Poor Management Uncovered In Employee Covid Work-From-Home Survey
By: Jennifer Friebely
Tags: Work Life Balance, Work From Home, Management, Personal Development, Careers

Poor Management Uncovered In Employee Covid Work-From-Home Survey

About 400 employees at all levels were surveyed

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

About 400 employees at a large, privately held corporation responded to a survey. It was regarding their feelings about the pandemic, working from home (all office support staff has been on work from home since March 2020), and what it would take for them to return to the office.

For the sake of confidentiality, I can’t reveal this company or any details. I consulted for them and can only share the findings in general terms. Many of these findings are consistent with surveys at other large corporations.

Year over year financials are better

It’s important to note that the company’s sales, profits, and earnings were either the same year over year or increased each month. The corporation was not negatively impacted by having its employees work from home or by the pandemic. If anything, the company benefitted from reduced equipment and leased overhead in some areas.

Where employees agree

Almost all of the employees felt more productive and enjoyed working from home and would like to continue doing so after the pandemic — even one or two days a week. Some wanted to work remotely permanently.

Another area of agreement was with commuting. Everyone loves the financial, time, and environmental benefits that eliminating the commute to the office provides.

Lastly, employees with families and young children appreciate the improved work-life balance that working from home affords them.

Where employees disagree

There is disagreement within the ranks. While everyone feels favorable toward working from home in some form post-pandemic, the extent to which people work from home differs depending upon their role in the organization.

The sales managers (99% are men; it’s a male-dominated industry) wonder how they can monitor the support staff who are getting their jobs done. Otherwise, the company’s numbers and billings would not be at the levels they are. The managers are used to being in control of the support staff, yet it’s not the support staff that needs the focus.

Meanwhile, the sales agents who report directly to the sales managers complain that they want the offices open because “it would improve their morale to be around the support staff.” They also believe the office needs to reopen to train new staff.

Regardless of the pandemic, sales agents are free to come and go as they please because of their roles. They are why many of the support staff feel it is unsafe to be in the office. These agents are circulating everywhere and without consideration for the risk of contact.

Lastly, the sales managers are concerned with onboarding new employees — whether they are support staff or agents without a physical office.

It’s a middle management control issue

Unfortunately, the corporate culture is extremely outdated. The majority of the support staff are female. The majority of the sales agents are males, again — the corporate culture — and the industry in general. Naturally, the company promoted senior agents to branch managers and above. They are all male and heavily steeped in the old-fashioned culture.

Because they can’t get a handle on their agents — and helping them perform better and solving onboarding training issues — they are looking at the support staff as scapegoats. The support staff is already doing their jobs. Some don’t realize they are doing it unconsciously. It is so ingrained in the office culture.

However, this sort of “misdirected control” is what insecure managers do. It may or may not have anything to do with male versus female. It just happens to be made exponential because, in this case, it is also sexist. We saw questions in the survey from the agents like:

How can we see what the support staff is doing?

Well, how about the results. Are you getting paid? Are your clients getting their shi*t? The support staff is the machine that runs the place.

And then these same salespeople were griping about morale:

I feel my numbers would be better if everyone were back in the office supporting one another.

Or this guy who has someone lay his clothes out for him every morning. Is he the only one who hasn’t heard about webinars?

Who is going to make sure that my work gets done if we get someone new? Who will teach my new assistant how I like things done?

In conclusion

I hope and pray that the senior management of this corporation sees these middle managers’ behavior for what it is and forces them to do their jobs and manage and develop their sales teams.

No longer having a brick and mortar office cannot be an excuse not to develop and onboard people. There’s too much technology to make the claim that everyone needs to be in the office to be trained.

It is not incumbent on the least paid support staff to be the morale of a company. I hope someone sees their corporation reflected in this story and stops the madness. There are a thousand other companies just like the one I’m discussing here.