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?

Goodness me, this is so archaic OP. You really do need to sort this all.

I've just taken a new job with a company who are using Xero and Receiptbank, which are so easy.

Can those wfh actually wfh? As in do they have access to all the info they need?

If you are not paperless, how?

From the other side:

I'm still in the office while most of the other staff are WFH & it's absolutely ridiculous the amount of slack I'm having to pick up due to this.

Being office based I'm expected to carry on with my own job as normal (which is already impossible to fit into the week & needs to be looked at but no chance of that at the minute) but I'm also expected to pick up the basic office tasks such as checking the phone messages & dealing with the majority of them, dealing with the incoming & outgoing post, picking up anything that the others are sending to the office printer from home & tasks that wouldn't normally fall under my role. I'm also the only person dealing with furlough for our clients so I've got about 50 payrolls to process that I wouldn't normally do. Broken down into time needed for each task my current workload is about 150% of the working week so I'm in the office at 7am & getting home around 8pm.

Yet I know that people are on reduced capacity WFH taking the piss - not one of them has young children.

The most irritating thing about it is that my entire role can be done from home & I'd get more of that done without the constant interruptions of dealing with everything else.

This just leads to resentment & will destroy any "team" by the time we're back to all being office based.

You sent a ton of paperwork to your employees homes?

Your company must be a security nightmare. Good luck. Gdpr is a thing remember, and you've got payment details out where they are much easier to be stolen.

If you're still part of that company when all of this is over, I highly suggest you modernise, and fast. What you've done is beyond stupid.

If they are skiving and getting away with it (which they are) they will continue to skive

You need to crack down on this now before any work ethic vanishes completely and you have half your workforce with zero motivation

Daily call first thing in the morning, have you gut teams, video call? Inc office staff.

Discuss individual schedules for the day, challenges etc, set out rotas

If also he having a 15 min chat with each member of staff and if they are slacking or logging on late this is the time to bring it up. Set out tasks for each of them per day to take the strain off the onsite staff. Explain you still expect a full days work. You'll prob find you only need to do this for a short period of time before they start pulling their weight.

You keep talking about how the office staff just want to do their job but they're going to have to suck it up, and it's your job to tell them that.

Of course you need some restructure and that is your task for you to do. You need to make the paper copies digital, you need shared file space, and you need to manage your team.

So what if the office staff end up scanning instead of doing their normal job if it means those working from home are actually productive?

This whole thing is down to mismanagement.

It can be difficult to find motivation and actual work to do if you're at home, especially if it's not part of your usually routine.

You need to make sure the home workers are being "set" work with clear expectations that it is done to the definite timescale. The overworked in the office should be sending it to the homeworkers.

We have acknowledged that our homeworkers won't be doing a full day's work. The work isn't there because most of our operation is closed but we have written a set of "expectations" regarding deadlines and contact, whilst also understanding that those with children are facing other challenges too.

Definitely look to hire someone to scan in the invoices whilst you get sorted with a more permanent solution. People really are desperate for work, you would easily find someone.

Ds1 uses google drive on his phone, press the plus button and options include scan. He uses this to photo his sixth form work to email in to college. It creates a PDF.

Smartphones can take very detailed pictures, I cannot see why this would be an issue for your invoices. You just need a clear border around the edge of the document you scan, so for him he just puts it on his wooden desk. The scan option does the rest.

Re the staff at home, I would first ask if there are problems. Any issues WFH should have been raised by them if there were any so far. After that I would ask why their productivity has fallen so far?

My own teenage sons are up out of bed at 7am and have started their school work by 8.30am having showered/dressed/breakfasted. With absolutely no prompt from me.

Haven't read all the replies, but scan and email the paperwork, don't be sending it to employees homes.

OP doesn't need to hire someone to scan the paperwork, she needs to get people from her existing workforce to do it.

You only have to "allow" honeworking if the jobs can be done from home, otherwise they should be in work and practicing social distancing. You need to set up a virtual team meeting to discuss this and ask for suggestions on how you can all work together to make this work, or they will have to be back in the office.

My boss is talking to me twice a week about what I am doing and where I am with it we have weekly team meetings to discuss what everyone is doing and where we are are etc.

We also have a 30 min ot once a week to drop in just for a chat etc.

I too am missing having people to bounce ideas off or ask quick questions of but we are using messaging and chat services for this. I would t say I have been as productive at home in the first week but this is changing as I settle in to the routine

People expecting staff to be as productive as at work in he first week, especially when WFH has not been set up or phased in properly are being unreasonable.

Welfare check everyone. See what if any issues there are and if any adjustments can be made.
For example I'm a key worker but can work from home some days. Should be 8 - 5. I start working at 7, dial into the team briefing at 8 then at half 8 have a break, check on kids and make sure they know what they need to do in the morning.
Some people with young kids may need to work reduced hrs. Put a realistic plan in place for each team member

You need to manage both those wfh and those working in the office. There are loads of good ideas above so I’ll not repeat that.

As a manager I find that some staff will incrementally push how much they can get away with unless you stop them. Others are brilliant and will just get on with things. Some don’t like change and have to be nursed through it and others adapt well.

You say you are not a good manager but if that’s your job you’d better learn quick. As an accountant you are clearly educated so do a bit of research if you need to but you have to step up if you want to keep your job.

Peoples “jobs” are going to have to change to facilitate working in the current circumstances. This means staff at work might have to do more donkey work like scanning stuff or calling to ask suppliers for electronic invoices to enable those wfh to pick up more. Those wfh will have to pick up more to compensate. Things might legitimately take longer, but people should be demonstrably working and able to explain what they’ve been doing with their time. It sounds like they aren’t.

You need to show everyone that you are managing this situation and let everyone know what is expected. Talk to staff at home and find out why they are not logging on and deal with any issues they are preventing it.

Youve mentioned none have kids (my advice would have been different if they did). Are there health issues preventing working or are they just isolating, as that might also change my approach.

How do you deal with staff normally if they're not pulling their weight?

You only have to "allow" honeworking if the jobs can be done from home,

OP said those working from home are in the vulnerable health group. Most workplaces are allowing those people to work from home.

It sounds like now is the time to learn to be a good boss. They know you're crap and they are taking the piss, probably convincing themselves that because you don't give them work, it's ok to lounge around.

It's really not that difficult. For a start, Skype meeting at 9am assuming that's when they would otherwise need to be in the office.

Discuss what has been done the day before and what hasn't. Say it as it is, that you know some of them (don't give names) were not logged in after 12pm, and you want them to email you to let you know why that was so you can address the problem. Remind them that it is the expectation that they work the hours they are paid to work, and if they run out of work, they should be contacting you to let you know. Only you can authorise them to log off.

Your point about scanning taking as long doesn't make sense if you have half of the staff doing nothing and half overworked. Get the staff in the office to prioritise scanning and sending, and those at home to deal with the invoice.

Ask all your staff to complete a handover at the end of the day with which invoices they've dealt, which are outstanding and what is left to do.

You can't be a manager and not take control of your team. Many people will self-motivate themselves to work and find things to do, but many will use the excuse of being at home and not 'watched' to consider their work is to just do what comes their way and not look proactively at what else they could do. Take into account the mental impact of the lockdown and people will feel even less mentally motivated. It's your job to motivate them and remind them what you expect of them.

Yes, so it's in that group's interest to make it work. I don't thiink it's unreasonable to expect them to work with OP to find a way to make that happen. The employer has done the right thing, but if the employees aren't doing their bit they'll have to go in, vulnerable or not. Hopefully they can all find solutions so that's not necessary.

Sorry but you sound totally obnoxious and need to change your management style.

If people have work to do - how they do it and when they do it should be a side issue. WFH isn't as easy as some think and not in these times, a bit of flexibility is needed so as long as they get it done and to timescales then what's your problem.

You need to reset your expectations and rethink your management technique at this time.

My employer has explicitly told us that we need to lower our expectations of our direct reports, and that staff will be producing less for a variety of reasons. We met yesterday to highlight the at risk outputs and re-evaluate the year ahead.

We have a time recording code we can use to make up the hours we lose in a day with paid special leave.

Employers like mine will be rewarded with employee retention and motivation in the long term.

In the short term, you manage the employees you believe to be genuinely slacking off.

Try CamScanner......

Free app for all employees and send to a centralised email box for uploading.

Really? I am a teacher. We are in a rota to go in once or twice a week into school to teach the children of key workers. We have several teachers in the vulnerable group who are not on the rota. They do what they can from home but none of the rest of us actually expect them to put their health at risk by going into school, even if it means the rest of us have to do more. We all also have work to do from home.

Things like invoices should be very easy to do from home with some simple technological changes. Paperwork is not something that ordinarily requires a person to be in a specific physical location.

Sorry, that was in response to this:

The employer has done the right thing, but if the employees aren't doing their bit they'll have to go in, vulnerable or not.

I'm mainly working 'as normal' as our large department is remote first. It must be difficult to make the switch if this isn't usual behaviour for you and your team.

We are conducting most of our meetings over Zoom, I had 8 yesterday plus got a pile of other emails and work done.

We also use Slack for instant messaging. It shows when you are active/not, and we set our work hours each day in our status as they are all slightly different dependent on circumstances. I'd really be suggesting trying to use some of these software tools to help maintain contact.

You may also need to be more prescriptive of what you expect them to do whilst at home. We've had a massive review of our work and what new priority tasks are. This has been agreed as a group and filtered down so we know what we are doing.

I saw this on Twitter last night -
You are not working from home. You are at your home during a crisis trying to work.”

I think it’s an important distinction worth emphasising.