I am going through a promotion process at work and a large part of the interview process centres around solving the challenges of hybrid working (which in this context means that each team member will spend some days in the office and some WFH). To complicate matters I am based in a different office to the rest of my team so even when I'm in the office I am working remotely.
I'd like to read some expert insights about how to manage this situation. Can anyone recommend some good books by business leaders or management experts about how to approach management in a remote working or hybrid working environment? I'm not in a STEM field so it doesn't need to focus on STEM (and in fact would rather it is not too closely tied to STEM or any particular industry).
Thanks in advance!
* 1on1s are very important - There is no water cooler for remote teams, so you have to manufacture it. Take 30min with each team member each week to just chat without an agenda. If the conversation gravitates towards work, fine. If it doesn’t that’s fine too. But I would take an interest in my employee’s life outside of work. I would make it a point to know what their hobbies were, their family’s names, their life story, etc.
* Protect your work time - Each Slack message is an interruption. Have at least a couple hours a day where notifications are muted so you and your team can get into a “deep work” state. If something is urgent, pick up the phone.
* Trust your team daily, hold them accountable weekly - Don’t micromanage your employees and ask what they did each day (outside of a daily virtual standup if they like that, where they post 1 message about what they’re working on and what they might need help with). But at the end of the week, evaluate their performance and adjust your management style to fit. With remote work, it is possible for folks to push the envelope on work/life balance, so be ready for that, but don’t assume it or be so worried about it that your policies become stifling.
I’m sure there are more, but those are a few that served me well through the years.
Good luck!
The hybrid just means you also get the nice parts of going to the office, but for any remote work to work, async remote kinda needs to be default for the whole company, and the office are just perks
Every team will work differently in a remote fashion, so I would actually say the books will give you ideas, but just talk to your peers to see how they want to ideally work.