The concept of working remotely has been around for quite some time now. Many employees or freelancers don’t endorse the habit of making it to the office every day. But since the novel coronavirus outbreak, even the people who would daily report to the office are working from their homes. The virus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has now claimed more than 10k lives and infected 253,000 people in 180 countries. The World Health Organization has now termed the outbreak as a pandemic, making the world witness the largest work from home experiment.
Organizations around the world have mandated or offered their employees work from home in an attempt to prevent the transmission of the virus amongst the employees. Working from home was already great on so many levels. Not having to commute saves money and time and can actually make you happier. A plethora of free tools makes it dead simple to check in with office teammates. And if you want to work in sweats or pajamas, you can. Post the outbreak, work from home has even become a savior, safeguarding individuals’ health.
But there are challenges, as well. While it may be a boon for employees, HR professionals and employers will definitely have a tough time in making things work. It becomes a task for the employers to effectively manage the workforce working remotely. Leading HR firm, Gartner Inc through its recently published report “With Coronavirus in Mind, Is Your Organization Ready for Remote Work?”, highlighted how employers can manage telecommunications efficiently.
To manage remote talent during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gartner recommends HR leaders do the following:
Provide direction, confidence, and resilience.
Employees are relying on leaders at all levels of the business to take action and set the tone. Communications from senior business leaders to managers should prioritize associate health and business sustainability. Communicate regularly with employees, maintaining an open dialog. Gartner’s survey found that 56% of organizations have communicated a plan of action to employees in the event of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Communicate openly and often
The first imperative in any crisis is to keep employees informed, but how and what you communicate are critically important. This is especially the case when employees are working remotely and may otherwise receive less information from organizational channels than if they were in an office with their manager and peers. Remote-work success depends heavily on whether you trust employees to do their work even if you can’t see them.
Share openly and often what the real impact of the crisis is on your business, and normalize what to expect. If you don’t, employees will simply turn to the distributed network of information — websites, social media, etc. — to fill the void. Make sure managers are informed so they can cascade information as needed. Candor and two-way communication help to establish the trust you need to make your remote-work policies a success.
Contextualize coronavirus for the organization.
Leaders should be a trusted source for accurate and up-to-date information on coronavirus and how it is impacting the organization. Avoid sharing information from social media; leverage trusted resources such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Contextualize information and data as much as possible so that it specifically relates to the organization.
Bolster technology enablement
Technology plays a key role in enabling communication and remote work, but HR leaders indicated that poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote working is the biggest barrier to effective remote working in their organization. Cloud-based productivity tools and other employee-facing technologies are increasingly prevalent in today’s workplaces, but this sudden large-scale remote-working experiment will definitely surface additional lessons learned — and opportunities for improvement. To increase utilization and improve the effectiveness of remote-working tools and technologies, communicate best practices and ideal use cases. Even if your technology or infrastructure is inadequate, guide employees on effectively leveraging email, instant messaging and internal social media platforms to drive better and more consistent usage.
Encourage intentional peer-to-peer interactions.
With reduced or no facetime in the office, employees should maintain regular professional and personal interactions with their peers. Gartner’s survey found that 40% of organizations have set up additional virtual check-ins for employees with managers and 32% of organizations have introduced new tools for virtual meetings. HR leaders should encourage employees to leverage communication platforms they already use, either at work or in their personal lives, to create new ways to work together.
Establish team guidelines.
Remote work looks different for each employee depending on their needs and those of their families. With unprecedented school closures, many employees must take on a double role as they support their children and families throughout the workday. Organizations can meet employees’ needs by empowering teams to adapt to their conflicting time demands. For instance, teams can set “core team times” when all team members are available to collaborate.
Provide flexibility for employees’ remote work needs.
When preparing for employees’ eventual return to the office, empower employees to make choices best suited for their needs and comfort levels. Where possible, allow employees to decide when to return to the office. Enable essential employees whose work requires them to return to the office to choose the hours that work best for them to return to avoid peak commute times.
Trust in employees to be productive
Whether your remote-work initiatives are routine or urgent, trust is the foundation of their success. Remote-work success depends heavily on whether you trust employees to do their work even if you can’t see them. Managers often worry about the lack of visibility into the workflows and routines of their direct reports when they work remotely. Employees who work from home often manage their time so as to leverage the time of day when they feel most productive, and they don’t suffer unnecessary interruptions to the degree they do in the office.
Sandeep is a journalism and mass communication graduate with a keen interest in politics and business. He is a part of Research & Content team at HrNxt.com.