1/ Finding Balance
The way you approach people management during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak will have a direct impact on your employer's branding and your employees’ happiness. Building a structural process that is easy to follow is essential. Of course, you want to avoid micromanagement encroaching on the employee’s self-management ability. You want to keep the same level of freedom to be masters of their workday carrying out the outlined project milestones and holding the scheduled meetings, which are now taken to cyberspace.
2/ The Need of New Tools
To ensure that you can continue your business and maintain a good company spirit of the remote teams and homebound employees, they need to be given reliable tools almost immediately. Yes, you were used to working in a certain way; your employees were used to some established tools. Remember, we are living in an unprecedented era, a time of crisis, and the global phenomenon asks most of us to explore new ways of doing things. There may raise dozens of questions forcing you to question the status quo.
The majority of companies automatically switched to teleconferencing using tools such as Zoom or Webex. Another area is attendance management. Quite a number of companies have already based their employee attendance on trust by using exception-based timesheets. You can consider keeping the exception-based timesheets or you can start daily project time tracking. That is not to undermine trust in your people, rather the aim is to ensure clear communication. Hourly project monitoring broken down into tasks proves to be a valuable avenue of keeping track of the projects’ development remotely. Each work environment is different, and the choice of the most effective solution requires an individual approach.
3/ Employee Feedback
If employee feedback was a part of your company culture before, now the need for it has been elevated to number 1 on the employee happiness ladder. Amidst isolation, a regular 'well done' and feedback on the completed tasks is ever so important. It does lift the spirit and motivates minds. Sure, the dynamics between leader & employee are very specific at an individual level, however, there is a baseline: the feedback must be regular! A monthly exchange of thoughts reflecting on the past weeks asks for a simple tool. You don’t want anything complex. Software with a feedback module incorporated into the monthly timesheet page might be an option. This way, the feedback becomes an integral part of the timesheets´ approval process.
If possible, go for only one solution covering both needs: the one, which records the attendance with start/stop/break buttons and generates monthly timesheets with incorporated employee feedback. We are in this together! Maintain your balance and keep up the positive spirits.
