3 Mistakes to Avoid When You Send Your Employees to WFH

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Instead of making sure that your people are working, make sure that your people produce the expected result. 

First of all, define what it means to "have the job done." As a manager, you represent the company, and it is your responsibility to make sure that employees understand what the company expects. 

Then, define the result expected from each employee. Avoid listing of artifacts to be created or actions to be done (e.g., contact the customer, write a program, read the book). Instead, define the business value that should be reached (e.g., we should know what the customer expects, the user must be able to perform that operation, you should know how to do that job).

The standard advice is to keep goals S.M.A.R.T., and establish short deadlines, between a week and a month:

• Specific (S): Say exactly what the goal is.
• Measurable (M): Be clear about what success looks like.
• Achievable (A): Keep it realistic.
• Relevant (R): Base it on your skills, strengths, or interests.
• Time-Specific (T): Be clear how long you think this will take.

Always visualize the plan and its progress. The goal is to help people self-manage their work, so use a pull-through approach instead of push-through. Therefore, Kanban boards would work better for you than Gantt charts. 

Nobody needs an employee to merely present at the desk. Everybody needs an employee to do something useful for the company. Make your management style to reflect that simple principle. 

Lesson 2. Do not overestimate your people. 

While adult people are responsible enough and do not require to be micromanaged, it does not mean that all are ready to be fully self-managed. Self-management and self-discipline are the skills to be developed, and they are critically important for successful remote work. 

As a manager, you can facilitate the development of these skills by establishing a plan and help to decompose the significant amount of work into smaller pieces. 

A short meeting at the beginning of the day, where yesterday’s results and today’s plan are presented works — are excellent to keep the team on the rails, and also helps to monitor any troubles and impediments that may prevent the goal from being reached. The meeting should be short, no more than 1-2 minutes for a person, or around 15 minutes for a team of 9. If an employee needs any help or plans or an impediment needs to be discussed, a separate meeting should be scheduled. 

The fact that results need to be presented daily promotes employees’ self-disciplining. The daily planning also helps to keep the task simple enough for self-management.

Lesson 3. Facilitate Effective Communication.

Anyone, who is experienced in education, sales, or requirements management, knows that face-to-face is the most effective way to communicate, followed by videoconferencing, phone conferencing, instant messengers, forums, blogs, and the least effective: emails. 

One of the main disadvantages of the remote or distributed team is that face-to-face conversations are complicated. A thoughtful manager should make sure remote team members have efficient means to communicate, and know how to use them in day-by-day operations.

CHECKLIST

Here is a minimum checklist for the manager who wants to make sure that the team has adequate means to communicate:

______ 1) The team must have and know how to use:
______ a) Tele-conferencing and audio-conferencing software. Many organizations use Zoom and Skype for that purpose with great success.
______ b) Group and personal chat software. Once Skype was the best option, but nowadays, there are many alternatives, such as Flip, Slack, Signal, and many others. 

______2) There are established rules and tools for requesting, scheduling, and running, meetings. 

Using these tools, the manager may effectively overcome impediments for effective communications with the remote team and between team members. It also can break the isolation feeling that some employees may have when we send them to work at home. 

These challenging times may be an excellent opportunity for you to try agile frameworks. For example, SCRUM may help a lot with proper organization of the appropriate balance of self-managed employees who work in clearly established borders, and who use all available means to produce the best possible business value. 

If you struggle to manage the team under new conditions, please do not hesitate to contact our company (http://www.gehtsoftusa.com). Our certified SCRUM masters and adult education specialists would love to help you improve your project and team management process and apply the best of the Agile world to the success of your business in today’s challenging business environment. 

About the Author: Gehtsoft is a family-owned and operated business. Our story began in 1999 when a father and a son decided that having over 40 years of combined software development experience is more than enough to start. 

Ivan Gekht, ICP-ACC, PSM II, CSSC Black Belt, is CEO and Founder of Gehtsoft. Having adapted to the evolution of technology, he is well-versed in transforming enterprise systems, motivating teams, and pioneering customer engagement solutions, with years of experience in product development and business management behind him. For more information, visit http://www.gehtsoftusa.com. Follow Ivan and his blog at https://gehtsoftusa.com/blog/ and at LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/718673.