AIBU to expect people working from home to actually work?

[MelbourneWay]

I'm the manager of a small company in an essential sector operating from a number of sites. Most staff can't work from home, but trying to minimise social contact we allowed half the office to work from home. The result is that the staff working from home are doing very little work (we can tell when they log on) and the staff still left in the office are having to work harder than usual to keep up. I appreciate that most people in country are furloughed, but how do I get the staff working from home to actually do the job they are employed to do without appearing to be an evil employer?

Be in constant contact with your team. It’s draining but it helps everyone.
I’m working from home. My manager emailed me at 9am to say good morning. He sent a what’s app message at 10 checking in with the team. At 12 we had a team Skype call to go over what work had been completed and what the plan was for each person that afternoon. After lunch we all signed into Microsoft teams and gave a breakdown of numbers.
Eg completed emails from 9-15 March I will complete until 20th by COP
Only completed X this morning due to childcare I will log in between 6-10 and do Y and Z.

At clocking out time. The manager thanked us all and asked us to email over final numbers.

Tomorrow he will know what has been completed and what is still left to do to clear the horrendous backlog. Once that is on an even footing we will be given specific tasks and specific numbers to complete. Until then it’s very much all hands on deck. Everyone is working as hard as they can but there have been many issues wfh with computer systems and internet providers and childcare and illness. Work with your team, but overall manage them- if that involves being the evil boss and calling out people who are slacking then do so. Your team will respect you more for it

You need to :

• set workable and reasonable targets and have a spreadsheet or something for oversight so you can see what has been done (it’s not okay that you don’t know the situation with each invoice )
• have a check in in the morning and something else later
• have service level agreements - e.g ‘an invoice must be processed in X days’
• be reasonable with staff and think of wellbeing. Don’t micromanage them nor expect too much but also understand that being aimless is not conducive to wellbeing
• modernise your processes. They shouldn’t have to print out scanned invoices. This is a big opportunity for the business to get up to date. Can you task one person to evaluate your processes and recommend fixes so working from home is viable and you become paperless? You could task a few people to work together on this- it might motivate them and be a good project for people who are hampered by existing processes.

Why are they all still "working on their own invoices"?

Change the structure!

The ones in the office scan and save. All day long if needed.

The ones at home key in (from the screen not from printed copies).

OP
I suggest you do some delegation and start assigning them work. All invoices that need to be paid on a spreadsheet by x date. Any missing need to contact the companies and confirm amounts. Payments need to be done by x date. Employees need to find a way to make it all go paperless this time. Brainstorm. Etc

Put the ownus on them. It's easier to get away with not doing the work if there's non assigned to you and the work is general.

If you don't have scanning, take images on the phone and save in a shared drive.
If no one logs in after lunch... Why not? Is it because if work isn't done, there is no way to pin them to the account? This needs to change.
John needs to take abc account. Jane needs to take account efg. And Mary needs to take account xyz. So that if you find out that one isn't paid, you know who to speak to.
Also if no one logged in, give them a "hey just wanted to ask what you're working on this afternoon" call.

a relaxed work loaf

@Floralnomad wow 😂 aren’t you just great

All good ideas, thank you. We have cloud computing so sadly no more shared drive due to restrictions by the software supplier. Staff are allocated invoices based on first letter of supplier name. Clearly we need to change but staff still in the office have had enough of supporting those not in the office.

You need to tell them straight that you appreciate there have been teething problems but that they need to do more work. They should be doing more at home as less distractions.I've worked from.home for years and just get on with it. Talk to them one to one and say you notice productivity has gone down and is there anything thwy need to improve it. Mention that you have seen they aren't logging on at 9am or whenever and ask them why.

Head of finance department here. Are the home workers assigned specific supplier accounts to process or is it a free-for-all?

I'm surprised that you are receiving so many paper invoices. Almost all of ours are being emailed to us as pdf's now. Perhaps that is something that needs to be tackled as high priority - you don't know how long this situation will last.

You need to have a consistent procedure implemented asap - you can't rely on the staff working remotely to do that, it needs to be put in place by you.

@CalleighDoodle are you suggesting 2 mandatory meetings every day, morning and afternoon?

One major issue I am having wfh is the dramatic increase in check in meetings that is leading to me not having enough time to get actual tasks done. I believe it is in large part a trust issue until the boss is comfortable with the new situation. But while I looked forward to getting stuck into tasks first thing each morning that time is now taken up with agenda-less chats. Evry other day would be better.

It takes a lot of self discipline to WFH and unfortunately not everyone has it, but it's complicated here because instead of being able to select the more reliable ones, OP's had to make the change en masse

Some good monitoring ideas on here to choose from though - but if you use any, OP, be prepared for someone to start a thread about how unfaaaiiirrr you're being

Our team have worked from home for a very long time. What works for us is a morning team check in, say 9.30/10, that gives everyone time to check their morning emails and grab coffee first. We discuss and allocate work in the call and then get to it, having planned or impromptu catch-ups as needed through the day. Don’t have too many meetings or calls it eats up the time. We don’t checkout but do time booking. We are expected to be working or ready to work in our hours, no sloping off after lunch! We rely on and trust each other.
That said this is an extreme situation, I now am homeschooling too and struggling - we all are.

It’s not what time they log in or out, but whether they complete the tasks assigned to them.

Surely you have ways of measuring this? If not, why not? Put them in place ASAP.

If they are also looking after children/vulnerable people also then you need to cut them some slack. Accommodate their need to work outside core hours in particular.

I'm paid to do a job. My boss couldn't give a toss how many hours it takes me once I deliver the output I need to. My company could not be more supportive about working, childcare and the overall worry for staff in this situation.

Most of the company globally is in the same boat!.

The WFH is only part of the problem. You need clear end to end processes for each work stream and clear visability of objectives and targets that need to be reached.

If downstream processes are reliant on the work they are doing they cant just log of in the afternoon without completing that work. Have meeting with every one WFH tomorrow and schedule morning, lunch and end of day communications that need to be adhered to. Your set up is not in a position that they can work independently with no oversight.

Sending paper invoices to their home addresses is asking for serious problems from a data protection perspective.

I would absolutely not be telling them to WhatsApp or scan on their personal phones unless they are company phones fully encrypted with access to your company cloud.

You need to redesign your work allocation as quickly as possible. Out source to them all work they can do that doesnt require paper invoice access and can be done on your secure network.

Re assess the office based roles to try and free up a scanning support.

If this not possible get as many inbound invoices to switch to being sent via PDF to a centralised inbox ASAP. Move them to teams and then distribute work from there.

Paper invoices and no scanners?

Time to assign someone with experience of paperless systems to lead a project to get systems in place to allow remote working. Because the systems you are using now are no longer fit for purpose.

Put a project plan and budget together and lead your org into the future!

Also remember that your company isnt set up to allow WFH so cut your self some slack. Trying to implement full scale contingency planning for organisations is tough.

If your office staff see you take control and implement improvements and the WFH have clear expectations it will help to pull the team together.

Good luck.

What are the staff in the office doing? I'm surprised people are still going into an office at all. But agree with others saying you can't just dump wfh on people who've not done it before and expect it to be exactly the same.

There have been loads of articles floating around the Internet in the last couple of weeks, on how to work from home, and how to manage remote teams and so on. Not only are your staff adjusting to WFH, but you're adjusting to managing remote workers, and if you've not done it before, there are some challenges which aren't relevant when you're all in the office.

Have you provided laptops for people to WFH, with a standard build, so you know people have the right applications? Or are you expecting people to provide their own?

You need to look at the tools available to you - collaboration software, whether it's MS Teams, Google Hangouts, Zoom, Skype, loads of others. Make sure everyone can connect. Have meetings. Make sure everyone is there. This will be harder to enforce if they are providing their own hardware.

You really need to focus on the processes (and data protection) - how it worked with everyone in the office isn't working now some people are WFH, and you need to change things so they can work, for the business as well as everyone working there - you can't afford to let people get too pissed off about things as it affects morale, but it sounds like they are not unreasonable to be feeling fed up.

It is down to you to manage it all, but that doesn’t mean you're on your own - get input from your staff about how they think processes could be improved. Your optical project isn't complete, but there's bound to be other things you can do, dividing work up differently, and so on.

Depends on your company culture, though the situation is salvageable, depending on how you approach it.

Before this pandemic, when I worked from home, I did much more than 7 hours a day, and was on constant calls and meetings. I need to do this even more so now, as I run a large team, and am also part of the response team for my organisation.

When my OH worked from home before this, he did a couple of hours work, then spent the rest of the time sleeping!

We are now both working home, as well as having our 3 year old and a 2 year old with us, and he's expecting life to operate in the same way, except he expects me to look after the children and sort the house as well. It's causing numerous rows, and means it's more challenging for me to deliver my work.

A lot of people don't understand that working from home means that you still actually have to deliver, which is one of the reasons why working from home has a notoriously poor reputation.

It would help if you provide your staff with clear deliverables which fill the working day. Don't get hung up on when they do the work, as long as they do it. Really don't focus on whether they log in by 9am or whatever. I'm finding I have work in the middle of the night, or early mornings. If the staff don't deliver after clear instructions, you'll have to performance manage them.

Thanks again for all the messages, lots of ideas to think about. Fully accept that we were not prepared for homeworking. The invoices do need to be printed out as there is a lot of detail on them that has to be carefully checked. One of the reasons that the optical project failed was that gathering the text from the invoices was just not accurate enough. The other reason is that we have invoices from almost a thousand suppliers and the formats vary so much. I think the real problem is going to be that the staff still coming to the office just want to do "their job" and don't want to spend a lot of time scanning invoices for other team members.

I agree with the others who are saying you need to change tasks. If supplier recs can be done by those at home, then they get all of them while the in office staff handle the paper invoices, including ones that were allocated to the at home people.

Think of how to rejig tasks so that those at home don't need paper. Maybe write down all team tasks and then reallocate based on if need to be in office (paper invoices) or can be out of office (supplier recs, email responses).

Then you have to set expectations. People can't meet expectations if you haven't communicated them. Be very clear. You expect a full day, no logging off at 12. They have tasks to do and will be held accountable for performance. Initially to help you all you want them to give you a daily plan each morning, then report what they've achieved before logging off for the night. For supplier recs, that would be the list of suppliers they've done recs for that day. Then you assess if what they've done is what you expected.

It takes a period of adjustment to get everyone sorted.

As a manger you need to sit down and do a process map of what needs doing stage by stage.

Then forget about the way you usually do it and think about how it can be done in these circumstances.

Then tell your team how things will be done now.

Get everyone to check in, in the morning. Make a habit of contacting people with queries (either by email or phone), as and when you need them answering. Make people more accountable with your behaviour. Have regular meetings while people are settling into new ways of working. Ask people to contact you as they check out and let you know how the day has gone and any issues they've encountered so that as a manager you can collate a list and try and problem solve.

I'm surprised that the quantity of paper invoices posted hasn't decreased during most people needing to wfh.
I insist that my suppliers email all invoices to a special accounts payable address, if they don't then they should expect a delay in payment (even before the crisis).
My system is cloud based that I email the invoices to. It doesn't scan the information but I think there's an add on that does however I prefer to enter them all. I'm pretty much paperless now.
My last company loved paper copies of everything, I didn't understand why.

Why don't you hire a temp to do a few hours scanning or uploading per day? Lots of people desperate for work right now.