New Ways of Working in a COVID-19 World

The following is a collection of suggestions I’ve gathered from recent Agile Uprising podcasts and LinkedIn Learning resources which address the topic of working remotely.  Since many in our industry are not accustomed to working remotely I thought this might be helpful.

Work from home tips for employees

• Make your work space comfortable.  Use a comfortable chair.  Arrange lighting to reduce eye strain.  Set a comfortable temperature.  Make the space a quiet area so you’re not distracted and to minimize distractions during calls.  Use a space that affords the privacy and confidentiality of confidential information.  Remember that HIPAA still applies.
• Have boundaries on your time so you don’t work too many hours.  Set a start and stop time and honor it.  Have a dedicated work space.  Turn off your computer when not working.  On your mobile phone put work related apps on one screen that you can swipe away from when not working.  Turn off work-related notifications on your mobile phone during non-work hours.

Tips for Supervisors

Employee check-in during times of change
Questions you can ask employees to check on their personal change.

1. Is there anything confusing or unclear about the change that I can help you better understand?
2. What will this change take away from your work? What does the change add to your work?
3. How do you see this change supporting our values and our strategy?
4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how agreeable are you to this change?
5. What needs to happen to increase that number?

Be kind

• Be understanding that our life rhythms have been disrupted.  Waking up, getting ready for the day, going to work or school, coming home, our free time, these rhythms have changed.  It may take a few days or weeks for people to figure it out.
• How are you?  That may be a good way to start a meeting with a team or an individual.  Listen, and hear where people are.  If the person or team is checked out, this may not be a good time for this meeting.  Reschedule and agree to be more ready at that time.  Ask if there is anything you can do to help them be ready for this or other meetings.

We will be less productive

• Things will take longer.  Communication will be more difficult.  Finding people and information and documents will take longer.  Acknowledge this, and plan for it.
• Reduce the size of goals or tasks.  Chunk things down.  Working remote will make large tasks or goals more difficult.

Leaders may need to temporarily adjust their approach

The Merrill-Reid model for personality traits: Driver, Analytical, Amiable, and Expressive.   If you’re a Driver or Analytical, during this time you may want to try to be more Amiable and Expressive.

Questions to ask people about this new remote working.

1. What do you like about it?  
2. What are your challenges?  
3. Have you worked remote previously?

Continue meetings but be open to change

• Continue to have your meetings, but the time and frequency may change.  You may need more frequent but shorter meetings.  Talk to the team and individuals about this.  
• You may need to work around family and household timing and issues now.  Maybe you need to work around childcare issues.  
• Consider scheduling meetings to start 5 minutes after the hour to allow a quick break to people who go to back-to-back meetings.
• Use video during remote meetings.  Face to face contact makes meetings more effective, and teams better functioning.  We’re isolated enough, take these opportunities to connect.  
• Be prepared to change how you run your meeting.  Maybe include a short “Meet the Family & Pets” segment where the team can learn a little more about a family member or the family can ask a question of the team.  Or “Share your Hobby” where someone can show what they are working on.

Create a Remote Team Working Agreement

Agree on how you’ll work together.  

• How will we meet?  
• What information do we need to share?  Where is that information?  
• How will we talk to each other?  
• How do we know what each other is doing?  Do we need to know what each other is doing?  

Common mistakes supervisors make

Need to over communicate slightly because you are no longer walking around.  Instead of just posting a general email or general chat, you may need to call people out, and you may need to communicate in multiple ways, like Teams and email.  Once people tell you they have heard you and you can back off, then you know you can back off.

Since we can’t manage by walking around when remote, it’s an opportunity to have one-on-ones.  You can ask questions like: I really want to understand what you’re doing.  I don’t want to micro-manage you.  I don’t know how.  Please help me understand so I understand your way of working.  So I understand your impediments, where you need help, where I’m helping and where I shouldn’t, where you might need coaching.  I need you to help me understand how I should manage now that we’re not together.

Don’t be a seagull manager.  A seagull manager is a manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on everyone, then flies out.  Instead of focusing on tasks, focus on relationships and building your team.