Holly from Social Talent offers three concrete actions for managing remote teams during COVID-19: start each workday with a video all-hands to set tasks and check in, follow up with individual 20-minute check-ins, and clearly communicate your availability to the team.
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About 20 minutes.
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Hi, I'm Holly from Social Talent and this is a working from home guide for managers for today during this COVID 19 crisis. Because previous work from home guides don't really apply here anymore. In the past, working from home meant that you had the house to yourself as the kids were at school and most likely your partner was in the office that day. Working from home was a dream. A super productivity day where we had no interruptions. But alas, this is not the same. So in this video we will address three of the core issues with working from home during this crisis for you as a manager. 1. Communication. 2. Structure and Expectations and 3 Compassion. Communication under normal circumstances, loneliness is one of the biggest struggles of remote workers. And during this period of self isolation, let's just assume that this is going to get worse when we work in the office. The feeling of being in the physical proximity of your colleagues who you know brings an immense sense of well being. And as a manager, it's your job to keep open communication as much as you can. There are three specific actions that you must take. Action One is to start each workday with your whole team in an all hands call. Make this a video call with webcams on and set your display to gallery view so you can see everyone at the same time. Kind of like a Brady Bunch screen. If having cameras on is not the norm at your company, change the rules. These are extraordinary times and it's important that we stay connected. Use this time not just to set out today's actions and tasks and maybe check up on yesterday's progress, but also to get a freeform conversation going about how each of your team members are feeling and speaking about each of your team. Action number two is to then follow up with each team member individually. Your job is to make sure that no one in your team feels isolated and has an opportunity to speak. You ask questions, let them do most of the talking. Schedule these check in calls for about 20 minutes with an agenda to just talk about stuff that you'd normally talk about while you're out getting a coffee together. And then action. 3. Let your team know when you're available, which really should be the vast majority of the time. This is when your team needs you the most. So let them know if you're unavailable because maybe you're on an all hands call yourself or you need to do personal stuff yourself.
