What to do when my reporters always work from home (WFH) ?

With ever-increasing trend of work from home preferences, it becomes difficult for managers to manage the productivity of reporters and the timelines of projects.

It is true that when some people take high advantages at workplace, which soon affect the rest. While it is difficult to curtail your reporters from leveraging the perks of the employment, it is the responsibility of a manager to ensure that the productivity doesn't get impaired at the same time. First try to root cause the reason for such behavior of your employees using the questions given below. Then check the solutions and see what to do in order to alter the situation.

Organisation and Role

1. Does the role of employee demand them to be at office for productivity?

2. Is it the general norms of the organisation of is it a new issue that is caused by my reporter?

3. What is the WFH policy of the company?

Employee

1. Is the reporter's work dependent on anyone else?

2. Is anyone dependent on the reporter's work to complete theirs?

3. Is the reporter completing all the assigned tasks for the sprint or day?

4. Is the employee satisfied with the job and the team?

5. Does the employee have some family problems that they need to take care of?

6. How often does the employee take WFH and how long?

Self-Assessment

1. How often do I take work from home?

2. Am I regular at work? If not, am I indirectly provoking my employees to WFH?

3. Have I given the employee their deserving hike or promotion?

4. What actions have I taken to solve the issue and did that work?

5. Am I overloading other employees who are regular to get the irregular employees tasks completed?

Solutions

Conduct Regular 1-on-1s

Your employees may have concerns regarding the workplace and maybe hesitant to open up to you. Give them the trust that you will keep it private (and keep it private), and help them share the problems.

1. If it is regarding their salary or promotion, as in most of the cases, be transparent and tell them where they stand, and what they need to do to get their desired hike and promotion, or a role change. Dive deeper with them about the projects they are working on, the targets they have achieved and how their work actually impacts the business, than just instructing them to get a document ready. Only if they knew what mattered, it wouldn't have been a problem to them in the first place. By doing this, you can show that you are really observing their work and care for them.

2. If it is a family problem, ask them how long will their family need the full support and offer them to avail their leave if necessary. Taking leave is better the unproductive WFHs, as it may spoil the rest of the employees too. If the reason is genuine, see how their current responsibilities, the effort required, the dependencies, and the timelines go together. If you can foresee problems, delegate their responsibilities to others, de-prioritize unnecessary works from the team and give them tasks that they can practically accomplish. Keep others in the team informed of the emergency and request them to balance the priorities. This will help you earn trust with your full team, and of course, this will increase the loyalty of the employee once they are back to work.

3. If the employee finds their work repetitive or boring, talk to the employee what ongoing projects they would like to work on and see if you can fit them in without other priorities and employees getting affected. Or tell them of the upcoming projects and assure that you would loop them in in a few weeks or the following quarter. They will find the necessary confidence to put up with their regular routine alone until then. If their routine is a priority, see if a replacement for the task would be feasible, or if automation can be done. But convincing the employee every time to adjust with the routine is always a red flag in the long run.

4. If the employee feels they are overloaded at workplace and see WFH as the guardian angel, work with them to understand why they feel they are overloaded and try to understand the situation. Get all necessary information, let them know you will see what can be done, and immediately schedule a follow up meeting within 2 days. See if they are really overloaded, and see the productivity of the rest of the team members. Ensure you neither let the bar down to earn trust, nor you analyse the situation with bias for your favorite employees. On the follow up meeting, explain the priorities everyone else is working on and let them know your views and solutions for the same.

5. If they are looking for a job change and are trying to get more time for the same, let them know they cannot compromise their current priorities in order to work on job change and upskilling. If this has been going for very long, see if you can help them with an internal job change. Else, tell them they should probably consider quitting job if they are really passionate about new opportunities. If they are in financial need, they need to be regular at delivering priorities even if they choose to work from home.

Make your employee connect to scrum and meetings from home

If you follow a scrum practice, or daily meetings to get track of employee's progress, make sure you loop in people working from home. If they are not available at that time, make sure they send a mail or report their work in a chat forum where everyone in the team is present. It is common that reporters take WFH to cover up their unproductive days. By doing this, the tension will still be on while reporting to everyone, and the chances of getting their daily tasks done would be higher.

Call your employee on phone to get updates

It is easy to cheat on a mail or a chat. But, it needs more experience to lie on a call. Make a video or audio call by end of day to ensure that the priority is delivered. This will keep the reporters mind occupied of the call they would have to face at the end of the day, and will definitely show more progress. Also, they will understand that they need to take a leave if they are not willing to work that day.

Keep everyone else in the team informed of people working from home

In order to let everyone in the team know that you are monitoring people working from home, just as people showing up at office everyday, you need to inform everyone the reason why they have availed WFH and the task they are working on and the progress. You can do this in the daily meetings or scrum so that dependencies can prioritize their works accordingly. This will refrain existing regular employees to take work from home.

Conduct Team Building Activities once every week

If the workplace is cold, or if people in the team are not getting along too well, it will increase the ego in the team which will cause less interaction and help within the team. In order to avoid the same, block an hour every week for team building activities and make your reporters responsible to conduct activities in turns. Hand over responsibility to the most younger ones in the team until it becomes a practice. It is the "feeling of importance" that keeps every employee happier at workplace. Make sure to offer the same from time to time. Appreciate and recognize everyone's efforts without any bias.

Loop into different engaging projects

Sometimes the employees may not know why they are disinterested in the first place, try to allocate them to different projects and see how they react, especially if they have very little work experience. They may find new people or new projects more interesting than their current priorities. Some may find higher responsibilities more fascinating and may show an increased passion for work.