I saw a recent article that fewer than 26% of American households still have a person working from home.
According to the report, more and more companies are requiring people to come back to the office on either a part or full-time basis.
Working from Home
I have managed members of the team who work from home since the pandemic, and I have the opportunity to occasionally work from home as well.
Work from home has worked really well for my teams and for me, and I think it has to do with how the leader approaches it and sets expectations around it.
In several leadership courses, I’ve been part of, we have learned about situational leadership. This is the idea that your leadership style changes based upon the specific situation. To this end, working from home is a specific situation that I think requires a specific type of management.
Most of our teams are focused on specific outputs. For example, creating ads, writing press releases, updating websites, etc. Those same outputs exist in a work from home environment. The difference is the approach (the situation) to achieving the same outputs may need to be different.
Three Strategies for Working from Home
Having led teams who work from home for the past nearly four years, here are a few strategies I’ve used to help make this situation work well.
Morning Digital Standup – Any team member who is working from home shares their three priorities for the day with their supervisor by 8:30 a.m. This gives everyone a chance to course correct if something more pressing needs to be worked on. It also helps the supervisor to know what to expect during the day from the employee.
Use the Calendar for Lunches – When you’re in the office, it’s easy to see when an employee is taking their lunch break. When working from home, it’s difficult. Human nature is to assume the employee is not working. However, putting the lunch break in the calendar helps the employee be able to take their lunch without feeling like they have to be “on call.” It also helps the supervisor know they’re out and when they can expect a follow up on a tasks.
Review the Plan Regularly – I review work from home arrangements each semester. This gives both groups the opportunity to finesse the plan without causing frustration. Instead, it’s an ongoing conversation, which allows for minor tweaks to ensure working at home works well for both parties.
Don’t Forget Culture
While not something I do right now, during the pandemic, I (like everyone else) had the full team at home. For the extroverts, this was really tough. They missed the office chatter about life, the latest tv show, or being able to “pop in” and talk about a project.
I worked to combat that through a weekly initiative. I called it the Pancake Breakfast Meeting. Every Friday the team would gather for 30 minutes and not discuss work. It could be a personal accomplishment, trivia, TikTok trends, etc. Just not work. It gave people that social construct they were missing. It kept our culture alive as a quirky, smart group.
If you have members of the team who are fully remote, I think there’s value in doing something. If these folks never have the opportunity to socially interact with the full team, that culture piece is missing. Culture ties into retention, so it’s really critical to find a way to make sure those fully remote team members feel connected and part of the group.
What Else?
This is just a start to this conversation. I’m sure there are tons of great ideas about ways to manage remote teams. If you’re doing something that works well, I’d love to hear about it!
And Carrie On 