Support remote work and reap the rewards

The Covid-19 Pandemic has split the world down two lines. There are businesses who are increasingly encouraging employees to return to the office, and there are companies who see value in remote work and are encouraging employees to work from home.

Both of these approaches have value. A legal firm can work quite well using remote employees as lawyers tend to service their clients as if it were their mini business. However, a news organisation needs to have a newsroom full of people so that journalists do not cover the same stories and editors can provide guidance and feedback on articles. Managing journalists remotely is very challenging.

From a business rescue perspective, the ineffective management of a remote workforce can be a root cause of distress. I recently read an article which provides key insights on how managers can support remote work.

Maintain frequent, transparent, and consistent communication.
The article points out that when employees work from home, they can feel disconnected from their organizations, and nearly half (47%) of participants in the survey cited effective communication as crucial to their transition to remote work.

The article adds that using natural language processing to identify key themes in responses, it was determined that the most effective communication has five characteristics: It’s frequent, transparent, part of a two-way dialogue, easy to navigate, and consistent. These communication principles are useful in general, but they’re crucial when a company’s workforce is distributed.

Frequent: More than 1 in 10 of all respondents listed frequent communication among the most useful ways their company supported their transition to remote work. To increase the frequency of communication, many organizations have instituted daily or weekly updates from the CEO and made them accessible to all employees in real time. When it comes to the type of communication employees prefer on a frequent basis, video updates and webinars were deemed more effective than emails.

Transparent: Employees appreciated leaders who explained their decisions and clarified the rationale behind those choices. When listing what worked best, the second-ranked response emphasized frequent and total transparency in communication regarding business impact, decision-making, board feedback, and leadership mindset. Another HR leader noted the importance of being transparent about the financial impact [COVID-19] is causing to the business and together discussing options for keeping everyone instead of laying people off.

Two-way: Employees consistently valued tools such as weekly pulse surveys or dedicated COVID-19 email accounts that allowed them to share anonymous feedback and ask questions in real time. Virtual town halls and fireside chats provided another setting for employees to express their concerns and pose questions. Some employers created COVID-19 response teams focused on soliciting concerns and questions from employees, finding the right person to respond, and communicating the answers quickly and widely throughout the organization.

Easy to navigate: Several respondents singled out centralized information hubs on issues related to remote work and COVID-19. Highly ranked resources included frequently asked questions (updated daily), virtual training resources on trending topics (such as managing virtual teams and leading online meetings), archived video messages from leaders, and remote-work success stories from colleagues. They also highlighted the need to communicate clear guidelines on HR policies that were particularly relevant during COVID-19, such as sick days, time off, and expected work hours.

Consistent: The most commonly cited obstacle to effective communication was conflicting messages from different parts of the organization. Different functions, including HR, finance, legal, and operations, should send a unified message to all stakeholders, including front-line employees, remote workers, vendors, subcontractors, consultants, and customers. Middle managers and front-line team leads need to confirm that their communication is consistent with the top team’s messaging.

Provide support for physical and mental health
The article points out that, in the midst of a global pandemic, it’s not surprising that 15% of respondents pointed to company-sponsored COVID-19 tests, masks, and flu vaccines as positive actions their companies had taken to protect employees’ physical well-being. What is surprising is that employees were nearly twice as likely (29%) to praise steps to foster mental wellness and help them combat social isolation.

Social isolation among remote workers is not a new challenge — in fact, 6 of every 10 remote workers reported that they felt isolated before COVID-19 — but the pandemic has helped bring the issue into focus. The most effective step to battle isolation, according to our survey, is regular check-ins by managers to see how their employees are doing personally and professionally, an approach that was mentioned by 1 of every 10 people who completed the COVID-19 Pulse of HR survey. When more than 2 000 visitors to the platform ranked a list of responses, the answers that mentioned employee check-ins were among the most highly rated. Top-quartile responses (based on positive votes received) mentioned employee check-ins 21% of the time, versus 7% of responses in the bottom quartile. (See “How Employees Rated Actions Taken to Enhance Remote Work.”)

The article adds that virtual social activities, such as lunch and learns, coffee breaks, online exercise classes, and happy hours, were also frequently mentioned as ways companies can help employees overcome social isolation. These activities were not as highly ranked by voters as personal check-ins and were as likely to be mentioned in bottom-quartile responses as they were in top-quartile ones. Things like online happy hours and yoga classes are a fine way to facilitate social bonding, but they cannot substitute for leaders personally touching base with their teams.

More generally, employees appreciated emotional support, especially from senior executives. One CEO, for example, called every employee who tested positive for COVID-19, and another sent gourmet cookies and a personal note to all employees. The senior leaders of a retailer established a fund to help employees who were in need, and they personally made large contributions.

Employees also valued corporate initiatives explicitly designed to help them manage stress and maintain mental well-being. Specific initiatives included starting an online discussion board on mental health, sharing mental wellness resources, launching anonymous telehealth counselling services, and coaching managers on how to discuss stress and mental wellness with their teams.

Help distributed employees stay productive and engaged
The article adds that remote work can boost productivity, particularly on stand-alone tasks that require minimal coordination with colleagues. Allowing employees to work from home increased the productivity of patent examiners by 4%, for example, and call centre employees by 13%.

When employees need to collaborate with other teams, however, working from home may decrease productivity. One effective short-term step, according to our survey results, is for leaders to acknowledge that productivity may dip during the lockdown and to let employees know that it is acceptable.

The article adds that, longer term, however, organizations will need to evaluate the performance of remote workers. Most employers have not yet cracked that code. The same study that found that remote call center workers were more productive also discovered that they were less likely to be promoted than their onsite peers. Our analysis of over 1.4 million Culture 500 employee reviews from more than 500 of the largest employers in the United States found that employees who enjoyed remote work were more likely to speak negatively about how well their organization recognized and rewarded performance, their chances for promotion, and clarity of job expectations. As more work is done remotely, organizations need to rethink performance evaluations to ensure that they are not penalizing productive employees because of insufficient face time in the office.

Frequent, short meetings can boost productivity. Employees might grumble about meetings under normal circumstances, but many COVID-19 Pulse of HR respondents said that daily team huddles helped them remain focused and engaged while working remotely. Structured mechanisms to share best practices and tips on remote work were also popular. Executives and board members at one company used their twice-per-week all-hands meetings to share examples of what was working (and not working) while remote, and another company collected and relayed employees’ success stories on its intranet.

The role of BRPs
The role of the BRP can be crucial here as distressed companies rely on your skills as master strategists.

After establishing if remote work is suited to the distressed company’s business model, BRPS need to establish if there are any employees that will not cope with a remote working environment. The policy may suit the company, but remote work is taxing on employees.

Finally, the distressed company needs to have a very defined communication strategy as this is a key component in managing remote workers.