Many discussions are happening regarding remote work, working from home, and bosses wanting their employees to return to the office. What I thought we might look at is the other end of this conversation and focus on us, the people working away from an office.
Remote working means many things to many people, so to define it for today, when I say remote, I am talking about people who are working from home or place away from an office environment, not with or near their manager or boss and perhaps away from their primary team members or colleagues, for any length of time. I also assume you have agreed to work remotely (for any length of time), and your organisation is supportive.
Having experienced remote working for most of my corporate career and led and managed teams of remote members, I have seen the benefits and the challenges. So I share with you some lessons I have learned on how to be an effective remote worker. Would love to start this conversation and for others to share their experiences and lessons learned. The statistics show us that people want the flexibility of working from home, even if for a day, two or more. Knowing that this desire is unlikely to change soon, how can we, remote workers, learn to do this effectively from each other?
Here are my thoughts.
Out of sight, out of mind
First things first. We must understand that human nature is what it is. Your manager will likely focus on what is in front of them – whether that is the latest crisis or the employee sitting next to them. So if you are working away from the office, it is your responsibility to be visible to your manager, colleagues and organisation. Yes, it would be great if we all had a fantastic manager who always reached out and checked in, but that is not always possible. And reading through some of the messages many managers share online, it seems many have not been trained or educated on how to lead a remote team or manage the day-to-day practicalities.
So understand human nature and take responsibility for making yourself visible. Being visible might mean scheduling the weekly/fortnightly/monthly catch-up with your manager, face to face or using technology, and sharing with them what you are working on, projects you are completing, teams you have helped in and colleagues you are engaging with. You get the idea. Please do not wait until your manager does it. It might not happen.
Overshare, in these instances, the goodness you are achieving. Follow up with an email or, better yet, have a OneNote (or equivalent technology) where you keep the information you shared. Doing this has a bonus: your manager can reference this repository of your greatness when they are putting together your salary increase, your end-of-year performance or when some other manager asks them, so what does XYZ do? (mostly asked in matrixed organisations, but that’s for another article).
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Over-communicating while you are working from home is necessary. Especially if you are remote five days a week/do not see your manager or colleagues for extended periods. And yes, it is onerous, and yes, it takes effort, but again understanding human nature and that we are not around the water cooler and the elevator ride and the drinks after work (or whatever day-to-day interactions your office environment has) means you have to work a bit more. Still, I think that has advantages, and you can do this smartly.
Connect with colleagues who are consistently in the office and find out what is going on, not office gossip, please, but to get a handle on the vibe – the energy being exuded in meetings, for example. I am convinced that oxytocin (a hormone that acts as a chemical messenger in your brain and has an important role in many human behaviours and social interactions*) is “exchanged” during face-to-face meetings, and we miss some of the nuances if we are not in the room. Have a trusted colleague or two who can share the vibe in the room and help bring you up to speed with the body language you might have missed.
Communicate on work channels such as Slack, Teams or whatever technology is used where people congregate online. Contribute where you add value, post relevant information to the team, and engage and communicate on the status of work you are doing.
Set boundaries
Communicating also means communicating boundaries. This needs to be done. Work will always get out of you what you are willing to give it. And sometimes, we think we need to give more for the “flexibility” of working from home. No. Stop that. The work we do is the work we do. So communicate your boundaries and agree on them with your manager and team. What might that look like for you? Not responding to emails or not taking work calls after 6:30 pm, for example? Whatever that might look like for you and your organisation. The point is that you need to communicate this up-front. I would encourage you not to let your team and managers know that they can’t get you at 9 am when they try to get you at 9 am!
Do the work
I know this doesn’t need to be said, but it needs to be said. One of the critical mantras at my old employer was that work is what you do, not the place you go to. So, do the work. Achieve your objectives and the goals you and your manager or organisation agreed on.
As a manager, I gave people much more room to find how they wanted to do things. We agreed on the why and the what, and they devised the how. If that meant that they needed to be on the road to achieve it or work from a café, that is fine. But they were responsible for the outcomes and needed to communicate the result, seek help, or let me know if there was an issue.
Don’t surprise your manager. Don’t surprise your teammates. Do the work. Tell them if an issue prevents you from achieving the work. Whether you worked in an office or not, it would be the same, so why be different if working remotely? Professional courtesy and manners are still in play even when not in the office. And when you do great work, the work speaks for itself. The remote worker label is forgotten because you will be known for your great work, not the place you do it from.
Be professional
Needs to be said. Yes, I know during COVID, we all saw each other’s pets and children. We were all humans going through a human experience. It doesn’t mean I get to see you in your PJs or with bedhead. I doubt many of us would show up to work like that. So yes, be authentic, genuine, and human, but balance that with professionalism. Only you know that balance; people around you will give you clues. And if you are unsure, look at your manager and colleagues. What does the culture in your office say to you? And does it fit with who you want to be?
Connect and come into the office often
Connecting face-to-face might be more difficult if you are physically in another state or country, for that matter. If you can do it, then take advantage of it. Even if once a week/once a month, etc. Find a way to enter the physical space of your manager, colleagues and clients. If it means attending a conference or networking event, then perhaps do that. What I often saw with remote workers is that it somehow translated remote working to isolation working. That is not true and does not need to be. There are ways to connect that are not just about coming into the office or using technology. So be creative and find ways of coming into the space to meet up and exchange oxytocin. And if you cannot in any way or form, then know that you will need to make an effort somewhere else to connect.
Be part of the club
While we would all like to think that remote working does not matter, it does for some managers and colleagues still struggling with this concept. So find your tribe of remote workers in the organisation and create a group. Share tips and ideas on everything from receiving feedback to managing meetings better. You are not alone in this. If you are the only remote worker in your company(?), find a shared workspace where other remote workers might be and go there. Exchange tips, connect with other humans and learn how to be the best remote worker in your company. Maybe you will become an expert and give lectures and share your learnings with others.
Schedule the breaks
Yes, it would be best if you did this. Working from home means you can easily be attached to your technology, desk or phone for 9-10 hours. So do yourself a favour and schedule the breaks into your calendar. Maybe agree with teammates to end meetings 5 minutes before the allocated time and get up, stretch or play with the dog. Put on a load of laundry or look out the window. What you do doesn’t matter as long as you move, look at something different, and reset. This is critical. And eat your lunch. No one will care that you never had lunch while working and worked all through lunch hours. The only thing that will care is your body. So take a break. Enjoy it, and you and the work will be better for it.
Set up your technology
This is critical. You will need your tech to work for you. Your laptop/desktop, camera, microphone, lights, etc. If you need to be effective, and you need access to the work network and are not set up correctly to do that, you will struggle, become frustrated, and ultimately not do the work. So talk to your Information Technology department or equivalent and get it working. And if you are working from one location (at home, for example), ensure your desk and chair are set up correctly. Yes, I love to work on my kitchen counter and in a café, but I can only do that for 1 -2 hours a day; otherwise, my posture suffers, my eyes strain, and ultimately I tire quicker.
Final thoughts
If some of the above smacks of things we all need to be doing, whether we’re working from home or not, you would be right. However, until remote working becomes more ubiquitous, managers and organisations understand how to lead and manage remote work, and the world of work focuses on work as the output rather than the place or the hours; we, the remote workers, need to manage it and play an active role in making remote work, work.
Yes, other roles working in an office and proximity to managers and colleagues might not need to go to the extra effort (which maybe they need to!) and can smack of extra work for you that, in a world that needs to start focusing on outputs and not inputs, might not matter. Still, no point raging against the system. It is best to focus on how we make this work for us and the organisations we are a part of until the rest of the world catches up.
As always, if you invest in yourself, the rewards will be unfathomable.
Until next time.
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