Before the Coronavirus, managing employee performance was relatively straightforward as you would be able to see or spend time with them setting objectives and monitoring performance. Now that most staff are working remotely, how do you go about still effectively managing your team?
At present, many people are juggling work commitments with childcare and working in unprecedented circumstances. What’s more, we know that many workers have never had to / or are set up to work from home. This can make the entire experience difficult for both managers and their teams.
It’s important to remember that this situation is temporary, and it may take time for the team and managers to adjust to this new way of working.
Here are some tips to help manage a team remotely:
- Communication is key, all team members and managers need to make extra effort in finding ways to keep in touch with each other.
- Take a measured approached to the tone of your emails. Everyone is under extra pressure and without seeing the body language of a team member it’s easy for an email to be misunderstood.
- Understand the pressures the team are under by setting realistic targets and goals.
- Use video tech as much as possible so that you are having face to face interactions with your employee. This also makes them more accountable.
- Ask the team to become accountable for themselves, for example logging time or output (i.e. through a weekly report / update).
- Managers should provide opportunities to check in with their teams regularly the conversation going addressing any issues they are experiencing working from home or the current set up.
- Any performance problems should be addressed quickly, providing feedback to the team and working together to come up with solutions or new ways of working.
- Appreciate that this might be new to some of the team and that it may take some time to find a good way of working remotely.
- Encourage teams to get into good working habits and routines e.g. creating their own workspace, starting and finishing work at similar times to normal, washing and dressing for the work day. It sounds basic but can help give the team structure and promote good mental health.