When I first started my career, working from home was not a thing for the majority of staff. There were a few who were field based, such as area managers, sales staff and trainers, but the majority of employees were working in the office, warehouse or store 5 or 6 days per week.
As I look at the landscape today, while many roles still require staff to be onsite, such as care homes, hospitality and entertainment venues, and manufacturing, many roles including some we never thought could be remote workers are now in fact working from home at least some of the week. This includes doctors, call centre staff and senior managers.
I spent the first 25 years of my career telling people that they couldn’t work from home. Mostly this was true because of technology and infrastructure, but in March 2020 most companies were able to move all of their office staff to be home workers literally overnight. As the saying goes, “when needs must…” and for many it was a case of allow people to work from home or lose your business.
Today, 4 years on, businesses are still psychologically struggling with the balance between office and home working. Some employers have been very decisive and either given up their offices altogether or scaled them down to such an extent that not everyone can be in the office every day anyway. Other employers have specified the number of days you are required to be in the office and in some cases which days. However, there remains a large number of employers who want everyone back into the office full time. The reasons cited for this include trust, efficiency, team cohesion, improved communication and better business performance.
Of these, trust is the most contentious one. Most of the others can be measured in some way, but for a manager to say they don’t trust their employees, that is fraught with conflict.
We have been asked on numerous occasions, how can I monitor my staff while they are working? Requests have included: Can I monitor their keyboard activity? Can I force them to have a camera on? Can I monitor their response times? Can I ask them about their childcare arrangements? Can I ask them about their elder care responsibilities? Can I ask them to come into the office at short notice?
The answer to these questions is you can, but should you?
What does it really tell you?
As a business owner or line manager you need to think about outputs and performance, rather than inputs and presenteeism.
Do you prefer them to be sitting at their desk less of the time, but achieving everything you expect of them and more; or do you want them sat at their desk from 9am – 6pm with a break for lunch and be given insufficient quantities of work, full of errors and omissions?
As an employer, you need to recruit the right people, train them exceptionally well, motivate them, engage them with the business and empower them to perform. While they need to earn your trust, you have to be willing to trust them.
So how do you learn to trust, when every bone in your body marks you as a control freak?
The first thing you need to do is to be really clear in your mind about what you want people to do. What is the job they are doing and what are the performance measures? Do they have an up to date job description? Do they have SMART objectives?
Then you need to give them the tools they need. Do they have tools such as slack or TEAMS for staying in touch with colleagues informally? Are there channels for teams to communicate about work? Are laptops, printers, phones or other technology provided to enable staff to perform?
Next you need to think about when you do want / need people in the office. Do they have a roster of when they are required to be in the office, perhaps around internal or external meetings? Are the whole team in on specific day? Do you have a booking system to enable people to book desks? Can you seat everyone if they are all in on the same day?
Finally, do you, as their line manager have regular catch ups. Regardless of where someone is in their career, giving them regular access to you as their line manager is essential. For someone at the start of their career or in a new job, that may be daily. For someone further along in their career, it may be monthly, but 121s are an essential tool for building and maintaining trust. They are key to good communication and ensuring that everyone is travelling in the same direction.
There is no point in complaining about someone’s performance, if you haven’t managed them properly. There is no point in saying you don’t trust someone to work from home if you haven’t put in place the framework to build that trust. Trust has to be earnt, but as a manager or business owner, you have a lot of influence on how that happens.
