Working from home, "WFH" for some, used to be reserved for sick days or infrequent breaks from the typical stressors and distractions that can come with being in an office. These days, the remote work movement is on the rise, with many companies loosening their work from home policies, or—as in the case of companies like InVision, GitHub, and Buffer—going fully remote.
This trend is not without its reasons. Research shows that remote workers are more productive and happier overall than employees who put in 9-to-5 days at an office. How much so? A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which tracked output from 500+ employees at a Chinese travel agency, found that remote workers were 13.5 percent more productive overall (the equivalent of an extra day’s work per employee!). What’s more, turnover rates among this group were 50 percent lower.
There are a lot of reasons why this is the case, and certainly, remote work is not conducive to all companies or industries, but the findings indeed underscore a growing trend in which employers are offering more flexible work options to their employees. This is a wholly positive trend for many organizations, as employees receive the freedom and trust to perform on their own terms and, in turn, gain happier, healthier, and more productive workforces.
Of course, there are challenges to a remote work model. Even given the prevalence of video chat and screen sharing software, and real-time platforms like Slack, communication among colleagues can become clunky or detached. Managing a team can also become difficult. Without regular face time, you might have trouble keeping track of your team’s priorities and developing their talents from afar.
If you’re a remote manager, or considering giving your team the option of working from home, here are some strategies for maintaining a strong and effective leadership style.
Schedule regular pulse checks on the state of your team
Most talent professionals and managers agree that the model of once or twice per year employee engagement surveys are an antiquated means for collecting employee data. Check-ins that occur this infrequently don’t give managers or organizational leadership a chance to act on feedback in a timely manner. As a result, employees don’t see much value in delivering the type of feedback needed to improve culture.
This is especially true among remote teams, in which managers rarely interact in person with their employees. Even the most emotionally intelligent manager will find it difficult to assess employee engagement given the lack of face-to-face time.
At Butterfly, we’ve worked with remote teams and companies to help their managers keep a constant pulse on key drivers of employee engagement, such as team dynamics, roles and responsibilities, and management. Our platform sends weekly or biweekly “pulse” surveys to teams, which are fully anonymous and take about 30 seconds to complete. This simple ritual allows remote managers to monitor engagement over time and optimize their leadership styles accordingly.
Address your team’s feedback in real-time
Listening is important for any manager, but perhaps more important is what a manager does with the information that’s being shared with him or her. Remote managers should strive to be especially actionable in their approach to listening to employee feedback, and clearly communicate when team feedback is being used to make improvements or changes.
In the context of your team’s regular pulse checks, strive to dig deeper into why your employees feel the way that they do. If someone shares that they’re stressed out lately, ask them why. What are the major factors? What could be done, in their situation, to help return to a healthier work/life balance? If your team indicates that the office environment could use an upgrade, ask them to provide their input. You can set expectations that not every piece of feedback will be addressed—after all, it’s your job as manager to prioritize and create the best environment for your team—but you can demonstrate a willingness to listen and act when it makes sense for the good of the group.
Case study:
Challenge: A leading entertainment company partners with Butterfly at the enterprise level, monitoring the engagement of thousands of employees in offices around the world. One such office is their Toronto-based Canadian HQ, which uses the tool to turn employee sentiment into action.
Solution: Woven into the fabric of this organization’s individual teams, employees feel comfortable offering up ideas to their direct managers. One such suggestion came from a junior employee, who lamented about the difficulty of commuting to work and noted that a bus program would be a welcome benefit.
Result: The idea caught the attention of the employee’s manager, who wondered if such a program could be possible. The manager took the idea up the chain of command, and just weeks after the idea was surfaced, and the local office unveiled a generous bus voucher policy for the entire team.
When in doubt, over-communicate
Even with smartphones, chat apps and the general cornucopia of collaboration tools at our disposal, it’s tough to replicate the effectiveness proximity and face-to-face interactions made possible by a standard, in-office arrangement. For this reason, remote managers should overcompensate for the lack of in-person time by beefing up their communication skills. This could be as simple as adding a simple “How are you?” before making a request in Slack and as involved as scheduling bi-annual meetings in which the entire team is physically present.
Take for example Butterfly’s own head of technology and product (and my co-founder), Marcus, who leads a team of engineers across three countries and two continents. He has found that using video chat at least once per week is helpful in making up for a lack of face time with his team. Twice a year, he also hosts off sites with the full team, so that they can align on goals and get to know each other on a personal level.
Bonus #protips for remote management
In addition to the key strategies listed above, here are some quick ways to improve your remote management:
Know where your team is (physically). This is especially important for people who manage digital nomads who may be working across different time zones, thus affecting team communications and delivery windows.
If your team members are working from a vastly different time zone as the rest of the team, set expectations that they should be optimizing their schedules around those of the rest of the team.
It goes without saying that “WFH” should never translate into a day off. Set expectations around availability (e.g. being on Slack, responsive on email, etc.)
Being a leader is hard work, and the job can feel even more challenging when your team members are not in the same place. It’s likely that more teams and organizations will be more flexible when it comes to remote work, so understanding how to effectively lead distributed teams should be required learning for managers of all levels.
Want even more management tips? Download Butterfly’s free book, “Your First 50 Days,” which outlines dozens of actionable tips you can start employing right now.
