The past year has been marked by home office and quarantine. For many companies, this means redefining the way they work together. After all, managing a team that works better from home because of the corona crisis presents leaders with new challenges. At the same time, managing decentralized teams will most likely keep you busy for quite some time. In addition to the current requirements for the use of the home office, factors such as corporate expansion abroad and increasing digitalization may also lead to an increase in remote management in the future.
How has remote work developed?
How would you rate the switch to a home office? Has it been a success?
Before the spread of the COVID-19 virus, working from a home office was only done in a few companies. In recent years, there has been a direction toward more remote work, but the work culture in Germany has always been dominated by the presence of employees in the company.
According to a survey conducted by the BMAS (Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs), before the pandemic 11.8 percent of respondents worked in a home office at least 1 time per month in Germany. Half of the working days were completed from home by 5.1 percent of the respondents. (Cf. Bonin, 2020, p.18)
During the first lockdown in spring 2020, 27% of employees were in home offices, according to the Hans Böckler Foundation. In the meantime, almost as many are working from home again, while more employees returned to the office in the summer and fall of 2020. At that time, the number of employees in home offices was 14% and 16%, respectively. This may be due to federal government mandates or because more people have stayed home more consistently due to increased caseloads.
Why do employees find remote work difficult?
Every company is only as good as its employees. Unfortunately, not every employee is equally well suited to working in a home office. This can be due to several reasons: the design of the private living space, the technical equipment or their role in the company. Self-discipline is not the only thing needed for productive work in this context.
Employees need a good and strong leader, especially in new situations with new challenges. Employees are often confronted with prejudices from management and colleagues. They would work less productively, communication would suffer and there would not be enough digital skills. It is the responsibility of management to make the transition to the home office as easy as possible for employees. However, very few entrepreneurs have sufficient qualifications to be able to lead their team just as well from a distance.
For this, it is necessary to recognize and respond to the needs of employees. You must be able to ensure that all employees have the information they need to do their jobs. Unclear work instructions and roles in the company lead to employees completing tasks even though your colleague has already taken care of them. This can also be due to the organization of the company. Companies often use multiple programs that may not be compatible or have interfaces. Due to the lack of uniformity and transparency, more effort is required and the work becomes more confusing. Short inquiries or agreements require more time, since it is not possible to ask the relevant colleague or supervisor something "just now". The result: processes come to a standstill and frustration increases. It makes sense to communicate clear responsibilities to your employees and to provide them with a plan of what steps to take if there are ambiguities or misunderstandings. Let your employees know the best number of times to reach you. You should make every effort to get your employees' issues out of the way as quickly as possible. Even if you do not have time to deal with an issue at the time, you should provide brief feedback that you have taken note of the matter.
Cyberslacking while working from home
In the safety of the home office, some people are prone to cyberslacking, taking care of private business during work hours. This doesn't even have to be intentional and can have a number of causes: getting used to working from the home office, being distracted by one's household, one's personality (here's an interesting report on the connection between cyberslacking and personality), or dissatisfaction with one's job. This circumstance not only leads to frustration on the part of the employee, who has the feeling of always running after tasks, but also triggers distrust among colleagues and superiors, which damages the working atmosphere and reduces trust.
Maintaining a working atmosphere in the home office
In addition to the good organization of work processes, the corporate culture and working atmosphere must not be neglected in the home office. Many employees value the contact with colleagues and miss the exchange with them. For many, social inclusion is more than mere information exchange and also influences the well-being and productivity of employees.
At this point, it is a good idea to hold an after-work meeting where colleagues can exchange information with each other. Or schedule more time for a remote meeting to give employees the chance for a personal exchange. If colleagues can no longer exchange ideas with each other, an important aspect of quality of life in the workplace is lost.
Tip: Once the pandemic is over, it is a good idea to introduce regular voluntary face-to-face meetings. These give your employees the opportunity to exchange ideas in an unbiased manner, detached from the daily work routine, and strengthen the sense of community.
How do you master the transition to a home office?
Companies that are already economically constrained by the pandemic and where there is a demonstrably low level of infection are critical of the home office. Many entrepreneurs refuse to send their employees to the home office, claiming that the daily workload could not be met and that the quality of the work would decline. To what extent this is actually due to the discipline of the employees, or to outdated processes that are unsuitable for home office work, is not really comprehensible. For you as a manager, this situation may be stressful at the beginning. Not only do you have to handle your day-to-day business and work through your to-do list, but you also have to lead the team remotely and rely completely on your employees.
If your employees don't feel comfortable working from home right away or have difficulty adjusting to the new situation, it's necessary to approach them with empathy and understanding, but at the same time set clear boundaries and rules. Establish from the beginning what your expectations are and where you are willing to compromise. For example, in the organization of working hours. For families in particular, it is currently difficult to reconcile a job and family obligations such as childcare. For many people, working in a home office is the solution to bringing more flexibility into their workday. At the end of the day, it should be more important that employees get their work done, not what time they do it. It's important that all parties pull together and that their employees know that you don't have a free pass, but still realize that their needs are being taken into consideration. By working from home, many employees can't switch off after hours, you work longer hours than you should, the lines between work and play become blurred. This additional productivity can of course be beneficial for the company, but on the other hand it can also be a burden for the employees and promote burnout.
Did you know? In the Digital Nomad Index of the telephone system provider Circleloop, Germany is in 10th place out of a total of 85. The study examined which countries have the best conditions for remote work. This is interesting not only for their citizens, but also for people who want to combine work and travel or want to emigrate in the long term without changing employers. Circleloop collected data from several countries and compared them with each other. Factors such as Internet speed and costs, rental prices and searches of the term remote work played a role.
Remote Work after Corona
Already now, some large corporations have decided to continue to give their employees the opportunity to work remotely even after the end of the pandemic. These are the tech companies Spotify, Twitter and Google. They want to allow employees to work where it makes the most sense for them, even from another country.
As challenging as remote work can be for all parties, there are also benefits that can come from it. For one, companies that employ long-term home office workers can downsize their office space and save resources.
Companies and employees can disregard proximity to the workplace when looking for new employees. Employers can search for potential applicants nationwide and focus on the qualifications of the individuals. Expensive moves and long apartment searches are then not necessary and new employees can start a new job faster.
What do leaders need to keep in mind when it comes to remote leadership?
- Give your employees the opportunity to flexibly organize their working hours
- Maintain the common vision even from a distance
- Introduce new tools! Google Drive, Slack, Zoom or qmBase.
- Use these tools wisely and don't overload your employees with too much redundant information that prevents them from doing their work
- Let your employees know if they need a response to their information or questions and how soon (response not required or response required within four hours)
- Make it clear to your employees, even in the home office, that you are available to listen to any problems they may have
- Motivate your employees with a nice email and show gratitude for their efforts
- Enable group work even from the home office - this promotes team building and employees can support each other and maintain knowledge management.
- Involve all employees. Basic competencies about digital processes must be given. Enable further training if necessary
- Define clear responsibilities
- Agree on dates and deadlines
- Be prepared to accept new circumstances and dare to redefine leadership.
- Give employees some time. Not everything will always work right away and many employees will have to get used to the new circumstances.
How can you be supported as a leader?
You are not the only person who needs to find your way into the role of remote leadership. Share problems with colleagues or other supervisors. They can relate to your situation and have advice for you.
If you want to lead and manage a company and its employees remotely, you should look into the appropriate software solutions. There are various programs that can help you with internal coordination and asynchronous communication with your employees. The web-based instant messenger Slack can make your communication with individual employees or entire teams more manageable. You communicate in real time, see when an employee is online and can share information sources such as documents or images.
With a management software, you can control their entire organization. Depending on your expectations and needs, such software can be a single solution, such as document management or project management, or a complete solution that covers all areas of the company. You make many time-consuming and inefficient work steps easier for yourself and your employees by storing all necessary documents directly in the software. Your employees are enabled to work collaboratively, and you can manage teams more efficiently. The management of essential business processes is done compactly in one tool. In this way, responsibilities can be clearly communicated, deadlines set, ideas submitted and documents created.
The qmBase management software supports you in all matters of everyday business. It doesn't matter where in the world you are, whether in the home office, in the office or on a business trip.
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