{"id":15254,"date":"2024-02-14T09:54:51","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T14:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/?p=15254"},"modified":"2024-02-28T15:17:09","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T20:17:09","slug":"manage-remote-hybrid-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/manage-remote-hybrid-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Ways to Effectively Manage Remote and Hybrid Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"manageManaging employees in a remote or hybrid environment isn\u2019t so different from managing them in the office. It has its unique challenges, as any environment does, but these aren\u2019t barriers to success. The fundamentals of management<\/a> are the same. You\u2019re still working with people, helping them do their best work. The key is matching your management practices to the partially or fully remote setting.<\/p>\n

How you manage may look a little different. We recommend the following management practices when you supervise people who work at home some or all of the time.<\/p>\n

Schedule Regular Video Meetings<\/h2>\n

Spending time together in person with others is important. It goes a long way toward helping you make connections and form relationships. While video meetings aren\u2019t the same, seeing others face-to-face does make a difference.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t get the opportunity to interact with your team in person very often, consider scheduling regular video meetings. Use these to ask your direct reports about what\u2019s going well and what could be better, whether they have everything they need to do their jobs well, and what you can do to better support them. Pay attention to their facial expressions and body language. Managing people means managing emotions; it\u2019s important that you can see and hear the state they\u2019re in. But by the same token, remember that when people are working from home, their mood may be affected by non-work stressors in their immediate environment \u2014 not every frown will be yours to fix. Also, some people\u2019s expressions may suggest they\u2019re bored or grouchy when they\u2019re really just relaxed. Others may be most comfortable sitting or standing with their arms crossed. Try not to read too much into body language unless you have reason to believe that something is wrong.<\/p>\n

Video is also beneficial for full team meetings, both formal and informal. If you can swing it, schedule a periodic optional \u201ccoffee hour\u201d for members of your team to pop in and chat about whatever. Attendance doesn\u2019t have to be mandatory, but those who make time to attend will get to know their colleagues better, which is an important component of team building and collaboration.<\/p>\n

Define What Success Looks Like and Manage Performance Accordingly<\/h2>\n

If you\u2019re in the habit of micromanaging people \u2014 and we hope you aren\u2019t \u2014 remote and hybrid environments are going to be a big challenge for you. Unless you\u2019re using tools to monitor keystrokes or physical presence at one\u2019s desk \u2014 and we\u2019d generally advise against it \u2014 you\u2019re not going to know how your employees are spending every moment of their workday. The good news is that that\u2019s perfectly okay. That information isn\u2019t particularly valuable.<\/p>\n

What you want is for employees to do work that ultimately makes or saves your company money, and there are much better ways of measuring that than the minutes spent being (or appearing) busy. Namely, define success as an objective, measurable outcome and evaluate performance accordingly. Were the assigned tasks completed on time? Was the output of suitable quality? Were targets or goals achieved? These are the sorts of questions to ask and explore when evaluating performance. Not being in person shouldn\u2019t be a barrier to answering them.<\/p>\n

Consider Employee Preferences When Messaging Them<\/h2>\n

In a physical workplace, where you\u2019d regularly see your team, it\u2019s often customary to check in with them daily, at least with a stop by their workstation to say \u201cGood morning\u201d or \u201cHow are you?\u201d Some remote employees may want and expect casual communication to happen daily. Others, however, may be just fine hearing from you once a week or at a different cadence.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not sure about their preferences, consider asking them how often they\u2019d like to hear from you. Your schedule and the needs of the company may prohibit you from following their wishes to the letter, but understanding their preferences can help prevent you from reaching out too frequently and annoying them or too infrequently and leaving them feeling isolated.<\/p>\n

Clearly Define How Quickly Direct Reports Should Respond to You<\/h2>\n

When you send a person you manage an email or direct message, do you expect them to drop everything and answer you? Do they know whether they need to respond immediately or if they can wait until it\u2019s convenient? To avoid confusion and loss of productivity (which is significant when switching between tasks), make sure they know when they need to get back to you right away and when they can respond at their convenience. Because of the high cost of task-switching, you may even want to encourage employees to set aside \u201cfocus time\u201d when they can turn off notifications from email and instant messaging and give their full attention to projects or deliverables.<\/p>\n

Be an Example of the Work-Life Boundaries You Expect to See<\/h2>\n

While the home office has its distractions \u2014 laundry, dishes, that bookshelf you\u2019ve always wanted to organize by color \u2014 it can also tempt us to work too much. The same is true of the people you manage, and they\u2019ll look to you for cues on what their boundaries between work and life should be.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re emailing them late at night because you have a few minutes to spare before hitting the hay, they may feel like they need to stay up to check their inbox and respond. If you always eat lunch at your desk while doing work or attending video meetings, they may wonder if that\u2019s what\u2019s expected of them as well.<\/p>\n

Do your best to model the work-life boundaries you\u2019d like to see from them. Share what you do to balance your home life and work life, like scheduling emails to send during work hours. If you seldom take time for yourself, your direct reports may think that talking about healthy boundaries and flexibility is just that \u2014 talk, not to be taken seriously if they want to advance in the organization. On the other hand, if your company doesn\u2019t prioritize work-life balance and you expect employees to be immediately available at all times, that expectation should be communicated and modeled instead.<\/p>\n

Trust Your People<\/h2>\n

If you\u2019re new to having direct reports work where you can\u2019t physically see them, it may be tempting to closely monitor their daily work or ask them for frequent updates on their progress. But unless you\u2019re working with someone who\u2019s struggling to meet expectations, such scrutiny is unlikely to be a good use of time and will instead cause frustration and resentment for your employee.<\/p>\n

You should be able to trust your people to do their work. All successful work environments are built on trust \u2014 it\u2019s what enables people to work together.<\/p>\n

GTM’s Technology Lets You Easily Manage Remote and Hybrid Employees<\/h2>\n

Whether they are in the office, working remotely, or traveling the nation, employees are always on the go \u2014 making it harder than ever for managers to stay connected. GTM’s HCM platform, isolved<\/a>, allows employees anytime, anywhere access to view and request time off, update address and banking information, and complete other standard HR tasks directly from any device. This secure, self-service environment for interaction saves your managers time and effort, enabling them to focus on more strategic initiatives. Request a free quote<\/a> to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are some practices to help you effectively manage your remote and hybrid employees, enabling them to do their best work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[18,246,167],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-15254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gtm-biz-blog-isolved","tag-employer-policies","tag-hybrid-workers","tag-remote-employees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15254"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15261,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15254\/revisions\/15261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15254"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=15254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}