How to Manage a Team Working From Home

During this especially different time, business leaders and managers alike are facing the toughest challenge of keeping their businesses afloat while ensuring everyone continues to be safe.

For almost a year now, my team has been operating purely online. Since the onset of lockdowns, a myriad of ways has already been implemented to maximize productivity despite changes in work setup. However, while everyone is doing their best to keep up, there is no denying that the current situation takes a toll on people and puts a lot of stress on existing workflows. Healthy members underpins the growth of an organization. The key challenge now is how to ensure productivity while giving due importance to everyone’s wellbeing and safety.

I listed below some of the things our team is trying out. I would like to get some feedback and suggestions, and know how your own team works during these uncertain times. Without further ado, the list starts now.

1. Meditation

As the pandemic ravaged routines and stripped people of their liberties, the importance of maintaining a good mental hygiene received attention that for so long it deserves. Poor mental health pervades poor quality of output, lack of energy and motivation, and overall decrease in productivity.

While there is lots of information available on how to deal with stress, anxiety, and burnout, setting aside time to actually check on the mind has always been a challenge. Sometimes, it is easy to get used to chaos that makes peace and silence an unbearable anomaly.

The team started allocating fifteen minutes every morning to medidate as a way to practice mindfulness. I stream an app that guides us through the entire process. Everyone is encouraged to participate.

I had hesitations introducing the practice. While doing mediation in groups are not totally uncommon, mediation, for me, is a personal affair, a form of self-discovery and is therefore best done in private. However, aside from I cannot think of any other activity to help take care of the mind, group activities is one of the good ways to form cohesion within the team.

On the average, only half of the team attends each session where half of them are regulars. Not everyone is into it — some prefer to have their own quiet time, while others may even find it corny. Preferences vary, nonetheless, I would like to dedicate a few minutes each work day that will allow everyone will have the chance to to pause, breath, and reset. It is a valuable investment to build mental clarity, focus, and self-discipline.

Our practice is more of an introduction. Whether or not to delve deeper is a choice that will depend on individual preferences. So far, we have already completed the basic courses and, from this month, we are taking the course on focus.

2. Mixer

Pre-pandemic, even my team can be described as usually serious and silent, we often engage in some random conversation. This kind of interaction, arguably, is something everyone misses. When communications are purely transactional, affinity is easily lost.

Now, every afternoon, after the core hours have ended, we schedule a 15-minute meeting where we can discuss a random topic. This is my favorite appointment of the day. I have to confess that I prioritize it over other meetings. However, like the meditation session, attendance is also optional.

More people attend the afternoon mixer than the morning meditation. We exceed the allocated time, but I try to cap it to at most one hour. Through the mixer, I get to know my team more — their hobbies, their opinion on current events, and other things that (don’t) interest them. Its frequency and timing makes it a good venue for me to share the latest business situation.

3. Personal updates during check-ins

Every Wednesday, everyone is called for a check-in. The objective of this 30-minute meeting is for everyone to share progress and bottlenecks regarding each’s weekly mission. Since the pandemic began, a portion of the allocated time has been dedicated to personal updates. Personal updates include, among others, planned leaves, hobbies, recent discoveries, feelings, or one’s situation at home.

Personal updates are work related updates. It is easy to forget that so-called resources are people who have feelings, personality, problems and motivation. These things affect performance either directly or indirectly. These things are easier observed or felt in an office setting than when doing remote work.

Each roughly gets a little more than two minutes to check-in. Most time is still spent on work updates. There are those who are comfortable sharing everything that’s going on in their daily lives, and those who prefer to remain reserved and private. A common theme would be how they are trying to cope with the work from home situation. Their difficulties, frustrations, and the adjustments they have to make.

I hope that having a venue in our formal work schedule, even if it’s just for a minute, will help break barriers and even help us get to know each other more.

4. Ticket-documented transactions

When people don’t see each other, it is easy to assume that the other is not busy or not doing their work. This causes unjust expectations and frustrations. Follow-ups and tracking progress when everyone works like an independent node is very difficult. In an office setting, information flows more freely. It is easier to ask questions, requests for updates, and give reminders. It is easier to organize meetings and maintain the attention of its attendees. You can also see whether a person is already working on the thing you asked. Things aren’t as transparent as before.

The communication tool our company mandates has limited functionality. It is very easy to get lost. There is no way to tag or group conversations. There is no way to filter messages. It cannot be integrated with other tools. Needless to say, when all transactions are done online, with this kind of tool, it’s easy for things to get chaotic.

To help restore some order, existing ticketing systems and project management tools are now utilized to monitor the progress of action items and other issues which were previously settled through plain chat, including long-term consultations and routine tasks.

Adapting to a new work setup during a pandemic can be overwhelming. Maintaining tickets help free bandwidth in people’s minds. It lessens the things that people had to always remember and carry in their minds and therefore ease the feeling of burden. Tickets help a person to focus on a specific concern, and increase the chances of follow-through. Moreover, we are in the process of growing our team. Information that has been logged so far will be very helpful during onboarding.

Overall, this is still a work in progress. There are tickets that still rarely get updated. There are duplicate tickets. It still does not perfectly complement other systems. Nonetheless, it provides a good mechanism for establishing control and automatic means of follow through. Since discussions are documented, it is easy to keep everyone on the same page. When everything is in writing, it is easier to settle disputes. A dashboard view of all outstanding issues also provides a quick, up-to-date snapshot of the team’s progress.

5. Adaptive and flexible work style

Aside from regularly scheduled activities. The team has been constantly trying to find different ways better to manage transaction costs and seize opportunities brought by the new work setup. This includes, among others, provision of tailor-fit support, promotion of remote work etiquettes, and maintenance of existing policies. Those having difficulty are given more attention, while those who prefer independence, as long as commitments are met, are given more freedom. Everyday, we keep each other informed regarding our availability and status of internet connection, use of video during meetings, and have our back-up internet connection always ready. Tight regulation of overtime hours are still in place, and work-shifts are adjusted to compensate for work done outside usual work hours. We continuously calibrate, introducing and retiring processes depending on the situation.

It’s been almost a year since we started working from home, as much as I want to believe that a year is long enough to get people adjusted, the struggle still continues every single day. I must admit that maintaining all these activities is exhausting, but I can only hope for now that it will be worth it — that once the team sees each other again, we will not be strangers.