Worried about your Team’s Working From Home Productivity?
Take this Self-Quiz to avoid any expectations mismatch!
Photo by Kevin Rajaram on Unsplash
Take this Self-Quiz to avoid any expectations mismatch!
Question 1: Circumstance Gap: How effective can your team’s do this job role remotely?
This question is specific to the team and your specific company set up. It is not theoretical!
Fig 1: How remote can your team be?
The table above is a rule of thumb guide, but the key points are based on whether your team can do their job properly. It is also meant to be used as a reference point, to figure out which roles can be re-designed to be completed remotely. For example, if you now collect hardcopy forms from your vendors, then it would be a good opportunity future proof your company and change the processes to take digital documentation. With this change, you now have the option of remote working staff or even freelance part-timers.
Might be a tad difficult to bring your computer home to work if its this size. Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash
Question 2: Remote Work Capability Gap: Does your team member have the necessary skills to work in a remote environment?
While the skills can vary somewhat, due to the job scope and role; there are a few obvious skills that the person must have:
Online Etiquette (Email, slack, skype) — A rude email can trigger a chain of unhappy testy emails.
Clarity of stakeholder expectations- An employee who is not sure of what’s expected, could use the office environment to get confirmation from team members, or whoever else is within earshot. However, in a remote environment, that ability is greatly reduced.
EQ — The ability to know when a zoom call (or teams!) is needed, and the issue cannot be solved in emails.
Streak of Independence — Characters who need group support will find challenge working in a remote environment.
It is important to note that this capability gap is independent of the job capability skillsets because that would have been determined in Question 1 already.
Question 3: Willingness Gap
A team member may have a job role that is perfect for remote working, be capable of working remotely, but still not willing to do so.
Push factors tend to be home related reasons and these may not be easily solved by an employer. It can range from not having a suitable work area at home, or a non-conducive environment due to the many distractions. It could also be family members, either children or elderly who need the attention when they are at home. Honestly, these are issues that will prevent any long term work from home arrangements. It might be barely functional during a nationally mandated covid-19 lockdown, or Circuit breaker as we call them in Singapore, but in the long run it will not work.
Pull factors are all those benefits a person gets in office. In the shallowest extent, it could be the free pantry snacks. When we move up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it can include a sense of community, and the need to be validated in self worth by colleagues and bosses.
The willingness gap tends to be a function of factors from capability and assessment gaps. Of course, in a perfect world, an employee who has the capability to work remotely, with the relevant assessment framework, should be very willing to work remotely. ;) In reality, the Willingness Gap is not something that can be substantiatively influenced by the manager or the company.
An Internet Meme that Lonely People would know where to find.
Question 4: Assessment Gap
The Assessment gap has nothing to do with the employee, but the manager who sets it up. In a remote working environment, the assessment and expectations have to be outcome focused.
Team members need to set up their score cards with Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are focused on individual productivity, and not solely team outcomes. Yes, the immediate retort could be that it is a team sport. However, do remember that football and basketball teams also have defined team positions.
What happens if you are a manager of teams? I think it can still be defined with words like — Coach and mentor team members to increase internal sales by X% or Ensure team members make XXX cold calls a week. KPIs that say “Make $500k a year” give too much wiggle room for junior managers. For Senior Managers to Management, this is a moot point, since you are hired to deliver an outcome, and you live or die by it. (Of course, if you are one of those who are there as an outcome of favour rather than ability, you would definitely be disturbed by not being in office!).
What should you do to make WFH work?
The famous adage — “Showing up is half the battle”, is the rally call for the many who feel that their job security is embedded in the performance seen in the office. This leads to people showing up at office, and staying long hours, but not necessarily productive or innovative. This could also be a cultural expectation, like the japanese salaryman culture, or it could be individual, where the presence is meant to offset the lack of deliverables or political.
A remote working environment strips this, as human compassion triggers are reduced and the deliverable is more raw and focused.
It is important that your team is fully cognisant of your expectations of them, and if you are a team member, you should ask that of your manager. A remote working environment accelerates trust or lack of trust, when deliverables are not produced as expected by the manager. It may not be wrong, but just not what the manager expects!
For the manager, the most important Questions to self evaluate is Question 1 and 4. It is the leader’s job to set the environment, whereas the rest is dependent on the employee. So, give yourself fair credit, if you have done what’s necessary for your part of the deal!
X marks the spot, but is your whole team seeing the same X? — Photo by David Paschke on Unsplash
Last but not least, it is imperative to take this opportunity to prepare your work environment into a digital first workplace that allow team members to work remotely if necessary. The key strategic questions to ask: i) Which offline manual process is stopping our team’s ability to work remotely? ii) Does it make commercial and/or regulatory value to invest in that transformation?
Ultimately, a remote workforce is not simply about the ability for your team to work from home, but it is also the company’s ability to have flexibility in workspace management across multiple sites, and to have resource management (flexi-hours for various roles?). The possibilities seen today are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Keen to share some tips with your Team on how to be more productive while working remotely? Here’s another article I wrote on Productive Tips for Working From Home
Disclaimer: I write as a hobby on topics that I find useful to have a voice on. Nothing here represents the opinions of current or past employers, nor product recommendations or financial advisory in any form. I hope you find the writing useful.