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Four Strategies To Try When Remote Team Members Aren’t Thriving Out Of The Office

Forbes Human Resources Council

CEO/Co-Founder at Virtual Vocations, one of the leading online job boards focused exclusively on remote jobs.

As remote work becomes an integral part of our society and businesses begin to emerge from the daily chaos of quarantines and closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many employers will soon come face-to-face with new and changing expectations from employees surrounding productivity and availability. 

During the thick of the crisis, when teams were still adjusting to being suddenly thrust into virtual work, missteps like repeatedly missing deadlines, frequently being unavailable to colleagues or relying a little too much on a flexible work schedule were easy for managers to overlook. But as employers attempt to move away from the “we’re all in this together, so just do whatever you can” frame of mind that was the default during the toughest parts of the pandemic and back into the mindset of “business as usual,” there may come a time when difficult discussions are warranted to help team members who are falling behind get back on track.

While it’s doubtful that we will ever fully return to a completely business-as-usual scenario — and events will most certainly be classified as “pre-pandemic” and “post-pandemic” for years to come — employers must eventually return to some semblance of normal expectations when it comes to managing team members and measuring their progress. For many, this means determining new benchmarks of productivity and responsibilities that function within a remote work environment. 

Managers tasked with trying to be supportive of their team members amid the ongoing pandemic who are also seeing lower productivity than expected at this point in a remote or hybrid-remote arrangement can use these four strategies to help employees thrive while working remotely:

1. Don’t assume employees are purposefully not working.

While there undoubtedly will be some who flat-out take advantage of remote work to do what they want on company time, these employees are by far the exception, not the rule. Most employees who were good performers on-site but are struggling in a remote environment are falling behind because of factors that may be outside of their control. Steep learning curves related to new technology, different processes, asynchronous workflows and increased personal responsibilities are some of the most common culprits of suffering performance, remote or otherwise.

When working with team members to determine the potential causes of their faltering productivity, always err on the side of compassion and empathy. While underperformance is not acceptable long-term, managers and employees can have open, honest conversations from the start to help nip these issues in the bud as soon as they arise.

2. Take a closer look at daily job responsibilities.

For many professionals, their daily job responsibilities, and the processes used to carry them out, changed dramatically over the last year. Instead of experiencing a mix of in-person meetings, emails and phone calls throughout the day, many have been thrust into entirely online, asynchronous communication methods, while others removed entire workflows from their days in order to accomplish certain tasks as quickly as possible with limited time and resources when businesses first closed. Still others picked up extra work on top of their previous responsibilities to help colleagues who may have been under more personal pressures amid the pandemic.

If an employee who used to work on-site is not performing as well in a remote environment, take a deep dive into any changes that may have occurred in their position and daily tasks. It may simply be that the expectations of their role have changed or that priorities for the position need to be restated. 

3. Review and reflect on past performance.

Before writing off a remote team member for not meeting expectations, review and reflect on productivity standards that were set when they were working on-site and see if they need to be adjusted for a virtual work environment. Comparing past performance to current productivity levels can help managers discern if things have really changed that much or if it could just be proximity bias causing the perception of decreased productivity. 

If you’re in a hybrid work environment, take note of what you feel makes an on-site employee more productive than a remote employee, and if there is a real disparity, determine what needs to be adjusted for the remote team member to come up to par with their on-site counterparts.

4. Find out what’s working — and what’s not.

Some employees are just more suited to remote work to begin with, whether it’s because of high self-motivation or organizational skills that help them stay on track without as much feedback and direction. As a manager, don’t be afraid to pinpoint your top performers to find out how they manage their workday, what they do to streamline tasks and what habits they have that they feel make them the most productive. Maybe they utilize strategies like task scheduling or work batching, or they take advantage of online skill-building and mentoring programs. All of these suggestions can help managers build out a plan for helping other team members maximize their own productivity and live up to expectations.

It can also be useful to communicate directly with employees who are underperforming to find out the specifics of their workdays, including how they manage daily tasks and what obstacles they are running into along the way.

Final Thoughts

It’s true that job seekers and employees are now holding employers to higher standards surrounding flexibility, but this doesn’t mean you need to embrace a four-day workweek or six-hour workdays. It is realistic from a business perspective for employers to prioritize flexibility in on-site and remote positions while still requiring specific, measurable levels of productivity from team members. Using the above strategies, managers can drill down on what may be causing some remote team members’ performance to suffer and make adjustments to help them get back on track.

We are all still in this together, and together, we can create successful remote work environments where team members have the support they need to thrive professionally — to the boon of their employers — while also continuing to enjoy the benefits that remote and flexible work offer.


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