Managers who are responsible for directing other people’s activities can face some understandable impediments trying to connect with people constructively when they’re working away from their team. However, many managers have been finding ways to harness working from home towards enhancing their work output and managerial style. Here are some ways that you can maximize your productivity and performance as a manager working from home.
Using Organizational Tools to Stay In-the-Know
Spearheading a collaborative endeavor means that managers have to stay abreast of each contributing team member’s work. User-friendly Microsoft Project alternatives can centralize project materials and updates for managers. When you have good organizational systems in place, you won’t have to refer to a bunch of separate email chains or scour communications for attachments. Likewise, team members are able to share access to documents, spreadsheets, and fields to enter status updates.
Cultivating Strong Interpersonal Communication With Personnel
Even when you’re not face-to-face with someone, it’s still possible to have a personal dialog via phone or video chat to connect. When managers are removed from the team, they aren’t constantly bombarded with in-person interruptions. They can have calmer and more detailed discussions with people. As a result, they’re better to forge genuine and positive connections with personnel.
Meticulous Schedule Management
Steering the direction of a workday independently can present some variations in workflow ebb and flow that is not always good. To optimize time management, it’s advisable to attach set limits to individual agenda items. Also, frontloading your day with harder tasks rather than saving the tough stuff for the day’s end can make it easier to get more things done over the full course of the day.
Setting Metrics for Success
A significant percentage of knowledge-based workers have success metrics laid out for them by supervisors. This isn’t always the case for managers. Regardless of whether there are clear organizational criteria with which a business’ leadership measures their performance, managers should also strive to identify their own metrics and performance goals.
In the context of working from home, it’s a good practice to pinpoint clear agenda items. Categorizing short-term goals and results separately from long-term goals and results can provide telling insight about performance.
Coping With Busy Schedules
While some elements of remote work dynamics are certainly here to stay, there has been growing momentum across a range of industries to restore office time to nine-to-five. Naturally, limiting a workday to five o’clock has seemed like wishful thinking to managers. Having to work in a role with high expectations and above-average levels of responsibilities generally means putting in longer hours than other workers.
Working from home can make it easier to get through a taxingly long day. Furthermore, spacing out segments of a workday can make long hours more palatable for managers who have a strong work drive but other significant life commitments.
Ultimately, the hybrid-work environment has proven to be beneficial for a lot of managers. Starting and ending work days while staying put has been a boon for many people’s productivity levels, job satisfaction, and work-life balance.
