One-Third Do OK, and All Managers Face Challenges

How’s remote working going for you? If your business is like most, there are some bright spots and some question marks. As I’ve worked with clients over the past few weeks we’ve focused on some key things.

  1. How are you doing?
  2. How is your team doing?
  3. What percentage of normal function are you operating at?
  4. What’s your strategy?

Let’s focus on the people first — you and your team. Unless your business was structured as a remote business to begin with, the transition to remote work is not easy for managers for team members. In fact, according to Chuck Russell, author of No Bad Hires, and Chief Knowledge Officer at BestWorkDATA, “One third of the population struggles when working remotely. Another third has difficulty. Managers all have challenges managing remote workers.”

This is alarming! One out of every three remote workers in your business is just fine. But one out of every three is having a really hard time. And one out of every three is working to adjust, but needs extra support. All managers find managing remotely to be hard, because managers are used to being in control and control can seem elusive when working remotely.

Free Insights

To help you figure out where employees and managers fit within the spectrum of remote work and management, BestWork DATA is offering 100% free remote work assessments and reports. These reports offer personalized insights to help you and your team perform in this new environment. If you would like access to these reports, you can find more information by clicking here.

Here is a snippet of one report designed to help managers perform better:

What Percentage of Normal Function?

So how is the business performing? I’ve received two kinds of answers to this question. The first, which is great, is “I’d say ## percent of normal.” One manager quickly told me that her team is performing very close to 100 percent, because they are a team of experts who normally work autonomously and check in with each other periodically, which they are now doing via messaging and brief phone calls. Another client said, “That’s a really good question. We’re just trying to get as much done as we can. But I’m going to figure out the percentage.”

What’s Your Strategy

Finally, what is your strategy? I’ve talked with a couple of clients who are aggressively attacking their business issues, trying to do as much as they can as fast as they can. They’re doing what their instincts are telling them to do: Work more, work harder. But in reality, what they should be doing is to define a strategy before acting. I’ll explore more on that in another post, but for now I’ll leave you with this graphic to get your started.