Keeping up with home work
Let's be realistic. The novelty of working from home is starting to wear off for many. Motivation is waning, the demands of home-schooling children and meeting KPIs, as well as dealing with mounting anxiety, has some of us longing for the security of the office.
But given that a return to "normal" working conditions could be far off yet, how do employees and employers stay the course and keep the wheels of business turning?
While some managers may be inclined to resort to metrics to closely track staff productivity, management expert Valerie Dalton hopes other habits and thinking might prevail.
"Many managers are in the same boat as their employees right now, also at home struggling to structure their day, dealing with kids, dealing with their own worries; there seems to be a growing sense of people banding together," she says.
If managers are all about trying to maintain productivity and keeping their organisations afloat, and not attending to the fact that their staff are experiencing much higher levels of stress and worry, then their efforts will be counter-productive.
Different - and perhaps more reasonable - notions of productivity are emerging. "Given the extraordinary circumstances, many managers are advising staff that it's the amount of work they get done rather than necessarily the amount of time they spend working that's important," Valerie says. "It's a delicate balancing act between seeing staff as whole people who are experiencing these really unusual challenges, and trying to maintain a level of productivity that will ensure the organisation comes through this crisis. Empathy is a powerful commodity, always, but particularly now. Everyone needs to be kind to themselves and to those around them."
Several studies pre-dating COVID-19 concluded that people working from home are more productive. However, it can come at the expense of team cohesion.
"Maintaining weekly staff meetings, using Zoom or other online tools, helps keep distant colleagues in touch with one another, enables them to share experiences and stay motivated," Valerie says. "It's also an important time for staff to be invited into conversations about the future of the business, and I hope it leads to the adoption of different management styles.
"At times like this, managers are advised to draw their teams in and draw from their collective intelligence and experience, rather than thinking they have to come up with all the answers themselves. The more voices you get, the more perspectives you get, the richer the response you can formulate. It's better from both a staff morale and productivity perspective, and relieves some of the manager's burden.
"It would be nice to think we will see more inclusiveness, consultation and collaboration as a result of this crisis. And maybe, on the other side, there will be less of an 'us and them' attitude among some managers."
Dr Valerie Dalton lectures in management in the University of New England Business School and, for 13 years, was manager of the university's Graduate School of Business.
