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How Managers Working from Home Solve Problems

  • May 5, 2022
  • Posted by: Dr. Cindy Banyai
  • Category: Thoughts
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By Dr. Bob Preziosi

A new report released earlier this week found that 40-70% of managers will be working from home. This isn’t new for some managers but for all managers the added variable of the pandemic has helped create problems for all WFH managers. How have managers solved the problems that they have run into?

This blog and my next one will discuss how managers have regained momentum to get people and work back on track.
Carl Flores, the Service Manager for Trane Technologies in Manhattan, says that filling an open position has become a real issue since in-person interviews are not allowed. His solution was to use Microsoft Teams with all cameras operational so the candidate could see faces and his team could read body language. The interview was preceded by an internal meeting to build a structure so the interviewers don’t speak over each other during the interview. This worked out very well for him.

virtual interview
Sometimes managing from home leads to non-stop working. When you aren’t closing an office or walking away from work, it can lead to non-stop working. This was the problem for Leslie Harrington, National Accounts Director for Apotex. She addressed this by setting boundaries for when to shut down. While this is certainly a matter of building a new habit, it would be helpful to have an alarm go off on your cell phone or write a note to yourself and put it on your computer screen. Be sure to reward yourself for changing your behavior. You don’t want to relapse into your old habit of working through happy hour and/dinner!

Rita Smith, a former senior Executive at Ingersoll Rand, has had the same experience as Harrington. Rita believes that developing a feeling about work as a place to come to and leave from can be a powerful way to overcome the elongated work day. She also suggests that folks need to be trained how to use Zoom appropriately for many tasks especially building connections and collegiality.

virtual meeting
For some people the lockdown and social distancing didn’t feel like a problem at all. A few months into the pandemic many realized that we had overcompensated our virtual togetherness. Karishma Veljee, President of DigitalHire, said that she and her associates all felt burned out and productivity had fallen. She pulled her team together, and they realized that they had to get back to more execution and less Zoom. Karishma said that they cut out unnecessary meetings and regained their momentum. Other people have pointed out to me that an audit of their meeting activity resulted in rolling back the number of meetings. This can be difficult to manage as Karishma suggests because you have to maintain appropriate “touch” for your people.

Speaking of meetings, Sabia Cherebin, a Customer Service Manager at British Airways, had a problem with a couple of folks showing up in person for a virtual meeting that had been on the calendar for three weeks.

Their attendance was critical and the meeting could not be postponed. She moved the meeting to a place where social distancing was adequate, while the other attendees attended virtually. After the meeting she let the two individuals know the rationale behind the virtual meetings. She let all stakeholders know that all meetings would be virtual until further notice reminding folks that there were dial-in and connectivity options. Sabia planned her next meeting for a day when she was working from home to ensure that the meeting would be virtual.

Gianni Quintana, Founder and CEO of digitechi, balances work on two continents. While much of their work as a mar-tech demand consultancy is virtual, their main challenge has been setting up consistent touch points internally and with clients to humanize the post-pandemic work/collaboration experience. Also, lack of balance in meeting times with clients can cause delays in projects and communications. Lack of in-person events has led to greater use of Zoom, LinkedIn Live, and podcasts, such as SmartChickens. These tools have helped offset the lack of connecting with prospects, peers and clients.

 

Originally posted here.

Author: cindy

Dr. Cindy Banyai is the Vice President of Strategy and Operations at the Institute of Organization Development. She has worked in the field of organization development since 2006 as head of her own consulting firm specializing in evaluation and starting a nonprofit providing housing for homeless families. She is the founder and Principal Consultant of Banyai Evaluation and Consulting, LLC. She also teaches in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Florida Gulf Coast University. Dr. Banyai received her Master’s and Ph.D. from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan where her research focused on community development, public administration, evaluation, and governance. Her works have been published in peer-reviewed journals and she has published, edited, and contributed to several books on public administration and community development. Dr. Banyai has worked in the field of community development since 2000, exercising skills such as facilitation, research and reporting, and participatory engagement practices. In 2012, she joined a start-up nonprofit as its first Executive Director to develop the organization’s infrastructure and practice to provide housing and services to homeless families. She gained valuable insights about poverty, housing, and homelessness, while conducting research and evaluation for the organization and participating in local resource networks and advocacy groups. She received the Donald W. Littrell New Professional Award in 2015 from the Community Development Society for her work on regional initiatives at the Southwest Florida Community Foundation and for her commitment to community-based advocacy organizations such as BikeWalkLee. Dr. Banyai continues to serve the field of community development as the President of the Community Development Society and representative to the United Nations for International Association for Community Development, an NGO with UN consultative status. Through her consulting work, Dr. Banyai has worked with civil society leaders and government officials from more than 25 countries. Recently she focused on crafting an evaluation culture in Southwest Florida working with the Southwest Florida Community Foundation. Her initial work there focused on outcomes then expanded to include nonprofit capacity building, community research to inform grant processes, grant scoring, assessment of regional nonprofit capacity, collective impact process design, and impact evaluation of regional initiatives. She has also engaged in strategic planning and organization development with numerous local nonprofit organizations, as well as with global partners and companies through the global online training company the Institute for Organization Development. Evidence of Dr. Banyai’s advocacy of evaluation and its use is found in the increased evaluation capacity of nonprofits she has coached and the progress that has been made in data-based decision-making in collaborative initiatives. She also worked to institutionalize evaluation in governments and nonprofits around the world through technical assistance for the Japan International Cooperation Agency. There she helped national and local government actors in Nepal, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Greater Africa, Tunisia, and Chile.  In recognition of her evaluation work, she received the 2018 Evaluation Advocacy and Use Practice Award from the American Evaluation Association.