When we published our blog on Best Practice Reviews, we made a note to follow up on some specific examples. The corona virus disease (COVID-19) scare has pulled that topic to the top of the list.
In the first article, we talked about companies operating by a philosophy. We said that a company’s philosophy should be the simple statement of who they are and want to be. We said it should include:
● Great product or service – What differentiates your offering
● Great story - Why is your brand different
● Great customer experience – What is your service proposition
● Great team – What makes a great team member
Short of having gone through the exercise of self-definition and the volume of work required to instill the philosophy into everything we do at a business, we can get a lot of benefit from the next step, meeting the responsibilities of management. They are:
● Provide the tools and materials to do the job
● Provide a system that communicates expectations
● Provide a system that gives continuous feedback on meeting those expectations
We have been asked several times in the past few days how to rapidly move from an office setting to a telework setting and maintain some control over work quality and quantity. While some jobs require attendance at a facility, reducing the number of people in the building reduces the number of potential infectors and the number of potential infected.
For those that do not touch product on a regular basis, have jobs that are primarily administrative, have jobs that are usually away from the office or jobs that have cycle times that allow for taking work home, telework can be done with as much confidence as having the employee work in the building.
But, to be successful, management must meet its responsibilities.
● Provide tools and materials to do the job:
o Do you have enough computers and other equipment to outfit the employee to work from home?
o Does your IT infrastructure support safely working remotely?
o Can you get enough supplies to the worker?
- Will you send supplies from work?
- Can you have supplies sent from online sources directly to the employee?
- Can you have required forms converted to PDF to print or use this as an opportunity to eliminate paper forms in favor of all electronic forms?
o Are there pieces of specialty equipment that cannot be moved? If so, how do you share this equipment in a clean environment so that you reduce the risk of infection?
● Provide a system that communicates expectations
o Do you communicate expectations to your employees on a regular basis? Are there takt boards or call center boards that communicate your goals at the employee level?
o If your workflow is visual, can it be converted to digital format so that employees get the same cues on a dashboard?
o Are your dashboards deliverable to individuals working away from the office?
● Provide a system that gives continuous feedback on meeting those expectations
o Do you maintain progress boards, takt boards or the like? Can they be distributed to individuals working at home?
o Can you quickly develop metrics around performance, not activity, to distribute to individuals working from home?
o Can you set up daily “touch-base” meetings until you get the other systems in place?
With all the pressure for businesses to leave non-essential employees home (I hate “non-essential”, so lets call them non-contact), many potential clients are asking about ways to make that work. We can give a lot of examples.
But the right course of action is to start meeting the three responsibilities of management. Doing so will strengthen your business through COVID-19 or the next pandemic. It will also make you a stronger competitor and better employer even when folks get the “all-clear” to return to the office.
If you want help converting your non-contact employees to telework, give us a call. We would be happy to help determine a strategy to get through this period. We can also help prepare you for any future disruptive periods.