Inherited team that never meets in person through choice

[Daisythedonkey]

Hope someone can help. Recently been promoted to manage the team I have worked in for 4 years. I’ve worked my way up and did a large part of my boss’s job anyway so no problem being the boss and running the department so to speak.

However, boss was quite slack when it came to HR and pandered to the team (IMO). There is nothing medical or other personal issues that have led to the set up now (seen files etc.). Essentially I have a team member who lives 200 miles away who was employed during the pandemic and another who comes into the office one day a week, if that. A third who lives locally and can be in the office whenever. Prepandemic, everyone was in the office all the time and, if I’m honest, things were a lot smoother. There is zero team spirit now and very little informal communication. Office based team member misses sense of community and friendship, understandably really. It’s tedious rocking up to speak to no one all day!

I want to make everyone attend the office at least two set days/week. I don’t think this is too much to ask. Any advice/hints/tips?

There are other ways to resolve this than forcing everyone in 2 days a week.

We are forced to go in to the office once a fortnight and it is my least productive day.

Initially it was set up so we had an opportunity to chat to our 3 bosses, have a team meeting and generally catch up.

In reality, said bosses are often too busy for us to chat to them, we have a rushed 1 hour team meeting where nothing gets resolved because one of them always has to leave to do do something else.

I really like my team and things run really smoothly when we are all wfh, our bosses are responsive, supportive and keep us well informed. These office days just cause resentment and feel like a complete waste of time work wise.

As PPs have mentioned, don't aske them to come in for the sake of it. If you have concerns about performance or people not doing what they need to, address that but coming in to the office isn't necessarily the answer.

This.

It's a different world now to prepandemic - not least because this team has since hired someone who is 200 miles away.

There are ways to develop team morale that do not require someone to drive 400 miles every week - something that is going to add considerable expense for them or for you, depending on how mileage costs will be covered.

I'd try increasing formal communication first. Even something as simple as 15 mins every other day to chat about the day, to highlight issues etc.

Are your management skills quite poor? You sound like you’re out of your depth and think the only way you can manage (not lead, manage) your team is to crack the whip and have them all in the office just to show them exactly who’s boss. Give over.

Unless they are routinely not meeting targets, underperforming and they are all unhappy with the way it’s working then I would strongly suggest you learn how to manage a remote team - many of us have been doing this for years with teams scattered across the region.

honestly the only way you would get me to meet in person is to lure me in with a fun paid-for social. Have a team away day or meal out and drinks and team based fun games. This will foster team spirit.

Working from home is such a luxury that I would just leave if my boss expected me to come into work.

Yes absolutely no way going from no mandated days in the office to 2 days a week for everyone will work. You’ll likely have the one who lives 200 miles away resign and/ or take you to a tribunal, and the other one will be looking for other jobs.

I would-

1. Seriously consider the business need and any problems you’ve identified at a business level. Air these to the team. Give everyone a chance to solve them with existing patters over a decent time.
2. If then you consider there is a business need for more office based work, set this out on an individual level to the employees and see where they might be prepared to be flexible- e.g would the one who lives 200 miles away be happy to come in once a month for a week, rather than 2 days every week?
3. Discuss all of this with your immediate boss and HR.
4. Be prepared that it might not work with these employees and you might have to find other ways to make the team work- but then when you recruit new people make sure that you’re being clear about how much they will be needed in the office.

Isn't it down to the organisational policy? Or is it entirely at your discretion?

I work in a remote team and we have the best working relationship I’ve ever known.

I think trying to change remote contracts is only going to lead to resentment but if you feel the team isn’t working cohesively what measures can you try? Is there a regular all team meeting? Can you do monthly team socials online - we do a monthly quiz that works well. Speak to the team about what would improve communications - it could be as simple as clarifying a process.

You’re all right, I do need to look at the remote worker’s contract. It was set up as our office, despite where they live, but I was told (by them) it had been changed to remote. If this is the case, there is little I can do. All travel is paid for by the company for this person, but I’ve been told by my manger to cut down on the amount they travel due to the cost! Because of what we do, face to face in the location where we are based is essential at least once a fortnight. It’s hard to describe without being outing. I also have concerns about the remote worker actually working, given they are seemingly never available on Teams/email. My old manager definitely let a lot slide, knowing they were moving on.

What problem are you trying to solve by meeting in person?

You mentioned "informal communication", what does this mean and what is the business impact?

You would be daft to lose good, productive employees and take the cost of recruiting and training their replacements, without a solid business basis for your decision.

Out of curiosity, what impact do you think the lack of informal communication has on the team’s performance? Can you give concrete examples?

@Mrsmillshorse - people don’t overhear calls/conversations and links that could be made are not. Recently one person messed up financially (to the tune of losing £1000s) because they said they were unaware of a process change. They were but sort of hadn’t clocked to it. If we’d all been in the office that day, the error would never have happened as it would have been something of note that would have been mentioned.

There should have been better formal communication of a process change such as this

@SirChenjins - people do not support each other, possibly because they don’t know each other well enough. They work as individuals and it’s not what’s best for the team or our clients, rather what’s best for them.

My organisation went full WFH during the pandemic. We all have new contracts saying that and we also have employees living miles away.

The contracts say that if we have to travel in, we get full expenses including hotel fees, food etc. If your team have similar, is your company going to be happy when they start getting the bills?

I think this is a mad idea that will lead to people resigning and which may require you to pay redundancy if people do have a WFH contract as it is such a big change. However, if the contract doesn’t say that, you can legally do it. I’m just not sure being the manager who drove 50% of your team to resign is quite the image you want to have in your new role.

How do you know it would have been clocked?

What do you do to mitigate for someone not clocking something on a day that you haven’t randomly decided they’ll be in on?

You need to tighten up your processes if the only way your team clocks something is if they are all physically in one room.

Overhear conversations/calls - do you have specific examples of this impacting on their performance?

I live 200 miles from my head office, and go on as and when needed, on days that are prearranged for meetings and I know far in advance. Sometimes that's one per month, sometimes it's 3 times in a month (rarely). Work also pay for my travel, accomodation and evening meal when I'm down there.
You could test the waters to see whether a monthly team meeting f2f could work, pre planned and with travel paid for?
If I was told suddenly I had to be in twice a week, I would leave.

What do their contracts say?

@SirChenjins - this was before I was in charge. Personally, I’m going to start 15
minute catch ups first thing each morning so that things like this incident are not missed. That one was on previous (checked out) manager.

If you have underperforming staff you’re going to have to manage them. If you aren’t communicating changes clearly so that people make mistakes, you’re going to have to learn to communicate more clearly. If your only measure of remote staff’s outputs is checking their teams availability, you need to develop better productivity measures.

You seem to think that getting everyone into the office is an alternative to managing the team. It isn’t, it’ll just piss people off and therefore probably damage productivity.

@Daisythedonkey

YABU

HTH

You would have my resignation immediately. But my contract species home as my work location now anyway.

I am in a remote team and we meet in a weekly virtual huddle where we catch up and also talk through any work. I'm a manager and also have regular weekly check ins and message my team daily just to see how things are. We do occasionally have the offer of in person meetings too every couple of months. There are ways of working collaboratively without being face to face.

Do you have authority to do this? It would need to be a company wide requirement to be deemed fair.

@BattingDown - underperformance, agreed. Need to get to grips with what exactly can be improved/monitored etc. Having worked here a while, I am well aware of the individual personalities involved.
Comms and errors were not me, this was just an example of what happened before and wouldn’t have happened pre-pandemic with a much more collaborative culture.
Outputs - there are other measures but most of the work the remote worker does is desk based when not on location. They never actually appear to be online though. This is a long-standing issue dating back a while, before my new role. Again, not tackled by previous manager.
There are some real and identifiable training needs that could be resolved by various team members spending time together regularly, but on a day-day basis for continuity, not one day a month when the main focus becomes a catch up and not work.

I'm assuming that it's really easy to recreate new staff in your business?

If not, you're going to FUBAR very soon.

If there are productivity problems talk to the people concerned. Find out why and help them to sort it out.

You do sound very inexperienced, out of your depth and to be quite blunt, looking for a fight with your staff.