Are your managers adapting their performance management tactics to suit remote working?

Huge variances in manager strengths mean it’s vital your organisation implements the strategies and process for effective management of workflows, and effective performance management of remote employees.  If your business is talking the talk, but the managers are not walking the walk – your employees will.    Effective performance management keeps employees engaged and productive, and is vital for employee retention. Here’s our 4 top tips for effective remote performance management:

1. Ditch the annual reviews and make check-ins ongoing, regular and deliberately scheduled

Performance management in many organisations is an annual review – but in these uncertain and disruptive times it’s important to initiate additional interactions, to set up formalised, regular manager-report check-ins, which give employees the opportunity to raise concerns and keeps managers fingers on the pulse of what is going on in their teams.

The single most powerful weapon in a Manager’s arsenal is two-way communication.  But to ensure a consistently good management approach across the business, it’s important to add some structure for Managers, on how these regular check-ins happen.  Communications need to be regular, open and empathetic and employees should feel that they are supported and listened to.

2. Be flexible and thoughtful in your choice of communication platforms for reviews

Video calls enable you to see the body-language and facial expressions of your direct reports, but aren’t always the best tool for not in person reviews.  Even though they replicate the real-life environment of being together, the distractability of being able to see each other can sometimes be a hinderance to honest conversations.  When face to face in person isn’t available, employees often find it easier to express themselves more clearly through audio only interactions.  Or consider putting them more at ease with a “walking” talk – if you can meet face to face outside, this can work well but if not, just having both parties out for a walk can naturalise the conversation.   Consider all the options of what might work best and encourage Managers to personalise their approach to suit individual’s needs.  If you were previously using survey tools for performance management, now is the time to recognise that this is not enough on its own – get talking to your employees.

3. Create clear workflows, outputs and definitions of success

Working remotely reduces immediate visibility of the progress of work, unless a project management technology is being used or there are agreed milestone check-ins.  Iterative discussions and interactions throughout a project are far more effective and efficient as they prevent veering off course and also identify any delays which might be happening as a result of procrastination, lack of understanding or uncertainty on the needs of the tasks – far better to find this out immediately and provide the necessary support than to discover 2 weeks later things are delayed due to lack of understanding and progress.  It’s important to ensure your line managers are deliberately and regularly creating opportunities for project check-ins and have visibility of project progress.

4. Review your Manager’s remote management skills

Being a good manager in an office environment doesn’t always translate to being a good manager of remote or distributed teams.  Your Managers may need additional training, support, information and guidance to ensure that their approach and their communication is adapting to suit their new environment.  Remotework360 will be developing training opportunities for your managers and employees – make sure you’re subscribed to be notified when they launch.