Now that we are more than six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, people have become accustomed to working from home (WFH) and added some new tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which allow remote meetings and connections.
While the pandemic is affecting every organization, it is not creating equal outcomes - not even close. Sure, we may all reside in the same ocean, but we are clearly in different boats. Some of our clients are having the best year of their existence while others are reducing staff, eliminating locations or going out of business altogether. The only universal aspect of COVID-19 is that all of our clients have had some, if not all, of their employees working from home at some time. This new "remote workplace" has shined a light upon organizational culture and how different management styles fare during this new normal.
When my firm designs a cyberinfrastructure, we design it for that specific client. We've learned an owner's risk mitigation requirements vary significantly even within the same regulated industry. This affects how the infrastructure is designed for resiliency, fault-tolerance and disaster recovery. For firms within the same industry, using the same accounting and line-of-business applications as the organizational operating systems can have wildly different infrastructure designs based on the culture of the organization.
Every organization has a culture. Sometimes that culture is consciously defined and nurtured, but when it is not nurtured, then it will evolve organically. A firm's culture is its set of values, beliefs, principles and processes to determine how they make decisions and interact with their respective constituencies of shareholders, employees and customers.
WFH has revealed that some companies are not culturally designed for a remote workforce. Some companies simply cannot be successful with a largely WFH team because their employees must interact at a specific place, like in the manufacturing, hospitality, restaurant and retail industries. Please understand I'm not talking about profitability; I'm talking about management's philosophy and how it impacts the type of workers they choose for their company.
Companies have two basic types of employees and processes: directed and managed. Some firms believe each employee at a certain level is replaceable because it is just a learned skill. They feel they can hire people within a certain standard, then apply consistent management to the process in order to achieve the outcome they desire. They manage the outcome every step of the way, and employees are instructed to immediately seek direction if they cannot complete a step. Once the employee finishes a step, they stop until their manager provides the next step in the process. Firms with a large number of customer-facing employees operate in this manner, but this management style and hiring practice applies to many industries, both blue and white-collar. These firms with managed employees are finding WFH particularly difficult because managers are not "seeing" the work-in-progress to provide feedback. Managed employees typically reside in a culture that relies heavily upon a large amount of informal communication daily to operate smoothly, which can't be achieved via Zoom or chat. Companies with directed employees seem to be handling WFH better because their management style is to define the final outcome and then measure whether it was achieved. These firms allow employees at the same level of the company to perform their jobs with greater latitude as long as the outcome is achieved.
Organizations are finding that some of their employees who appeared to be the directed type really need ongoing management that is harder to provide during WFH. As you look at your own company or team, realize that technology is not a solution unto itself; technology is a bridge between effective people and effective processes. During WFH, some of your most valued employees will not be as effective because they need more management and interaction than others to succeed. Before you permanently reduce your office space, you may want to take inventory of your culture and your team members.
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