In a recent newsletter, I shared some of the findings from “The State of Organisations 2023” research report from McKinsey. I talked about some of the obstacles McKinsey suggested could be experienced on the road to remote working or a distributed working model and added a few of my own whilst suggesting ways to overcome those obstacles.

McKinsey also talked about the opportunities that a new way of working offers but it does not come about by tweaking old policies and practices. It requires new norms suited to a new kind of workplace.

McKinsey suggests five areas where you can start to focus and in this newsletter, I will add my take on their suggestions.

1.     Reset performance expectations

2.     Be transparent

3.     Be purposeful about where people work

4.     Remove ambiguity about working practices

5.     Test and learn

Reset performance expectations

McKinsey makes two statements regarding performance expectations, “… managers emphasising work outputs rather than time spent working…” and “an environment in which on-site and off-site colleagues feel that they are on an equal footing.”

I believe there are two things at play here.

Firstly, we need to enable leaders/managers to measure the right things in the right way at the right time. Secondly, we need this to be consistently applied across the entire organisation regardless of where or when an employee works.

It became blatantly clear that managers were not able to measure the right things at the start of the pandemic. The global demand for employee surveillance software went up by nearly 80% in March 2020, compared with the 2019 monthly average, according to research by Top10vpn.

The scariest part is that it looks like it could be the new normal. Demand for employee surveillance software was as strong in 2022 as in 2021 at 57% higher than in 2019, a bigger increase than in 2020. In 2023, it remains 51% above 2019 levels.

These managers have what is termed “productivity paranoia.” The term was coined by Microsoft to describe the situation where managers fear that employees are not working when they are working remotely.

The sad indictment of these managers is that when they had a line of sight of an employee in the office for 8 hours, they still did not know if they were working. They assumed that they were. These misguided souls believe that hours equate to outcomes.

At the start of the year, I wrote a newsletter called “Resolution or Resolve?” which explored the need to reset the performance management system. I said:

“Even before the pandemic, less than one in five HR leaders believed that performance management was effective at achieving its objective according to Gartner. This must be a concern. If the process was broken before the pandemic, failure to act now will destroy it.  Leaders must have the resolve to change how they handle the performance management of a remote workforce. If they don’t, trust will disintegrate, employee engagement will fall, and employees will walk out of the door.” 

I discussed the need to make the following changes. I will leave you to read the newsletter for yourselves.

Be transparent

 McKinsey raises the importance of having a single source of truth for everyone in the organisation and suggests that this could be in the form of a handbook and other documents that lay out the rules and norms and is continually updated.

One of the best examples of this is the GitLab team handbook. The introduction to the handbook states:

“The GitLab team handbook is the central repository for how we run the company. When printed, it consists of over 2,000 pages of text. To uphold the GitLab value of being transparent, the handbook is open to the world, and we welcome feedback. Please make a merge request to suggest improvements or add clarifications. To ask questions, use issues.

For a very specific set of internal information, we maintain a separate Internal Handbook.”

In an article for Harvard Business Review, GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij says:

“One big concern about distributed workforces is that people will miss out on the knowledge transfer that comes from being in the same place and able to consult colleagues spontaneously. The handbook helps us solve that problem because it provides a single source of truth accessible to anyone at any time. Our team members can’t stop by a peer’s office to ask for help, but they can consult an up-to-date, collectively edited resource to get the answers they need.”

“GitLab is fortunate to have operated this way since the beginning. At co-located start-ups culture tends to emerge and spread informally. But as organizations expand into multiple offices, cities, and countries, formal documentation and reinforcement of norms and values become more important. Many companies struggle with the transition. We never had to make that shift. We’ve always known how to ensure that our team, while fully dispersed, is nonetheless in sync.”

Be purposeful about where people work

Employees do not want to make a commute to an office to conduct work that they could have done elsewhere. It makes no sense to spend 2 hours on a commute to achieve what you could have done remotely. 

Organisations must work with their employees to define the activities that make sense to be conducted in person when there are advantages to being in the presence of colleagues in the same place.

In March I wrote a newsletter called “Was It Worth The Commute?” and proposed that this question should be asked by every employee when they are working in the office.

“This is the key question to determine what work should be done where. If there was a marked increase in productivity, performance, innovation and collaboration outcomes, then the answer would be “yes.”

The commute to the office must be for a specific outcome that cannot be achieved elsewhere such as working remotely.”

I have also previously suggested that there are only 5 reasons to work in the office.

Preference – if you prefer to work in the office, for whatever reason, then do so. It is your choice.

Purpose – if it makes sense to co-locate to establish a shared sense of purpose, work on team values, and build team cohesion, then do so.

Participation – a team decision that co-location would result in better participation for activities such as deep-dive discovery work, ideation and innovation workshops, energetic collaboration sessions, or active networking.

Productivity - If the team decide that they will be far more productive working from the office, then that is a good reason to do so. If an individual decides they will be far more productive working from the office, then they should do so.

Party - a good reason to get together in person and utilise the office space is to party. Celebrations are far more effective when conducted in person. 

Where people work must have a purpose.

Remove ambiguity about working practices

There must be clear and consistent communication protocols. In last week’s newsletter, I talked about the blur between professional life and personal life when there are no protocols in place.

There must be clear guidance on when to use synchronous communication and when to use asynchronous communication. The channels to be used also need to be clearly defined.

Synchronous communications are scheduled, real-time interactions by phone, instant messaging, video, or in person.  Asynchronous communication happens on your own time and doesn’t need scheduling.

At many organisations such as GitLab, asynchronous communication is the default. Employees use email, project management tools (e.g., Trello, Asana), workspaces (e.g., Confluence, Slack), and direct messaging (e.g., WhatsApp, Twitter) but do not expect an immediate response. There is a lag between when someone sends a message and when the party receiving the message interprets it. This is ideal for when the message is not urgent, and the receiver can consume the communication at their own pace. It may be the only way for employees with different time zones to communicate effectively without sacrificing their personal time outside of working hours.

Everyone should work together to determine the etiquette around when to use each type of communication and the tools that are going to be utilised. This should be documented in an employee handbook and subject to continual updates.

There is plenty of guidance available on when to use each type of communication, the pros and cons, and the available tools, such as this from Status Net.

Test and learn 

Everyone in the organisation should be encouraged and enabled to provide feedback about what is working well and what needs to be improved. If no one provides feedback, nothing will improve.

Finding the right working model, along with the codes of conduct, protocols, guidance, and supporting tools will not happen overnight. It is a journey of experimentation, trial and error, shared experiences, and lessons learned.

When things do not go as planned, they should not be framed as failures but as setbacks and learning opportunities. Leaders must be prepared to share lessons learned even if that means admitting that they got it wrong.

No working model is static. External and internal organisational factors and influences will result in changes to the model. It must be subject to continual improvement.

Summary

Leaders must learn to measure performance on outcomes and value delivered – not hours at a desk. A single source of truth for everyone in the organisation is imperative. Where people work must have a purpose and the protocols around communication and channels must be clear and consistent. Finally, this is a journey without a final destination as the end result will continue to evolve to adapt to an ever-changing environment.