As the UK goes back into full lockdown, we’re sharing the lessons our clients learned last year, to help you support and manage your teams more successfully.
By Claire Campbell, Programme Director, Timewise
So, here we go again, back into lockdown. Morale is low and people are exhausted; frontline workers, in particular, have had little respite. For office-based employees, many of whom had been planning to spend some of their time back in the workplace, it’s time to pivot once again to enforced home working. And for parents across all sectors, home schooling has been added to the to-do list.
But despite the all problems the new lockdown is likely to bring, there is one positive: we have done this before. Organisations across the country, our clients among them, have learned what works and what doesn’t. They have tried new ways of working and communicating, sticking with the successes and rejecting the failures. And in the best cases, they have used what they’ve learned as a platform to develop more flexible cultures.
Acting on the lessons others have learned will help make managing lockdown easier this time around. So, based on our insights from our clients and our own experience, here are our suggestions for what to keep, and what to avoid, when your employees are working remotely.
One of the more surprising outcomes from the first lockdown was that the explosion in remote working brought people’s home lives out into the open. For some managers, who didn’t know about the responsibilities their employees had outside work, this provided real insight into their team members’ lives. And both sides reported that people felt more supported as a result.
It’s worth noting that in the interim months, some people’s personal and financial situations may have changed for the worse; and with figures suggesting 1 in 50 people have the virus, sick leave will be on the increase. So regular check-ins will be important; it shouldn’t be a one-off.
Following on from the above, the employers who managed their teams most successfully in the first lockdown were those who realised that a 9-5 set-up wasn’t practical, and made it possible for their employees to work to a schedule that matched their responsibilities.
At a simple level, this meant things like scheduling meetings after 10am, so that parents could set their children off on their studies, or creating a timesheet code for non-work responsibilities for those who record their time (and encouraging them to use it). Some of the best examples saw employers providing additional paid carers leave, and clarifying that employees would be judged on outputs, not inputs, with active support to do so.
The risk underlying this approach is that over-diligent employees will suffer from work creep; the best employers redesigned roles that were proving too much to manage, and made it clear that switching off was both necessary and expected.
The negative impact of the pandemic on morale and mental health has been well documented, and many employees miss the interaction and creativity of the workplace when fully home-based. In the previous lockdown, the best managers and leaders put in place ways of communicating which supported team cohesion, and helped overcome physical distance.
This isn’t simply a case of arranging online coffee mornings or setting up team What’s App chats, although these do have a role to play. Acknowledging the challenges created by lockdown, and asking how your team members are feeling, is an easy place to start. Encouraging regular conversations about their purpose and priorities will help them feel connected to what they are delivering and why. Training managers to identify mental health issues and signpost support is also valuable.
Zoom fatigue became a real problem in the first lockdown, with some employees hopping from online call to online call, leaving little time or energy to get any actual work done. It’s recognised that video meetings are more exhausting than face to face ones, and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that everyone was (in theory) available, and meeting capacity unlimited, making organisers more liberal than usual with their invites.
Among the ways our clients found to address this were to block out meeting-free days or periods of time, to set out protocols for length and invitations to meetings, and to make it clear when attendance was and wasn’t expected.
There’s no question that transitioning from working in close proximity to your team to managing them remotely takes a huge mindset shift. However, in the first lockdown, some dealt with this more successfully than others. Stories emerged of teams being expected to log in to an all-day Zoom call so their boss could keep an eye on them; others of companies installing tracking software on company laptops to virtually look over people’s shoulders.
As every successful manager of flexible employees knows, trust is central to a positive working relationship. Those who managed this well in the first lockdown set clear expectations for delivery, and then gave their teams space to achieve it. For those who were struggling, our workshops were a great help.
However long this new lockdown lasts, the consensus is that there will be no going back to the old ways of working. Employees have stated in survey after survey that they want to hang on to at least some of their flexibility, and employers have seen for themselves that there are real business benefits to offering it.
The organisations that recognise this are one step ahead. Instead of seeing this shift to more flexible working as a short-term interruption of the status quo, they’re working to develop a truly flexible culture. One that starts at the top, with inspiring leadership and role modelling, and which is brought to life by well-trained managers and on-board HR.
If you feel that you need support with managing lockdown this time around, we’re here to help. In response to the impact of the pandemic, and our clients’ requests, we’ve created the Timewise Flex-Positive programme, a four-step process that helps employers develop and implement a flexible working strategy to match the evolving workplace. If you’d like to know more, please email info@timewise.co.uk.
In the meantime, on behalf of the Timewise team, I’d like to wish you all the best with the challenges that the next few months will doubtless bring.
Published January 2021
