I was recently talking with Jill Christensen about employee engagement
The question was raised "do employees work hard at home?" and the answer to that is "yes".
I've worked at home for pretty much all my career and have never seen any work impact. In fact I found that going in the office there were far too many people wanting "5 minutes" with me. But for most employees that work from home they feel neglected. You are not able to "pop in" on somebody or go and have a coffee.
When talking with Jill she said that "Companies often see that employee engagement is low and therefore they call up the Human Resources (HR) department to fix it."
She goes on to say "HR can help fix culture, but they are the "conductors" rather than the fixers. The culture and any culture change must come from the leadership."
So what can we do as leaders to support remote employees?
The three things that Jill recommends are:-
1. Communication
2. Connection
3. Collaboration
Jill has created a remote worker manger action items list here https://eea.mykajabi.com/ManagerActionItems
Front line managers need to approach this with consistency and the business needs to be able to measure the improvement.
In other words, this cannot be approached by a couple of managers, but all managers but use the same approach and be measured. Let's not forget "What gets measured gets improved" Peter Drucker
To summarise:-
Approach strategically
Collective responsibility
Measure success
Corrective action
For years, many business owners my age – in our 50s, which by some accounts is about the average age of the typical US business owner – have complained about the younger, millennial generation. They’re so different, we would say. They don’t want to work the way we do! And why should they? It’s not that these employees are less talented, loyal or lazier. It’s just that this generation has different priorities and one of those priorities is simply balance. In study after study, younger workers have made it clear they want the option to work more from home. They want more flexibility and more independence. They want more freedom. Yes, they can get their jobs done. But they don’t necessarily have to be doing it in the office all the time.
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