How do you make Remote Working Work?

Have you seen that some huge international firms are tearing up the rule book when it comes to working hours?

The future working trend is hybrid working, but some organisations have taken stock and gone one step further choosing to allow greater flexibility for post-pandemic working.

There will always be arguments for and against flexible working. Really, it is all about managing people well, whether someone is in the office or not. That means focusing on outcomes and impact, and not focusing on outputs.

In the office, poor managers think people are working if they are at their desk and are concerned if their teams spend too much time ‘chatting’ at the water cooler or whilst making a coffee. It comes down to what you define work as. If someone is sharing a joke at the water cooler it is still a vital part of working - networking, sharing thoughts, creating random connections. We even have customers who recognise the importance of this and are asking us for assistance in helping their people learn to recreate these ‘random moments’ - they know that working virtually is having an impact on generating creative ideas.

A manager stuck in the old Command/Control model will be obsessed by output statistics; how many calls did you make? How long were you at your desk? How many work conversations did you have?

A good modern manager will not care where you worked or for how long if you achieve agreed outcomes and have a great impact. This approach requires quality continuous performance conversations. Strangely, rather than investing in their managers’ competencies, some companies are using keyboard monitoring software to ensure they can monitor outputs remotely. They are valuing, measuring and supporting the wrong thing.

Perhaps we should all take a more flexible approach – maybe the future will be to do away with working hours all together.

Emailogic are training and virtual working experts, to find out how we can help you, please call one of our friendly team on +44 (0) 1452 886 556 or email enquiries@emailogic.com.