The Greatest Challenge in Managing Remote Employees: Inflexibility

You may think this is counter-intuitive. After all, the whole point of remote work is founded on flexibility – being flexible enough to work from anywhere, right? While flexibility allows people to work from pretty much anywhere, inflexibility is a mindset I have witnessed when people who work from home resist leaving home to travel to an office. This mindset is brought about by all the positive benefits of working from home – achieving greater work-life balance, increasing productivity, and gaining quiet time for concentration. Once employees have this, they are often reluctant to give it up.

Inflexibility Examples

I’ve worked out of a home office for 30 years and the notion of inflexibility hit home for me just a few years ago. I received a call from a work acquaintance who wanted to meet to pick my brain on an idea for his business. We were trying to set up a time to have lunch near his office in Washington, D.C., and he proposed several dates – none of which were convenient for me. I told him I would be in his area in a few weeks’ time, in the hopes we could schedule our meeting at a time when I would already be in D.C. for other business. When I suggested this, he got very frustrated and said, “If it’s going to take that long just to have lunch, why meet at all?” He hung up angry.

When I first started working from home, I would commute to downtown D.C. on a weekly basis for client meetings. It would take an hour-and-a-half each way – and all bets were off if there was a drop of rain. Over time, my in-person client meetings have become less frequent, due in part to improved technology, videoconferencing, and delegation of tasks to project managers. In addition, many of our clients now work from home on a regular basis and are comfortable with videoconferences in place of face-to-face meetings. Thus, I have become accustomed to conducting business from my home office and seldom go downtown for meetings.

So, when my friend tried to schedule the lunch meeting, I really did not want to leave the comforts of home to commute at least 3 hours and find parking just to eat lunch for an hour while we discussed his business ideas. This was not my idea of a productive use of time. However, after some thought, I realized that I was being inflexible rather than considering his wishes – so I called back and we scheduled a meeting for the following week.

This event has stuck with me for years. I have seen inflexibility resurface time and time again in both myself and others I work with. Here are a few examples:

• A regular teleworker complains every time she is required to go into the office, exclaiming that it is a waste of time and she can get more work done at home.
• A remote worker is resistant to attending a local industry conference because the commute disrupts the schedule he has become accustomed to.
• A coworker packs her lunch time with errands and is reluctant to give up that time to attend in-person meetings.

Remote Work is Attractive to Employees

Nowadays, the average employee changes jobs every 4.6 years. To attract and retain key talent, many organizations are taking extra measures to promote a positive work environment and to offer fringe benefits. Examples include allowing remote work, flexible time off (“flextime”), portable computers, and smartphones. All of these benefits enable employees to actively strive for a work-life balance. So much so that employees can become “over-acclimated” to working away from the office. They enjoy the freedom that remote work offers and are reluctant to give it up.

Most businesses still maintain core business hours. Prior to remote work, your time at the office was monitored by your manager and you were expected to be dedicated to work during business hours. If that meant changing priorities on work assignments, impromptu meetings, addressing colleague questions, etc., it was all part of the job.

Now that many of us routinely work remotely, we have a lot more control over our communication and the structure of our day and time. In a sense, we are our own bosses when it comes to how we manage our time. We tend to conduct our work in a way that fits our personal preferences. Some like an early start, others work through lunch, and some structure their work hours around family obligations. However, this can leave managers feeling like the work is out of control. It can be difficult to find employees available for last-minute work urgencies. Employees may resist taking on new assignments that could interfere with flextime plans, or they may be reluctant to leave the home office to attend client meetings or networking functions. I have certainly been guilty of many of these inflexible moments myself.

4 Tips to Encourage Flexibility

So, what can you do to help encourage flexibility among your remote team members? Here are a few tips.

Schedule in-person meetings

It is helpful to schedule in-person meetings on a regular basis to bring remote workers into the office and to keep them accustomed to leaving the comforts of the home office from time to time. If you manage teleworkers, this would mean scheduling days when everyone is expected to be in the office at the same time. It is important to bring teams together so that they can have face-to-face exchanges and understand their role in achieving the goals of the team.

Do something interactive

During those times when people are together, my suggestion would be to take advantage of the togetherness and structure some time for team interaction. Perhaps pose a question (How can we improve X service? Or, what were the three most insightful lessons we learned when we last performed Y service?). Have the team break up into smaller groups to discuss and present feedback to the team as a whole. In other words, if you are going to have everyone together, give them a task that can only be completed when they are all present. People can catch up on work status anytime but they cannot have face-to-face interaction unless they are all working together.

Establish goals to get employees out of the home office

If you manage employees who work remotely much or all of the time, you may want to establish goals for attending conferences, team meetings, coworker lunches, etc., on a routine basis. Establishing a goal that can be tracked – like through formalized objectives and key results in a performance management system – can help establish flexibility as a key part of employee performance. This can help promote a culture of flexibility among your remote work teams. It can also help employees grow and stay connected.

Employee recognition

We use a couple forms of employee recognition: weekly high-fives through an application called 15Five and micro-bonuses through an application called Bonusly. Everyone on the team uses these to recognize coworkers that have done a good job. In managing remote employees, I have started to reward employees who exhibit flexibility. All of the recognitions are made public to the team. Again, this is just another small way to help shift the culture of a remote team toward being more flexible in pursuing the goals of the organization.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t trade my home office for the world. It is the place I can be most productive, achieve a healthy work-life balance, and help preserve the environment by keeping my vehicle off the road. But as with anything, there are challenges, and right now inflexibility is the one I am most focused on trying to counteract. And as a manager, I must set the example by being more flexible myself.

So the next time I get a call from an acquaintance to discuss business ideas or get invited to a local networking meeting, I hope I will remember to be flexible. If it’s a beautiful day and I’m cranking on an assignment so I can take the dogs on a relaxing walk, I hope I will at least pause to evaluate my priorities before I go fetch the leash.