Dr. Megan Nocivelli
May 20, 2020
How to provide distance leadership for the remote workforce
By Dr. Megan Nocivelli
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented business leaders with serious profitability and sustainability issues. When leaders have time to look beyond the immediate decisions of salary reductions, layoffs, and furloughs, distance leadership is one of the next topics that needs attention.
Many talented and loyal employees have been laid-off or furloughed in the COVID-19 crisis, making it more important than ever remaining employees are motivated and performing at a high level. However, the challenges of leadership and employees in this environment is different.
“The challenges from the leadership team’s perspective revolves around having meaningful work we can hold people accountable for,” said Glenn Juchno, vice president for organizational development at YMCA of Central Massachusetts. “So much of our day working at the Y is your interaction with people that you don’t even know is going to happen yet.”
This presents business leaders with a new challenge. The hyper-speed with which leading or managing employees remotely has been implemented has caught some leadership teams unprepared. While some companies have had a small but growing percentage of employees working from home and have developed distance leadership skills and protocols, other employers have refused the WFH trend. Companies who have not embraced WTF, need to immediately develop distance leadership skills while managing other serious and unprecedented business problems.
In organizations where WFH was thought to be code for a personal day off, leaders are now realizing the benefits of allowing employees to work from home and the quality of work and level of engagement from many employees remains high. Organizations who have never allowed WFH, will be forever changed by COVID-19 and shelter-in-place and will allow some percentage of employees to continue to work from home once the crisis has passed, and will enjoy higher job satisfaction ratings as a result.
“The pandemic has really shown our organization – which, by the way, did not have a work-from-home policy – that a board meeting can be done on Zoom and get better attendance than some in-person meetings. It'll be interesting to see a year from now which positions remain remote or a hybrid of remote and office-based,” Juchno said.
He reflected on the stellar work of a digital marketing and social media employee who previously was expected to be in the office five days a week.
“From a leadership perspective, if we're going to consider remote work from home, we address whether that option fits the person and if it fits the work they do. I think there are definitely some positions that are remote worthy for consideration.”
Juchno pointed out there are likely to be new business opportunities as a result of the pandemic and explains the YMCA is identifying which services it plans to provide when shelter-in-place laws are removed. It is possible the pandemic “could change what the Y has been known for. What we were doing in February may not be important now.”
Businesses in all markets would benefit from the same analysis of what services they previously provided and what will be important as society returns to a post-pandemic normal, said Juchno.
However, many organizations have employees who are struggling in their forced WFH environment, feel isolated, and lack their usual focus. These employees are often people who are in their chosen line of work because they thrive on the interaction with peers, customers, and patients. Perhaps they consider their work a vocation and enjoy their daily interactions, and the opportunity to help people. For some employees, shelter-in-place is a sentence; they cannot find the motivation and focus that used to come so easily.
How about those employees who have never needed any additional prodding or direction but in the forced WFH environment are underperforming? These hard-working employees have always functioned at a high level, but they seem to lack focus and motivation after shelter-in-place laws forced them into full-time WFH.
They require a new type of leadership.
For leaders who must lead and motivate from a distance – now called distance leadership – the exceptional employee who is now underperforming is a frustrating riddle. It is important to note this is not a reflection of a loss of motivation or loyalty, but a response to a drastic and, for some, negative change in their environment. For workers where focus seems to be lacking, employers must remember some are dealing with spouses working from home as well as home-school responsibilities.
The following are ideas and tactics to engage and support remote employees, particularly those who have struggled with the transition.
- Reach out via group digital meetings. Hold more frequent, yet shorter virtual meetings to discuss company issues and information as well as specific workgroup tasks and deadlines. Allow for time before and after the meeting for some socializing among team members.
- Reach out individually to as many employees or team members as possible. Check in via one-on-one digital meetings to discuss personal challenges employees may be facing and to offer support and solutions wherever possible. Knowing they are not alone in their struggle or hardships will relieve undue stress for employees and allow better focus on their work life.
- Support the training and use of digital meeting platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom for all employees. It is hard to understand the level of connection one feels in a face-to-face digital meeting over audio participation only, until they have participated in digital meetings where employees can see their coworkers faces. Meeting via online digital platforms has become a new normal and many have found video meetings an effective substitute for the former weekly team meetings and training sessions.
- Utilize the breakout rooms to encourage team and work group connections. Again, allow some time for team members to catch up and socialize.
- Break projects and tasks into smaller bites with shorter timelines to help keep employees focused. Provide more feedback than prior to COVID-19 to encourage momentum and help employees feel connected and appreciated. Even those employees never needing extra encouragement and prodding may need more feedback and encouragement while working from home.
- Schedule virtual social meetings to play a game and encourage connection. Enlist the help of your natural party-planners. They will love the challenge of creating connections in the virtual world. This is an opportunity for them to feel valued and appreciated.
- Provide as much positive feedback as possible right now. There is no overcommunicating during this pandemic. Show employees your more human side, particularly if you don’t often share your personal life. Employees need to know that leadership understands the stress and challenges of working from home: While the employee works from home, also is their spouse, and their children are engaged in distance learning (and being taught by their parents). Show employees your challenges; they will appreciate connecting with you on a more personal level.
Distance leadership skills are needed now but will continue to be necessary in every organization in the future, as business will never return 100% to life before COVID-19 (BC). Employers are encouraged to engage distance leadership skills and identify new business opportunities for the post-pandemic business environment.
Dr. Megan Nocivelli is an associate professor of marketing and chair of the marketing communication program at Nichols College in Dudley. Reach her at megan.nocivelli@nichols.edu and 508-245-3212.
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