First Timr Manager - Fully Remote
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Anonymous
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I am about 6 months in to my first management role and it is driving me NUTS.
I feel like I did not start off on the right foot - I was probably overly understanding and permissive given this is my first time and I do NOT want to be a micromanager. We work in a high-volume environment and things have to get done urgently sometimes. I often feel like one of my employees is doing other things during the workday, frequently saying they have kid issues and need to be away from their desk, offline for long periods of time, etc. Their work is not being done or prioritized quickly or consistently enough and I am not happy with the level of responsiveness when I ask for something. How do you approach management in a fully remote environment? What are reasonable expectations that I can set through some counseling before this becomes a bigger deal? Yes, this person has a signed telework agreement that has policies about working hours but at the same time I don’t want to be a jerk. For example, when I message someone on TEAMs, what is a reasonable time to wait for a response? I understand no one is truly at their desk working for 8 hours straight, but is it reasonable to ask that someone be online, responsive, and working for seat hours in a remote environment? Help out a newbie here and let me know what is reasonable and appropriate here. |
Anonymous
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So, if you need immediate responses to inquiries then your teams need mobile phones. If you are fine with people taking an hour to get back to you, then you don’t.
Also, if expectations and needs evolve throughout the day, and you need immediate feedback, consider whether that is a you problem. How much planning and priority setting do you do? Do you have regular check ins with each of your employees? You should. Scheduling time in advance on a predictable schedule is important for accountability, for you and the team. What do you need from the employee you are worried about that you aren’t getting? Tell them what you need, see if they can deliver it without you telling them to stay in front of their computer during set hours. |
Anonymous
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Focus on the big picture- the work not getting done timely. Write it into their performance evaluation and have set deadlines. When deadlines pass, email about it asking for a status. Miss a few and you have a meeting regarding their performance, ask how you can help them. Miss a few more and PIP.
If you are a fed, feds can focus on the hours. It’s not okay to be away from your office. In my office you need to take leave in the middle of the day. Start and end times are flexible. Depends on the agency though. I disagree that they need mobile phones. They should be responding on Teams within 15 min. |
Anonymous
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At my last job we had written expectations for how fast we'd turn around projects of a certain type. If you hit a roadblock you had to tell your manager.
We also had written expectations for how long we could take to acknowledge emails and voice-mail. These were only strictly enforced when there were performance problems (which you have) but it was good to set expectations. Somebody who needs to step away with kid issues needs to take PTO. I'm a big fan of remote work, but having clear expectations is fair to everybody. |
Anonymous
| How often do you have a 1:1 with them? |
Anonymous
| Thirty minutes is reasonable to wait. |
Anonymous
| You need to deal with this before your other employees get annoyed too. I am very annoyed with other coworkers who never seem to do any work and you have to pick up their slack. |
Anonymous
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I’m wondering if you respond to every inquiry immediately. Again, is this a you problem?
You need to be organized about what people owe you and when, and what you owe others and when. Sounds like you have a lot of fire drills. I have yet to work in a place that truly needed fire drills. They should be rare. If they aren’t, that’s a management issue. |
Anonymous
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You either have a goof off, mom no child care, person with multiple jobs.
Either way make it clear they have to focus your job. But be prepared they may not care or simply can’t. When I was remote I had one boss always doing team meetings last minute and emailing me and I was wedged between three staff doing it to me. I quickly decided I DGAF not worth it to me and started job searching |
Anonymous
Weekly (I have only 3 employees under me; 2 are generally fine and at least get their work done even if they’re doing other things during the workday). |
Anonymous
This is a great idea. The telework agreement (company-wide) speaks to some of this in general terms, but I will think about how to put expectations in writing for my team. I am trying to strike a balance between allowing some degree of flexibility - everyone needs that - but ensuring work gets done. This has been such a challenge being my first fully remote job AND first management role. I want to be fair and accommodating, but I’m frustrated by the fact that I may have already created a dynamic that will be hard to undo. |
Anonymous
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So you have a sucky employee.
Time to set expectations. On teams, response within 1.5 hr during expected workday (8-5, or whatever you have). If they expect that they will be offline for longer than 1.5 hr, they need to take PFO for that timeframe. This is very generous to work life balance. You can do child pickup, physical trainer workout, dr appt, etc very easily in 1.5 hrs. If you cannot respond within that time when you are working , you are out. |
Anonymous
| I would expect a response within 20-30 minutes. Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you can run errands which you can do during lunch. Prior poster had it right. Stay organized on who owes you and what you owe. Weekly 1-1 to review projects. Set clear deadlines. Tell the team that you need to start holding everyone accountable as you are getting questioned on deliverables. If your employee is repeatedly telling you they can’t work during normal business hours, then you either adjust hours to accommodate needing to say, pick up a kid from daycare; talk to HR about options; or out your foot down and tell her that she needs to figure out how to deal with her personal problems as they are impacting her output I use 1-1 and team meetings to discuss projects and deadlines and hold people accountable. |
Anonymous
| Let employees flex their time, within limits. My old employer allowed people 30 mins for lunch plus an hour of wellness every day. If your office doesn’t have a policy on this, they should. Let people have reasonable time to do stuff outside of work during the day. If people are going to be away for an hour+ tell them that’s fine but to mark it on their calendars so you know. You can even ask them to plan this time away in advance. Like, allow a 1.5 hour break at certain times/days so the employees don’t feel like they need to sneak stuff in and can structure their time—if there is no structure to the flexibility, then people may start to slide into bad patterns. Get ahead of it. |
Anonymous
| You set the expectations. " I need this by x,y and z time. " You also have to be reasonable. Most things should be able to give at least 3 days notice. If something is urgent, make sure it really is urgent. Everything cant be urgent. I had a remote manager who would schedule last minute meetings for things that were not even remotely urgent like an annual performance eval. That really pissed me off. I dont buy your "i didnt want to micromanage" and that you were "permissive", sounds more like you wanted to be laidback and now pissed that your team isnt high performing |