How will leaders manage remote work after the COVID-19 crisis?

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):

[Inaudible]

Speaker 2 (00:02):

People of earth. We have come to upgrade your cosmic consciousness DNA activation. Ready in three

Speaker 1 (00:18):

[Inaudible].

Craig P. Anderson (00:19):

Hi, welcome to Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership in exile. I'm Craig Anderson

Lou Quinto (00:23):

And I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson (00:25):

Today we're going to be talking about, you know, a little bit in the future here as how leaders are going to have to deal with the remote work question. And after we get through this Corona virus pandemic for a lot of leaders, this is the first time they've really had a remote workforce being the rule instead of the exception. And the acceptance of remote work has grown dramatically over the last several years, but it's still really not the norm. But what we've seen through this time is that it's actually possible to push through a lot of the technical barriers of work from home and what remains really is the cultural and leadership issues that people have to face. So that in this episode we're going to just check out us how leaders can think through a new world of remote work when this crisis has passed. And Lou, just a couple of little statistics for you.

Craig P. Anderson (01:06):

A recent study from Upwork projected that over third of full time employees are projected to work remotely in the next 10 years and 63% of companies have at least some remote workers, but no policy around remote work. So there's lots of to talk about here and today we're going to break it down into three areas. One is what does this mean for the leadership mindset? What kind of mindset do you have to have as a leader, as you faced this issue? And what's the employee's mindset is they deal with this shit you. And then finally we'll talk about, you know, where you can begin as you start dealing with this issue when people start returning back to the offices and you know, hopefully the very near future. So Lou, why don't you kick us off with a discussion around leadership mindset?

Lou Quinto (01:44):

Okay. Yeah. When I, when it comes to the leadership mindset, the first thing that I think every leader needs to take into consideration is, is one, do you trust your employees to work remotely? That's one of the big things. I think that you'll find that in the trend of remote working is that there's always been that uneasiness of trusting the employees. And I, I aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. I forget who it was, but they said the way to trust people is to trust people. And Hemingway said that I think, and a, what you want to do is you've got to place your trust in your people. If, if that's the case. The second part of that whole mindset though, right, is you really have to look at the job itself. And does the job itself lend itself to being a remote worker?

Lou Quinto (02:27):

Because some jobs may require financial information. They may require a confidential information and let's face it with we all have wifi in our homes, but when it comes to our wifi, a lot of people are still using Craig that one, two, three, four password. And so if someone knows that you've got an employee working from home that's dealing with your finances or dealing with confidential information and they want to hack it it probably, you know, someone in high school could hack your, if you've got an easy password to get through. And so that goes back to, I think what you were saying about policies is that that leap, that leadership mindset needs to say, okay, if we're going to go in this direction and maybe increase [inaudible] our remote workforce from what it used to be to what it is now because people have experienced it.

Lou Quinto (03:19):

I think that policies need to be put in place where leaders really need to think through that whole thing of one. Do I trust that? And when I say that trust, let me just go back and clarify because I don't want to say leaders don't trust their people. They trust their people, but at the same time, it's the trust of is the job getting done? And when you get individuals, myself, that are perhaps of the boomer generation that are used to that eight to five, that's where that uneasiness with that trust comes in. It's not the trust against the person. It's you're, you're breaking a mold that you're used to and it's a comfort zone. And so, so when I use the word trust and I, I talk about that issue, that's the way I'm using it. I'm not talking about they don't trust people.

Lou Quinto (04:04):

They don't, they don't trust the, the new business model compared to the old business model. I think that's the best way to put it. So I would say leadership mindset was one, trusting your people that, that they're going to get the job done. Two is to make sure that the you, you've done a good job and you're looking at the functions of the job to see if that job truly qualifies as a remote job. And then the last one would go back to the leadership mindset of, do I have policies in place that would prevent problems from happening that may expose information, financial data of our company. Just somebody whose eyes you can't see that.

Craig P. Anderson (04:44):

Yeah. And we'll hit that in our third point in talking about some of those policies to put it, you know, what I'd add here is, you know, and I agree with you, I think there is kind of that breakdown of the, you know, for, you know, leaders who've been around for awhile and this is how we've always done it. You know, and there is that kind of trust issue as you defined it or you know, maybe even worse. But you know, two things I'd add to that is, you know, it's really important to make the right hiring decisions, right? That we need to hire people that can handle that remote work situation. And you know, and even with all that said, I think there are some genuine concerns about productivity, fairness of policies and really, you know, as much as we talked in prior videos around remote work about the virtual water cooler and using technologies to kind of replace kind of that accidental interruptions you have through the day bumping into people in the hallways. I think it's a valid concern of leaders to think through it, but this has always been our culture. How are we going to shift people over to thinking about where it's a lot of that small but important work gets done in the hallways as people are walking around. So

Lou Quinto (05:41):

Sure. Yeah. The the, the other part before we get to the second point that that came to mind as you were talking is that I think now more than ever also when it comes to evaluating employees, I think you're going to find with [inaudible] if there is a larger remote workforce that the metrics on evaluating an individual are going to become much more measurable.

Lou Quinto (06:04):

And so I think you're going to get a lot of that interpersonal information that creeps into those annual or quarterly reviews and it's really going to be now focused on natural bubble metrics because as we talked about in a, in a [inaudible] video about managing remote workers, we talked about managing by objectives and so how do I manage someone remotely? You got to go to the objectives, to the project, to the plan and whatever it is. And I think that we're going to find that with a larger remote workforce, you truly are going to have more measurable metrics that are going to be used for evaluating employees.

Craig P. Anderson (06:42):

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of the employees, you know, the, you know, the employee mindset is an important part of this as well. You know, I, I don't like to just throw out quotes as much as you Lou, but if I were to quote, Spiderman is uncle Ben with great power comes great responsibility. So, you know, there is something to, you know, I think we talked a lot about what leaders might need to shift, but I think employees need to understand too that, you know, kind of coming into this remote workforce, it is something that's new and there is that distance. So what does the employee need to change about their behavior? You know, how do they need to show that their presence? What does it mean to, you know, you hear a lot of people say, well, I like the flexibility work from home, but Nope, it's important.

Craig P. Anderson (07:22):

That's great. But there's also like, you know, if I call it four o'clock and I need a question answered, you know, in a, in an office situation, I'm walking down the hall saying, Lou, I really need this answer. You know, if I'm calling your house or hitting me up on messenger or Slack or something, I need to know that I'm going to get that response. So I think there is a piece for the employee to say, you know, how do I need to show up in a regular way to be there? And I think most people do it, but I think you have to kind of get over the fact that get yourself around to the fact that showing presence more ostensibly than you would by just sitting at your desk in an office is an important piece as well.

Lou Quinto (07:57):

Yeah, it's definitely going to take an effort on the part of the remote employees, particularly if a company does take the time to establish, you know, good policies on this is how it's going to be. I think one of those things is going to have to be that as you mentioned, that work schedule is that if I'm your manager, I know that if I've contact you between nine and five, I can expect you to be able to hook up with me on, you know, a video chat or something like that as opposed to wow, I, you know, I was walking the dog or you know, I stepped outside because lunchtime isn't going to be 12 to one anymore. Probably a for remote worker, remote workers going to work as long as they can. And that is going to cause some issues. And so the remote worker, their mindset needs to be, I need to develop a schedule and I need to stick to that schedule.

Lou Quinto (08:44):

Even though all of the distractions that you have at home and after we get through this crisis, obviously the kids hopefully will be back at school at you. You're still gonna have those, those personal distractions that are going to take away from, from that work schedule. And I think in a previous video you and I talked about that if you don't handle those distractions well and you don't maintain the schedule, you're going to find that you're going to put the family to bed, get the dishes done and it's nine o'clock at night and you're going to go back to your office space or whatever area that you're doing and you're going to work til one or two in the morning and that's not good for you because part of that mindset for the employee has to be, how's my health also? And if you, you know, we talked about now sitting in an office, everyone talks about, well, I want a better work life balance. Well, trust me, you and I have both worked remotely for a long period of time, me more than you. And I can tell you that if you allow your schedule to get away from you, you end up losing more of that work life balance than I would've had if I worked in an office. I'm just creating the problems by [inaudible] tending to distractions that I really don't need to tend to during the day,

Lou Quinto (09:56):

But it's a break. And so that's part of that mentality of that employee also is that if I want to be, I enjoyed during this, you know, Corona crisis. I enjoyed working remotely, but at the same time, if I want to continue to do it, I need to get better at it. And so I think right now we're all, we're all giving ourselves a little bit more leeway probably than then in the normal situation. If you'd just hired onto a job when things were normal, I, I, things would, you wouldn't have had that. But because let's face it, probably 95% of the workforce is working from home right now. Everybody's learning at that same time pace. And we're giving those allowances. And in addition to that, we've got a crisis that's affecting us personally, financially, and we're all in the same boat together. So we're, we're commiserating.

Craig P. Anderson (10:43):

Oh yeah. And probably, I would just say probably 90%, 95% of the professional workforce. You know, certainly a lot of the front line employees are still there. And you know, I think that's an amazing effort for a lot of [inaudible].

Lou Quinto (10:53):

Yeah. As we'll find out there. They, they are, they are keeping the economy going and they, along with our, the medical staff or the heroes that we'll look back at.

Craig P. Anderson (11:03):

So let's talk about the last piece, Lou, and you touched on this a little bit already, is, you know, how do we start making that transition back? You know, as we go back to work, you know, as you said when we were kind of prepping, you know, a lot of people won't be ha, you know, couldn't get fast enough back into an office when this is done, but those questions are going to come up and, and what a leaders need to do. So think, you know, thinking about, you know, you've touched on this a bit. It's, you know, what are the policies, right? Right now, what jobs are eligible to work from home? What are the availability policies like you said, you know, nine to five or eight to four, whatever those timelines are that you want. And you know, having those metrics around responsiveness.

Craig P. Anderson (11:37):

You know, I've had remote it plays in the past. You never wanted to get on video chat. I'm like, well no, I'd be on video chat. Right. So there's an obligation, you know, so look like you're ready for work. Cause I'm assuming you're talking to customers to potentially in measuring productivity in a different way. You know, there's, you know, as you're kind of building through this, you know, it's not just like the quarterly goals and the annual goals. You may still meet those, but what about when I need something from you in 20 minutes? What's the level of responsiveness there?

Lou Quinto (12:04):

Yeah, it's going to be daily and weekly goals. There's no question about that. But as you and I've talked to, talked about prior to starting the, this episode is God knows I am not a great prognosticator if I knew the answers of what's going to happen when we try to get back. Just some sense of normalcy here. I wouldn't be doing this podcast right now. I'd probably be on my yacht in Miami awake doing a lot of social distancing from people. But I wondered why you weren't out there. Right. But at the same, but at the same time, I believe truly that when we do get back to normal, we're all going stir crazy right now in our houses and we want to get out. We want to go to a restaurant, we want to be with friends, we want to socialize. And one of those areas where we socialize on a daily basis is that work.

Lou Quinto (12:49):

And so I think that a lot of people, you know, if you're going into this where, Oh our, you know, we're all, all of a sudden going to expand into this big remote workforce, I think you're going to see a significant contraction because people are going to want to go back to the office and they want to go. We want to get back to normal. Okay, we've been stretched. Our comfort zones are being stretched beyond belief right now. And I think we want to get back to normal. And so people will flop it. They will be, if someone wasn't early for work every day of their life, they will be on time if not there ahead of time when this thing get all all comes up. But at the same time, I think as time goes on then and people get used to it, they're going to start to think back to, you know, when I was working remotely I was able to do this or you know, I, I was more productive because I didn't have those drop-ins.

Lou Quinto (13:36):

You know, particularly if I'm an introvert type worker, if you're an extrovert, the office place is going to be a great place for you. So at that time, I think when it comes to policies and implementing a remote workforce or an expanded where remote work first, let's talk about that. I think first we should perhaps, you know, recommend that people look at doing things maybe not five days a week, but maybe two days a week initially and to see how it goes through. So, you know, get used to that. But, but some of those policies, you know, to get back to the point here is going to have to be, you know, what are you doing and how can we make sure that that job is getting done. In addition to, as I touched on earlier, if you were in contact with information that is proprietary, that's confidential, it's a client information that we can't share with anyone else. If it's, you're in charge of finances for a company, you know, you don't,

Lou Quinto (14:30):

I, if I were the manager or the owner of the business, I wouldn't want people doing my financial books in their house. Okay. So, and that goes back to the cyber security that we need to talk about. So these need to be in place conversations in public need to be, you know, that needs to be a policy. You know, you can't go to Panera's or Starbucks and know in the morning and work for two hours and use their public wifi. It needs to be an encrypted why Phi? And so public wifi would be part of that policy would be a no, no. Or taboo. In addition to that conversations, you can't have those conversations in the coffee shop and you, you need to have those at home. And even though we think, okay, that's common sense, low, come on, we know people won't do that,

Craig P. Anderson (15:14):

Right?

Lou Quinto (15:14):

Don't.

Lou Quinto (15:15):

No, you can't go that far because the first time someone breaks the rules, there's no rules to go back on. Just say you broke this rule. And so that's why I think really companies are going to have to look at their remote workforce policies and procedures. And even though it may sound common sense, Greg, I truly believe they need to be written down so that there is an understanding. Because go back to the first point we talked about and I brought up trust. We need to make sure that that trust is there and the way that trust is there. Stuart agreement in the policy that I will not do this, I will do this, you will do that. And now we develop that trust.

Craig P. Anderson (15:53):

Yeah. You know, it's, I threw this quote out to your earlier Ronald Reagan, right? Trust, but verify you got to trust your employees to do the right job, which you're probably gonna want to verify it too. So. Well, Lou, what are your key takeaways today?

Lou Quinto (16:04):

Key takeaways is remote workforce isn't as easy as easy as it as everyone thought it is. Particularly since we've all been thrust in this situation. But I, I would say that that one, there needs to be that shift in mindset both in the leadership role and there needs to be that shift in the mindset of the employee. It's the first two points we talked about and you know, my key takeaway is trust there has to be trust on both sides is that I'm going to be able to do my job at home. You're going to trust me for getting the job done and the leaders are going to need to be able to trust their employees that it's getting done. The second one is, and I, I truly believe this, again, I said I'm not a great prognosticator, but I will tell you if the remote workforce does expand after this crisis is over, I think you're going to find that metrics for job performance are going to be much more measurable in a lot of that interpersonal relationship. Part of that, those metrics that now occur in annual or quarterly reviews is going to be taken out of the picture completely. Well, not completely, but it's going to be really reduced significantly. And so I think that goes back to, you know, those having metrics that I can measure your performance and you understand why you're being evaluated the way you are. And that'll go back to policy. So I hate to recap the three, well, what did you get? Great. What are your

Craig P. Anderson (17:29):

One is, I've never been so aware of trying not to touch my face as I have been during taping this video. And the second one really is, you know, I think it's that idea that there's responsibilities on both sides of this equation, right? Leaders are going to have to realize there's a transition and, and figure out a way to make this work in many cases. But there was on the other hand that of the [inaudible], the response responsibility, the employee to also find ways to make this work and maybe do things they might not naturally want to do because there's an important work ecosystem. We're trying to recreate this way. Very good. Take us out loop.

Lou Quinto (18:01):

Okay. So we hope you enjoyed this episode of Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. If you've liked it, please like it. Please make comments, let us know what your thinking is, what your companies are talking about. Also we'd like that information to be able to help share with other people in future episodes to try to get a sense and a feeling for what's going on out there because we don't know. And we'd like to hear so subscribe. Also don't forget you can download this on podcast on one of your favorite podcast platforms and as I, and telling everyone, keep your hands washed and keep your distance. So with that, thanks for joining us. I'm Lou Quinto

Craig P. Anderson (18:40):

And I'm Craig Anderson.