This month, several articles published in the press highlight home office due to the pandemic and its possible effects in the short, medium and long term.
On Exame’s portal alone, through a brief search, the user finds: “Google and Facebook extend remote work plans until the end of the year”; “Twitter warns that employees may work from home forever”; “Company has more than 200 openings with home office and salaries of up to R$ 12 thousand”; “XP extends home office until the end of the year and considers permanent remote work”; “What will be the fate of office towers after the pandemic?” and “Vivo has 130 job openings with home office and remote selection”.
All of this may be a sign that traditional work models are already being transformed. Other options are gaining ground.
The Covid-19 pandemic showed the entire world the fragilities of our society, from the economy to health, from families to companies, from personal plans to relationships with work.
These relationships were weakened to the extent that the labor rights guaranteed by our Federal Constitution were relativized in order to confront the crisis caused by the speed of the virus’s spread. We produced an ebook gathering the main legal impacts to help your company act in compliance with the law in force. Download the ebook and stay informed!
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Home office stands out as a solution in the new scenario
For this reason, we highlight below good practices that can help manage the team in a remote work regime. The source is Endeavor Brasil, an organization specialized in supporting high-impact entrepreneurs worldwide, present in more than 30 countries and with offices in several regions of Brazil.
Home office due to the pandemic – a new mindset
There is no point in switching to the remote model and expecting everyone online from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Define what results and deliverables are expected for each role. In the remote model, you will not be able to control working hours or time online, but you will have visibility through the deliverables and success criteria defined with each person.
Communicate a lot, all the time. Remotely, the team sees the day-to-day through photos. In the office, in person, it was possible to see the film. The perception is different, which is why the number of photos that the remote person sees allows them to have a more complete film.
Control points
To track the team’s results and deliverables in the remote model, take some KPIs into consideration.
Lagging Indicators: these are the result indicators, especially if they correlate with a final business goal. For example, total sales, recruitment, Marketing and Operations.
Leading Indicator: these are the trend indicators, related to what needs to be done today to arrive at a certain result tomorrow. For example: number of calls to clients.
The team’s mental health
The main attention now is to people. Have discipline with processes and rituals to feel the temperature of the team. Follow up on how they are feeling in this period of uncertainty, make yourself available and be a source of optimism and security.
Have a channel – via Slack, e-mail or Whatsapp – for technical and psychological support and for information about cases of contamination on the team.
In every meeting, whether 1:1 or collective, begin by making a personal checkpoint. Ask what people did over the weekend, how they are adapting to remote work, how the family and the home routine are doing. This ice-breaker is a calibration for the leaders.
The ice-breaker can also be a song played for a minute to change everyone’s mood and help with the connection to the present moment.
Encourage the coffee conversations, common in the in-person model, through virtual happy hours, weekly team meetings or draws on Slack for one person, each week, to share what they have been learning about a specific topic.
Invite the team to set times to start working, have lunch, take a break and, finally, end the day. Hold videoconference meetings with the camera open. It makes a difference to look at everyone’s face.
Home-office work structure
Consider offering a specific monthly amount for the team members’ internet and electricity expenses.
Provide support for the transition to remote work. More operational and junior roles need your support more than senior positions. Offer financial support, if necessary, for the purchase of a chair or internet bandwidth – and offer guidance on how to follow the work routine.
Leave the channel open for those who need help setting up these environments. In this way, you handle the needs to purchase desks, chairs and computers by assessing each case.
Processes and rituals
Remote work demands better processes. From the most trivial to the most complex things, it is important that you have well-documented processes and that you revisit them whenever you find it necessary.
Having the necessary tools prevents you from falling into micromanagement. Those who work from home always have the doubt: “am I doing it right?”. If there is no process in which the person expresses what they are doing, the insecurity remains.
Define the communication channels according to the urgency of each message – and notify the entire team of the protocol. Urgent messages call for you to phone, or send a WhatsApp, for example. If it is something less urgent, use Slack, a chat tool or e-mail.
Remote work tends to increase average productivity. This peak of concentration with solid processes helps to have more traceability for managing the team.
Maintain all the rituals, even if adapted to the remote model. Now, more than ever, the team needs this routine and these interactions.
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