Do managers miss the sweet-spot of remote working?
Copyright by Stephan Klaschka 2010-2024
From my series on how to build a successful BRG.1
Prologue for Context
When I built the NxGen BRG (NxGen stands for Next Generation at the Workplace) in a large, multinational enterprise, we took it upon ourselves to challenge the established viewpoints and organizational thinking to break new ground and make progress. A constant hot topic was the emerging and increasing demand for remote work arrangements - this was more than 10 years before the COVID pandemic forced remote work on practically all office-based organizations and their workforce around the globe.
While the 2020 COVID pandemic magnified the immediate need, in its wake now many companies are rolling back their work-from-home programs as they continue to struggle to manage a remote workforce effectively. The managers in these organizations have returned to old patterns instead of figuring out how to make remote working work effectively. It is possible. But it needs an approach that can feel uncomfortable at first.
Stumbling in the dark?
Organizations keep struggling with this dilemma: The need for employees working remotely, often from home, is on the rise for many business reasons that include cost savings and the competition over attracting and retaining top talent.
On the other hand, many managers have a hard time allowing their staff to work outside their immediate proximity and direct supervision. Their reasons often include fear of change introducing the unknown but also a certain cluelessness about how to effectively manage a remote workforce and move beyond their personal comfort zone.
These conflicting drivers open a tension field that the organizations tend to struggle with. - Does this sound familiar to you?
No silver bullet
Unfortunately, there is no ‘silver bullet’, a one-size-fits-all solution that works for everyone and in every environment. Too much depends on the nature of the work, necessary interactions and communication between team members as well as the jobs and personalities involved. It takes a close look at the individual organization to craft a remote working program that fits an organization and maximizes collaboration at a measurable performance level.
Common ground for remote working
However, we can learn from others how to establish a basis for a fruitful remote working program in your organization (if you don’t have one yet). Research offers tangible results such as the “MTI Report 09-14: Facilitating Telecommuting: Exploring the role of Telecommuting Intensity and Differences Between Telecommuters and Non-Telecommuters”. The study compares telecommuters and non-telecommuters and it came up with the following findings that I want to discuss in more detail paired with my own experiences. - Note that I use terms like ‘telecommute’, ‘telework’, and ‘remote working’ synonymously throughout this article.
Telecommuters show increased commitment to their organization and experience more work-life satisfaction than the non-telecommuters group. No differences between both groups though on job satisfaction and turnover intent, i.e. how likely employees are to leave the company.
On a side note, the latter two findings are quite different from my professional studies and experience, where employees working remotely reported a 57% increase in work-life balance. Increasing workplace flexibility including remote working, i.e. giving the employee more control over their schedule and location, became a driver also for employee attraction and retention.
– What are your experiences? Do you see remote work influencing job satisfaction and employee retention? Please share your experiences!
Interestingly, the study explored also ‘personalities’ and found that more extroverts tend to be telecommuters, so people with a higher drive for social interaction and communication rather than the quiet ones.
This appears conclusive in light of the simple finding that (a) telecommuting in many companies is not implemented consequently but rather as an “idiosyncratic deal” between individual supervisors and employees. (b) These supervisors prefer granting permission to telecommute to high-performers. This can explain a pre-selection of extroverts over introverts, who may not show up on the supervisor’s radar as much and therefore tend to receive less remote working opportunities.
Generally, teleworkers commute from farther away. They find commuting more stressful and want to avoid rush-hour traffic.
Less surprisingly, telecommuters were interrupted more by family members given their physical presence at their off-site work location.
This seems to suggest that working from home could be less effective than working in the office given more family interruptions. My observations are quite different and based on a controlled pilot project which showed that the workers in the office feel distracted by their colleagues stopping by randomly; the workers preferred working from home when they needed focus and wanted to avoid distractions calling this their most productive work time.
Disruptions occur at home as well as in the office. It is the employee’s responsibility and best interest to ensure a professional work environment at their home office so as not to jeopardize their work results. Consequently, also performance needs to be measured by results and not physical presence. This levels the playing field and allows for a fair comparison between all workers independent of their working location and distractions.
In the triangle of telecommuters, supervisors and Human Resources (HR) practices the telecommuters generally view the organization differently from non-telecommuters. Most telecommuters perceive technology training is available to them and that the organizational reward system as well as their supervisors was supporting telecommuting. Telecommuters also believe that there is an underlying business requirement that drives working remotely.
Once again we see that a level playing field is viewed as an important success factor for effective teleworking. Technology serves as an enabler that makes teleworking possible in the first place and connects coworkers across remote locations. Offering remote working not only becomes a business necessity but also addresses increased expectations of the modern workforce to telework powered by ever-improving communication and collaboration technology.
Now, the telecommuters in the study seem to understand the changed business environment that pushes organizations to open up to flexible work arrangements for competitive reasons including cost savings as well as employee productivity and retention – their supervisors, however, apparently did not ‘get it’.
For most of us, the times are over when workers came to the factory or office only because the resources they needed to accomplish their work were concentrated in a specific location and could not be distributed (think early typewriters, heavy production equipment, incoming mail deliverers, and so on). For a growing services industry, these physical limitations no longer exist – yet this outdated paradigm remains present in the minds of many. Many people still tend to have a certain picture in mind of what work ‘looks like’ and where it has to happen which comes down to an office with everyone present from 9am to 5pm.
From the supervisors’ perspective, things look different than for the telecommuters: Over 50% of the supervisors of telecommuters believe “that employees have to be high performers” to be telecommuters. This view is shared by only 37% of the non-telecommuting supervisors. This brings us to the most critical component and success factor for making remote working work…
Management attitudes – the make-or-break
The MTI study phrases this barrier kindly as “challenges and obstacles emanating from attitudes of individuals in the organization”. The obstacles to implementing an effective telecommuting model often originate from management itself or even the HR department tasked to make a policy. The reasons for resistance can be multifold and include a lack of better knowledge, fear of change such as losing perceived control or authority, lazy avoidance to probe outdated beliefs, or taking a one-size-fits-all approach without evaluating the specific environment.
I even experienced the paradox of managers believing they could work from home just as effectively as from their office desk and making use of this flexibility at their convenience while not trusting that their staff could be similarly effective or was trustworthy enough just as much. They see remote working being a ‘perk’ for their staff and reserved for ‘top performers’ who ‘deserve it’ – a double standard is being applied which is often enough based on murky or questionable criteria (if at all). These managers show a sense of entitlement while ignoring that (as the MTI study confirms) remote working increases employee satisfaction and commitment which tends to increase also performance; as an example, performance increased with remote work by 30% in the department I managed, and in which we measured impact.
Some managers fear they may lose ‘control’ and that their staff may abuse the newly acquired freedom to control their schedule and work location. This ‘control’ is often based on the deceptive perception that staff works ‘better’ and is ‘under control’ when confined to an office location and closely ‘eye-balled’ by their supervisor.
What it takes to make remote working work
More effective is the consistent application of measurable and pre-defined goals that demonstrate unambiguously, transparently, and quantifiably whether an employee met their goals or not – independent from their schedule or work location. In practice, managing by performance showed more effective in distinguishing effective performers from under-performers than a manager looking around the office space and hoping the staff is performing just by their mere presence.
Implementing remote working is not exactly rocket science but takes an honest and diligent approach based on trust and clear expectations. From a practical perspective, a viable model for remote working includes:
Put away with the ‘telecommuting-is-a-perk’ attitude
Closely look at which jobs have remote working potential together with the affected employee
Identify the employee’s team, i.e. the people who need to cooperate closely even across departmental boundaries (organizational, geographic, etc.)
Include employees to model how remote working could work in their team, try it out, and be flexible to improve the model
Strictly rate all employees by their performance based on measurable and tangible results that are clearly defined
Apply transparent standards for all employees consistently
Treat remote and non-remote workers similarly including equal opportunities treatment and rewards
Provide effective communication technology and adequate training
Address manager concerns and prepare management with adequate training and guidance.
Managing a remote working environment indeed provides new challenges. They include, in particular:
Strictly managing performance by setting clear expectations and goals upfront while exercising transparency all along.
Overcoming ‘old thinking’ by questioning one’s habits and beliefs to approach with an open mind new or different ways of working. Include your staff to come up with ideas on how to make it work.
Diversifying and mastering the spectrum of communication channels. Choosing and using the media preferred by the staff to communicate effectively and efficiently with employees might vary by the message and frequency of communication.
If this includes peer-to-peer video, instant messaging or texting (SMS, chat, slack, etc.) then learn to master these technologies. Limit face time for confidential or sensitive topics that should better not be communicated electronically with a narrow-band media such as text or email that opens too much space for misinterpretation. However, don’t abuse face time for routine communication either.
Most of all, mutual trust is the key component in the critical relationship between manager and employee. This can be the hardest to build. For managers, taking some temporary measures can prove helpful in establishing a trustful working relationship with their staff; for example, starting with documenting and reviewing weekly performance plans together with the employee until the manager develops more trust and is comfortable with exercising less timely supervision or micro-managing.
In general, if an organization lacks trust then remote working will hardly be implemented effectively, consistently, or to its full potential – but then, if there is trust missing, remote working may not be the biggest problem this organization faces…
Stay tuned for my next post on: Part 1 of 3: What does it take to keep innovating?
From my series on how to build a successful BRG (=Business Resource Group) group, i.e. a business-focused ERG (=Employee Resource Group) first published on OrgChanger.com.