Australian businesses are relatively new to the concept of ‘working from home / remote working’.
Many businesses would have been aware of it, but small businesses in particularly, are more unlikely to have had anything in place prior to the COVID-19 situation.
For those businesses new to the concept, we get it, there’s no doubt some concerns around maintaining productivity in this difficult time.
Today, there are lots of electronic data available to employers, with workers more reliant on applications and software to interact with their managers and colleagues.
However, this is not the time to be increasing this or replacing face to face communication with technology.
Right now, it’s more having good conversations and about relationships and trust.
This is new for both you and your employees. New things always take some time getting used to and some adjustment by all involved and this is no different.
Increasing your monitoring of employees could also have a negative impact on productivity, but also your relationship. Your relationship with your employees will have a big influence on levels of trust.
In the current climate, the way managers interact with employees is critical to productivity because it will be the primary point of contact with you.
We are in a very unique situation right now, so each employee will have different situations and pressures at present, so having conversations and understanding their situation will help to best work out how it will best work for everyone.
The key is to focus on outcomes, as opposed to processes. Agree with your team members outcomes and a timeline, but given the current situation, ensure you provide them some flexibility and autonomy around how employees achieve that.
