performance will be highlighted further in the next blog/article.
After seeing to employee health, the greatest risk to your organization right now is Data Security. When you are pushed into remote work in an emergency situation, you did not have a lot of time to plan. In addition to providing hardware, software, or SaaS solutions to support virtual work, your organization should immediately set and communicate cyber security virtual work policies and train everyone in the organization. These policies need to be aligned with your overall IT strategy and IT security and cyber policies.
Another key risk to the organization revolves around HR and legal compliance. Compliance will be a vital role in planning future remote work, if your organization decides to continue it. For now, your HR and Legal teams should be drafting policy related to remote work for remote work now, and planning for the remote work in the near future.
Build in effective communication mechanisms. Relative to remote work, perhaps the most challenging thing you are dealing with right now is in refining communication. In general, communication in support of remote work needs to be much more proactive with outreach than typical, past communication. When everyone is in the office, communication is centralized and teams come to you. In the remote environment, leadership needs to push more communications. As soon as you can, train leaders in effective communication for virtual work groups or teams. Then train your other employees. Use technologies available within your organization and explore new ones.
There are a number of key challenges for communication in remote work:
Clarity. First of all, clarify expectations related to availability of your employees. Which jobs or roles require availability during the traditional workday, and which do not? For other ideas related to this, please see my earlier blog which outlined realistic work guidance for remote employees. Employees are working at home with spouses working remotely and children out of school and daycare. Employers need to be flexible and realistic and allow for flexibility as appropriate.
Also related to clarity, we need to define, communicate, and implement clear expectations related to outcomes and outputs for each position. These are the actual drivers of activity in any organization, and they are especially important in remote work. Has your organization defined productivity? And if so, how are you measuring it? If you are measuring these aspects of remote work, you can study the metrics and leverage key “learnings” to make improvements. Studying these metrics can allow you to address and correct opportunities for improvement.
Define and clarify meeting structures for your organization, allowing managers to define meetings for their teams. To address weekly planning and coordinate activities, one highly effective organization in Minneapolis set a new Monday morning virtual team meeting and short touch-base communications using Microsoft Teams and other technologies.
Clarify expectations around work-life balance. Years of data show that remote employees tend to work longer hours than in-office employees, and many can get burned out. Perhaps you can have employees define their work hours and communicate them so that fellow employees can respect those work hours. In times of remote work, the employee can’t as easily get away from the work, when the work is in the next room. There is not a commute that acts as a boundary between work and personal time.
Part of clarity revolves around employees’ fears about job loss. In one organization, employees keep asking their leaders about what is the plan going forward, and they are getting no information in return. To keep productivity and engagement high, we need to tell our employees as much as we can. If job loss is a real possibility, what would be the ethical way to handle it? How can you help them prepare?
Evaluate team size as part of improving communication. Many organizations are finding out the importance of team size when it comes to virtual work. Team size has always been important, but the drawbacks related to having too large a team show up more when working remotely. Most work teams and work groups function best with fewer members. If you manage 50 direct reports right now, you know what I mean. You are already experiencing how difficult communication can be without well-planned-out virtual work. Is there a way that you logically group your team or work group members into smaller groups each with clear goals (perhaps think 12 or fewer people if possible)? Development teams generally are larger and because of clear goals and expectations, smaller may not be required. However, virtual work teams generally should be grouped into smaller groups. Think of football teams. The team overall is very large, but it is broken into smaller units.
With smaller teams, communication is easier, but the greatest impact may be seen in lower costs, smoother interactions, better innovation, and deeper trust between members – all supporting greater productivity. Team size and structure will be important planning items as you look ahead to your organization’s new normal. I’ll discuss this more in future blogs/articles and you can contact me if you have questions right now.
Engagement: Keep your feedback loops open. Do you currently have realistic engagement metrics and systems to ensure they stay strong? These systems and dashboards are important for any workplace, but even more important in virtual work. How are you measuring engagement, performance and productivity? In the absence of information, many people invent their own “information.” Employees thrown into unplanned remote work can feel as if they are losing connection. Part of that loss comes from decreased feedback from their leaders. In decreased feedback and communication, employees can disengage. Employees need feedback, praise, and communication.
As your organization creates needed feedback mechanisms and ideas, don’t forget to ask your employees. Any one leader may have different direct reports that prefer to connect in different ways. One manager has 5-minute touch-base calls daily. Another leader provides open “office hours” in zoom and lets employees know so that they can touch base at any time. Ask your employees, and then create mechanisms to give leaders and employees what they need.
Feedback and Lessons learned to improve the remote work plan: How will you get feedback from throughout the organization related to remote work? Any feedback related to “gaps” in remote work need to be addressed and corrected as soon as possible, and then communicate how you are addressing them, and give regular updates. How are you recording the lessons you’ve learned during this time of emergent–from supply chain issues to communication and engagement opportunities for improvement?
Most organizational structures can handle remote work very well. In fact, nearly all organizations benefit from well-planned-out virtual teams. You may want to make remote work and virtual teams part of your new normal.
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