People thinkthatall they need to do is set clear and realistic objectives and they will no longer have to worry about whether or not employees are actually working when doing remote work. This is in fact a necessary but not sufficient condition: the qualities of the manager also play an important role.
I thought that by 2024 companies would have acquired enough maturity about teleworking to stop asking certain questions, but that’s not the case and some are still blindly trying to get their employees to return to the office 100% of the time.
Remote working: as many good solutions as there are individual cases
Don’t misunderstand me: even though I’m convinced of the more than positive aspects of remote working in my particular case, my job etc., not everything is black and white. I don’t think the answer is as simple as 0% or 100% or even setting a fixed percentage that applies to everyone all the time. It depends on many factors linked to where the employee is in terms of seniority in the company, in their position, in their current project, and for the same person, depending on the stages of their career, it can vary from 0 to 100% from one week to the next (Why does an employee want or need to work remotely?). And again, an individualised approach is far from always being relevant, even though work is a collective sport. (Remote work: a collective issue treated on an individual basis)
However, many companies do not understand this and remain in a Manichean vision of the subject, even if it means implementing practices that are destructive in terms of engagement and trust (Is Workplace Trust Dead? A ‘Big Four’ Firm Will Soon Use Location Data to Track Employees).
On the other hand, for example, Netflix, which I was talking about just a short while ago (What does Netflix’s culture and management tell us about today’s world?) is very open to teleworking despite its demanding culture. That must mean something
But I don’t believe in simplistic thinking on the subject, or in ‘just do it’ solutions.
No remote working without clear, measurable objectives
Whenever I’m asked how I know whether the people I manage are really working or not when they’re teleworking, I have only one answer: I couldn’t care less.
They have objectives, we can follow the progress in achieving the objectives over time and, at the end, whether they’ve achieved them or not and when they’re supposed to produce something I can see whether it’s done or not and with the required level of quality. (In the future of work the result is watched and nothing else).
It’s not any more complicated than that, especially as progress on certain tasks is not necessarily a function of time spent (Remote work imposes a result-oriented culture).
I recently came across an article with a somewhat over-simplistic title (This management theory could reshape the return-to-office debate) which said the same thing: if you set clear objectives all you have to do is check whether they’ve been achieved and, on the other hand, if you don’t set objectives you can’t expect to have idle employees, but that applies just as much to remote working as it does to the office.
Management by objectives is not enough for effective remote working
In any case, I shouldn’t have expected anything else from an author whose job is to sell… management by objectives. But the rather reductive ‘there’s a magic wand’ title and the article in question made me realise that there was a part of the equation I was forgetting when I talked about monitoring objectives rather than monitoring work. Or, rather, something I was taking for granted that wasn’t there.
To say that all you have to do is set objectives and follow them up is a bit limiting in terms of your vision of the manager’s role. ‘I set the objectives, I put everyone to work from home and I don’t care what happens’. No, it doesn’t work like that.
There are many reasons why an employee misses their targets or doesn’t produce what is expected of them on time. Dilletantism is just one of them, and far from the most common.
The scope of the task may have been underestimated, the employee may encounter an unexpected problem, the problem may come from outside (the customer), the employee may not understand something…
In such cases, the employee and the manager have reciprocal obligations. The employee’s obligation is to alert the manager as soon as possible that he or she is not making progress, and the manager’s obligation is to help.
Yes, it’s 2024 and we still need to remember that the manager’s role is to help his team succeed and not to spend his time behind their backs.
Is it possible to manage by wandering around at a distance?
You might retort that, in order to provide better help or even to realise that an employee is struggling behind his or her screen, it is preferable to be with them in the office.
I’ve never disputed the benefits of management by wandering around, which simply consists of wandering around a workplace to understand what’s going on, but you have to put things into context.
This technique was born in the 1970s, first in factories before spreading to offices, but in both cases there was one thing in common: the absence of any means of communication other than mail and telephone. Email dates back to 1965 but I doubt it was as popular then as it is now, especially in factories.
In short, if the idea is relevant, it needs to be adapted to today’s context , with new tools and new ways of working that are as much constraints as they are solutions.
Managers lack digital leadership
Managers need to develop what I call a kind of digital leadership, with a new approach to interactions, their pace, the use of the many tools at their disposal, and adapting their tone to each tool, otherwise their message will not be understood.
We often talk about teleworking from the point of view of the employee, but unfortunately never from the point of view of the manager, who more often than not is digitally handicapped (The “remote manager”, weak link in remote work). I’m not talking about the use of digital technology in general, but specifically in the manager’s role and even more so in the expression of his leadership.
Only then will management by objectives fully justify the use of teleworking, without managers having to worry about the activity of their teams.
Bottom line
Management by objectives is as effective as it is reassuring when it comes to teleworking, but effective remote working also requires appropriate management and leadership.
You may think that I’m giving you an unstoppable argument to go against my ideas and justify returning to the office… but it’s also an argument for businesses to think about the qualities really required of today’s managers.
