What this pandemic has revealed for many is that working from home does, in fact, have its upsides. Once thought of as radical and cumbersome, a comprehensive WFH policy is now a considered relevant enterprise resilience strategy. Alternative staffing models, including mixed-model or 100% distributed workforces, allow businesses to focus on growing, no matter the barriers.
I’ve witnessed the advantages of distributed work since 2001, when I began leading my team at Topcoder, a crowdsourcing platform that allows companies to engage with skilled workers from around the globe on specific projects. We’ve always had a flexible WFH policy at Topcoder, but we decided to have a fully remote team in 2013. Distributed workforces are my bread and butter.
So believe me when I say it’s possible for a remote team to not only survive but thrive. But leadership needs to strategically back up the initiative. In particular, chief human resource officers have the greatest opportunity to drive distributed staffing models that cultivate talent in new ways. In addition, CHROs play a vital role in fostering a culture of belonging in distributed or blended workforces — and we all know that culture increases effectiveness, productivity, and morale. The rest of the C-suite depends on CHROs to lead the effort so businesses can stay focused on growing.
3 Lessons I’ve Learned Leading a Remote Workforce
If you’re planning on leading a remote or mixed-model team into this brave new world, you have a few aspects to think through. Success requires a new approach and new strategies for working from home. It can be intimidating, but it can be done. Here are three of the most useful things I’ve learned leading a 100% distributed team for more than five years:
1. Focus on the outcome, not the effort.
If your usual approach to management meant tracking the time employees spent at their desks and relying on watchdog productivity-monitoring tools, then you’ll struggle with remote teams. It’s both difficult and ineffective to manage how, where, and when your employees do their jobs in a remote environment. More importantly, it doesn’t really matter — what’s important is the outcome of that work.
Managing by outcomes means understanding what you’re asking someone to do and recognizing what is and isn’t reasonable. It requires a two-way communication in which a request and an acceptance happens — like a handshake. Successful remote-first companies inspire a 2020-and-beyond kind of loyalty in which shared objectives reach through the internet to create unconventional bonds that truly work.
2. Transparency is everything.
HR transparency fosters an environment for employees where doing their best work is a top priority. It creates and encourages trust between leaders and employees, which is crucial when managing a fully remote team — two-thirds of whom have likely never worked remotely before. Here are a few things you can do to create a transparent workplace:
- Set up bimonthly all-hands calls to openly discuss every major aspect of the company.
- Encourage daily communications through tools such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- Create open and shared work calendars that include personal appointments as well. You want to create an environment where it’s OK to have a yoga class or a soccer game on the calendar — it’s much better than environments where employees feel they have to lie about their time.
- Share as much information as possible with community members and invite them to participate in virtual and physical events throughout the year.
3. Drink your own Champagne.
To foster a successful remote environment, it’s vital to practice what you preach. The move toward a distributed staffing model calls for disruption, rebuilding, and perseverance at all levels of an organization — especially leadership. It requires an honest assessment of skills, evaluation of initiatives, determination of short- and long-term needs, and agreement on desired outcomes.
Now is the time to examine who you are and why you exist, and to ensure that your entire remote workforce is empowered to “live that way” in their work-from-home environments. This will take some thought and likely some experimentation, but in the end, it’s worth it.
The business impacts of COVID-19 have accelerated what was, for many, a predetermined destination. In that sense, the constraints of our lives have changed for the better. It’s a leader’s job to understand and get behind that momentum, guide people through the movement, and empower everyone to emerge as better global contributors because of it.
Mike Morris is the CEO of Topcoder and the global head of crowdsourcing for IT services at Wipro. Topcoder is an on-demand digital talent platform that is powered by a community of 1.5 million design, development, and data science experts. Mike speaks worldwide as a gig economy expert, using his passion to help other companies develop digital innovation through innovative workforce models.
