Thought Leader Insight: Remote (mis)management
It’s easy to tell car-crash stories about mismanagement during the COVID-19 crisis, so let’s do just that! Within these tales of disaster are valuable lessons, and surprisingly fine lines between good and bad, for managers who wish to rise above.
THE HARD WORD’S THOUGHT LEADER INSIGHT SERIES IS INSPIRED BY MOMENTS FROM OUR REGULAR INTERVIEWS WITH THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST IN BUSINESS.
Goodness, I have heard some dreadful stories about staff management over the last week or two!
There’s the high school principal who sent out a tersely worded all-staff email demanding teachers working from home are in front of their laptops (and nowhere else but in front of their laptops!) every day from 8.30am to 3.30pm. If they don’t respond to emails within minutes, they’ll be punished.
There’s the CEO of the shopping centre management business who insists all staff must still come to the office, despite the fact that they’re able to work from home. He is open about the fact that he doesn’t trust them to work remotely. He has also physically split the office down the middle – if you catch public transport to work, you’re on one side, and if you drive (and are therefore less likely to be a virus spreader) you’re on the other, safer side…
Then there’s the creepy GM who asks staff to keep their webcams on all day long, so he can watch them working in their homes. And the boss who has decamped to his holiday house up the coast while demanding that staff still work from the office during business hours. And the manager who showed up for a Google Hangouts video meeting shirtless.
It’s easy to tell car crash stories, and just as simple to highlight the inspirational ones. There are plenty of LinkedIn posts celebrating how great it feels to work for a business that truly cares about its staff.
Most employers, however, are somewhere in between.
When I spoke with Gavin Freeman, performance psychologist and director of The Business Olympian, about best practice management of staff who are working remotely, what surprised me most was the very fine line between excellent leadership and disastrous mismanagement.
Physical separation of teams
As an illustration of that fine line, let’s look at the case above in which the manager split the office down the middle – clearly a terrible idea. But some separation of staff is good in a pandemic environment, Freeman says.
It makes good sense in terms of business continuity, particularly when there are only so many people who know how to do a vital job.
“You might split certain critical staff into a red team and a green team, for example,” Freeman says. “They can never work together, and they can never work in the same physical office or other space without that space being thoroughly cleaned.”
“This is one way to help ensure business continuity if one group goes down with the virus or another illness.”
Bosses who spy on their staff
What about El Creepo, the manager who tells staff to keep their webcams switched on so he can watch them working?
Actually, while this is a dreadful idea and legally questionable, Freeman says some workers agree with each other to keep their webcams on. This is so they can simply look up and see each other, and communicate in real time when they feel the need, just as they do in the office.
“We need routines and consistency to perform at our best, whether that is the regular morning coffee catch-up or the ability to have a quick chat to the person in the next cubicle about an important project,” Freeman wrote in a recent piece on LinkedIn.
“When working from home we are in a different environment and this changes our behaviour. Consider your own perspective – would you sit at your desk for seven hours straight? There is a good chance you will become distracted or lose focus. Communication is vital during this time and maintaining connectivity will definitely go a long way to support this strategy.”
Ask for a little, receive a lot
And what about the school principal who, as if his staff are petulant children, strictly enforces working hours when they are working from home? A great manager, Freeman says, will absolutely indicate the number of hours they expect their people to give to the business each day. But they will do so in a way that demonstrates empathy, trust and tolerance.
“If you tell somebody to sit at their desk for eight hours, you don’t need to be a performance psychologist to realise they’re not going to be productive,” Freeman says.
“But what if you ask them to give you four solid hours, each day? Perhaps they work from 9am to 1pm, or they do two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. That way you’re going to get far more out of people, and you’ll likely get more than four good hours out of them. Plus, you’re also recognising the fact that there are other distractions and pressures in their home lives, just as there are in their work lives in the office.”
And if you think the people-management challenge is interesting right now, Freeman says just wait until the pandemic ends and staff who have tasted life in the wild are asked to return to the office. But that’s another story for another week … hopefully sooner rather than later!
Professional writer Chris Sheedy originally spoke with Gavin Freeman for a story about risk engineering during a pandemic, for the Engineers Australia magazine.
