How to Lead Staff Who Are Working from Home

The COVID-19 crisis is forcing us to experiment with home working on an unprecedented scale. The internet is bursting with practical tips, on work attitude (get dressed and comb your hair), motivation (make a to-do list), the importance of working to a daily schedule (plan separate times slots for work and relaxation), online meetings (make sure you turn off your microphone when you’re done talking) and working together (brief each other on who does what). The role of leaders and managers doesn’t seem to come into it much.

And yet it is their job description that has undergone the most far-reaching change in the past days and weeks. If they literally can’t see what is happing on the office floor, how are they to lead staff who work from home?

The keyword here is trust. Trusting someone essentially means making yourself dependent on the actions of another person in the expectation that this person will do what is important to you – even when you can’t monitor or control their input. Trusting staff to do the work they have to do from home is putting managers at the mercy of their subordinates. It’s the world on its head! How are managers supposed to handle this?

Opposite effect

A series of studies found that managers who approached staff from a position of distrust would often end up with the opposite of what they set out to achieve. Threatening staff with sanctions beforehand, emphasizing that working from home is not a holiday and requiring a minimum number of hours to be put in, increases the likelihood of people breaking the rules, various studies suggest. Another managerial pitfall is constant rank pulling to show who’s boss.

Managers who are primarily occupied with maintaining their own position are unlikely to show much confidence in their staff. They can be unwilling to relinquish control or share important resources, budgets or information. In this way, they undermine the ability of team members to do a good job, which has been shown in controlled experiments as well as studies among managers and staff in businesses. But leaders who make their staff feel they are trusted reap the rewards in the shape of greater effort, better performance, a lower rate of staff turnover and greater compliance with the rules.

Good cooperation between team members is also largely dependent on trust, studies have found. A comparison of effects found in 112 studies featuring 7,763 teams showed that mutual trust improves team performance. Team members worked together more efficiently and were more effective.

The positive effect of trust is particularly evident when teams are made up of people who have different skills, depend on each other, and when some team members have more decision making powers than others. The time people have spent working as a team is not a factor of great importance, nor does it matter whether team members are physically working together or meeting only online. The fact that not only virtual teams work better when trusted by managers offers great hope for the future, now that so many people are forced to work from home. The leader who manages to build a relationship of trust from a distance will continue to reap the benefits long after staff have returned to the office.

So what should leaders do to achieve this? It is important to make it clear to staff that they are teamed up with fellow-professionals who have the right skills and work attitude. Leaders can also encourage that team members mutually support each other and are equipped to solve any problems encountered on the way. This will motivate team members to help each other out while at the same time creating an atmosphere in which mistakes can be discussed openly and freely. All of this will improve team performance.

Flexible hours

It is the manager’s job to create the right circumstances, to monitor progress, and to intervene if things don’t work out. Leader interventions should not indicate distrust or communicate a need for control but aim to find the expertise that is needed and help solve problems. Trust does not mean abandoning your team or leaving people to sort things out for themselves.

In the present circumstances offering support may require adjusting the team’s working hours so colleagues who are home-schooling their kids can share this task with their partner.

Another important task of the manager is to show awareness of, and appreciation for, the efforts and performance of the team and its members. Even more than in an office environment, distance working thrives on the recognition of a job well done and of the leader’s ability to acknowledge and appreciate each individual team member’s contribution to it. Many managers have trouble doing this. They only speak out when there is a problem, afraid perhaps that praise may encourage team members to demand a bonus there and then.

But if people manage to adapt to what is asked of them under these extraordinary circumstances, or even carry on "as normal," a compliment is definitely in order. And managers should be generous with those – now more than ever.