5 Tips for Suddenly and Successfully Shifting Your Team to Remote Work

Unpredictable situations (such as COVID-19) can turn you into the manager of a remote team overnight. Attuned’s SF office is in the midst of a complete lockdown at the time of writing, and in Japan (home to our HQ), many managers are staring down the barrel of remote work for the very first time.

How can you keep your team successful with little to no practice as a remote manager? We’ve got some tips.

Routines go a long way in signaling to the brain that it’s time to go to work.  Suddenly shifting to a remote working situation is likely to be disruptive, but the disruptions can be minimized by holding onto patterns our brains are already familiar with.

Encourage your team  (and yourself) to maintain their personal prep routines as best they can, and encourage them to dress for work.  Putting on work clothes sets up a mental boundary between work and down time and can even play a part in boosting productivity.  Workplace expert Mason Donovan, author of The Golden Apple: Redefining Work-Life Balance for a Diverse Workforce agrees that wearing work appropriate clothing brings about a change in mental state. “We feel more present, and we have a higher level of commitment and engagement.”

As a manager, you can help encourage the work signaling by holding all of your regularly scheduled meetings at their in-office time slots.  Additionally, if your remote working situation is temporary, it’s beneficial to keep your company’s regular office hours. Doing so will allow your employees’ body clocks to keep their internal rhythm, including their wind-down time.  According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work 2019, the number one issue employees have with remote work is struggling to know when to stop working when working from home.  Helping your team avoid burnout also means setting boundaries.

Though Albert Mehrabian’s famous  7–38–55 Rule (7% words, 38% tone of voice, 55% body language) of personal communication is often debated, human communication is comprised of more than just words–we utilize words in conjunction with tone of voice, facial expression, eye contact, and posture to convey a clear picture of what we mean.

Working remotely reduces the amount of visual communication available, so creating opportunities for visual clues is imperative.That’s why the use of video is critical.  It’s far more difficult to understand your direct report’s overall mood or gauge a teammate’s reaction to change in plans if you’re relying on audio alone.

Video can give you that extra bit of information you need to make sure that everything from your regularly scheduled team wide meetings to quick catch ups are as productive as they can possibly be.

Additionally, seeing one another on video serves to further reinforce the mental state of being “at work.”

Your team is probably already using a messaging tool like Slack or Microsoft teams. Use these more casual methods to encourage your team members to communicate with each other often–both as individuals and as a group.

If you don’t have one already, set up a “water cooler” channel for the type of in-person updates you would normally get just by virtue of being in the office (and will now be missing from home).  It’s always surprising to us just how many people are intrinsically motivated by social relationships. For some, not having personal connections at work can zap their productivity. Social Relationships is a need-to-have level intrinsic motivator for 27.9% of Japanese employees*. That’s almost a ⅓  of your team that needs to keep the connections going.

Each of your employees is going to react to the shift to working remotely in different ways. While we noted above that nearly 30% of employees are intrinsically motivated socially, the data shows that 14.5 % need to have Autonomy*. What works for one employee might not work for another.  You’ll be more successful in communicating meaningfully with each of them if you personalize your approach.

One-on-one meetings with your reports are a smart investment of your time and do wonders for your teams’ morale, productivity and engagement If you are not conducting one on ones already, now is a great time to start.

In your one on ones make sure both you and your report know what success this week will look like, in whatever amount of detail is most appropriate.  Make sure this is in writing somewhere and can be referred to easily. Clear expectations can reinforce a sense of purpose or direction that’s often easily lost when in a new or different environment.

This goes for all directions in communication: it’s important for you to know what your report expects from you and the rest of the team as well.  Make sure all parties sign off on the tasks.

At first, it may seem difficult to establish trust in a remote work environment.  The best way to re-establish trust is through accountability team-wide. Make sure that all expectations and goals set are followed-up on.  Hold people accountable for work they haven’t accomplished and publicly celebrate work they have.

As a manager, you are the role model here. Make sure you give feedback in a timely manner, and avoid canceling or rescheduling meetings.  Your reports need to know that they are important to you and the organization. Keeping your word and showing up are surprisingly easy ways to set a really positive precedent.

To delve more in to the data of “What Motivates People at Work?” you can read more in this article.

* According to Attuned user data of more than 10,000 intrinsic motivator profiles