Winning Ways to Work from Home

Melody McGuirk

January 10th, 2021

If you didn’t think 2020 was bad enough, here in Ireland we are beginning 2021 on full lockdown. Since the new level 5 restrictions were put in place on New Years Eve, once again work is as remote as possible. This creates many challenges for people working from home and is especially hard on managers who are overseeing remote employees (which is something they might not be used to).

I read an article from the Harvard Business Review called “A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers” which outlined challenges and concerns that employees are facing such as getting distracted at home, the feeling of social isolation and finding it hard to obtain information from fellow employees. Managers are also struggling to effectively communicate with their employees and worry that they are not working efficiently.

I feel that managing employees from their homes is extremely difficult and definitely a new territory for many managers across the world. While working remotely it is clear to me that managers must try harder than they have ever before to keep their employees on task and motivated.

How Managers Can Aid Employees Working from Home

In the HBR article, Larson, B. Vroman, S. and Makarius, E. (2020) referred to a few ways in which managers can aid their employees who are working from home in the following ways:

1. Check in daily with employees

2. Establish different communication platforms

3. Set employee expectations

4. Spend time having informal conversations

5. Listen to your employees

Essential Skills

I think there are certain essential skills that managers must have to make sure that working from home is successful for their employees. This includes conceptual skills, technical skills, interpersonal skills, and political skill (Catherine Cronin, DL840-Intro to Management, ‘Lecture 1 - Introduction to Management.pptx’). Although all these skills are very important, I feel that when managing remote workers, human/interpersonal skills are crucial.

I think that the most valuable interpersonal skill a manager can have is self-awareness. This means that they have a high level of emotional intelligence and can understand & deal with their employee’s emotions and anxieties.

Furthermore, I feel empathy goes hand in hand with this. Having these social skills will help managers create a stronger relationship with their employees and will help increase their productivity. These skills will assist employees in reaching their full potential when working from home and will lead to a higher performance rate.

Conclusion

I really hope you enjoyed reading my third blog post. Once again if you enjoyed this please leave a comment and share. This is my first blog of 2021, hence I am a bit rusty! So please be kind in the comments below. See you all next week!

References

Hakinmhan, 2020, Work from home,social distance concepts on covid-19 outbreak situation.government policy solution.safety and health [image] Available at https://stock.adobe.com/ie/search?load_type=search&native_visual_search=&similar_content_id=&is_recent_search=1&search_type=recentsearch&k=Working+from+home&asset_id=332413869 [Accessed on 10th January 2021]

Larson, B. Vroman, S. and Makarius, E. March 18th 2020. A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers. Available at https://hbr.org/2020/03/a-guide-to-managing-your-newly-remote-workers [Accessed on 10th January 2021]

Cronin, C. 2020. Lecture 1 - Introduction to Management.pptx’. DL840- Introduction to Management [Accessed on 10th January 2021]