Life is now remote and companies should be following along.
By: Carlos Cárdenas
Tags: Remote, Remote Working, Advice, Management And Leadership, Trust

Every day on the news we see there is a new big company or startup announcing that they are going remotely indefinitely. Companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Platzi, Rappi, etc. This, of course, has several implications for the companies and the employees.

Photo by Ken Tomita from Pexels

One of the most important of that implications is that the payment for the time spent sitting in a chair is over. This requires a deep change in the way traditional companies used to work, we can’t ask someone to have a digital camera on throughout the entire day, because the working space is now shared with family members, visitors, and other people that have different intimacy reasons, reasons we can not ignore.

On the other hand, we must have a relationship of trust with the employees. Most companies claim they encourage freedom and respect, but when you look deeper, you have spy software installed, hourly logs, mandatory all-day live calls to ensure people are sitting working, and a lot of practices that in real life just frustrate the employees in a way that sooner or later they’ll start looking in another direction and end up leaving the company.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

Another thing to bear in mind is that we are at home, we are not at an office anymore, we have our families with us, our pets, our friends. Kids interrupting meetings, dogs barking, the neighbor that just bought a new power tool and it’s cutting everything he can at home, anyway, anything that you might consider annoying, are now things that will show up in your daily workday, so don’t overreact, forgive, and always think everyone is doing it’s best to be working from home and safe.

If you can’t build a relationship of trust with your employees there is something wrong with your company. You should be able to hire someone whom you can entrust a task or problem and be sure this person will deliver the solution you ask for using the given resources, and even if he or she can’t you’ll have feedback and proposals for a different solution to the given situation.

Build an online community, look at other companies, keep your employees interconnected, encourage them to discuss not only work-related topics, now more than ever we need to work with friends.

Provide the tools, your team needs to communicate, Zoom, Teams, Slack, Google Chat, Google Meetings, etc any communication tool is a must-have tool for every company nowadays. Please don’t use social networks for this, don’t allow company communication through Facebook or Instagram, choose a couple of tools, and try to have everyone on board and stick to them.

You have to stop thinking passively, you, as a manager, director, owner, etc, need to have a proactive attitude with your employees and prospects, you need to communicate, you need to be open to any comments or suggestions they might have, especially now that we are all going remote.

The world is changing, and your company should be following along, embrace remote work, trust your employees, and provide them with the tools they need, your company will succeed only if your team is successful.