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?

Leave them alone as long as they are doing their jobs. Improve communication. If they are a shirker, home or office won't make a difference.

Whilst some jobs are purely “do the project, work the hours that suit” others do require an element at least of coverage (not presenteeism)

OP has said that the worker in the office tends to get stuck with most client queries. Whilst these possibly can be divided up remotely, it does mean that WFH colleagues need to be accessible to pick them up promptly.

OP, if you became my boss, I'd quit.

You are mixing up two separate issues: 1) where your team work and 2) the quality of their work.

Good staff work well in any location. And it is possible to train people remotely.

Shirkers shirk anywhere and anyhow given the opportunity. You need to address underperformance as its own issue.

As well as mixing up these two things, what you haven't learnt yet - and this is common in new, enthusiastic managers - you can't change a culture overnight. It takes time. You have to pick your battles and phase in new changes.

Alienating staff means they'll quit (which might be what you want).

OP, lThere’s nothing in your updates which suggests you have a clear idea as to why getting them back in the office will do anything to improve performance. You’re throwing out words like teamwork and communication in an attempt to sound manager-ey, but aren’t specifically linking them to anything beyond ‘I’m their manager now and what I say goes’. If you have an issue with someone not being available then address that, and then learn how to manage a team who work remotely.

You’re far more likely to get the best out of your team if you address any issues as they arise, if you work collaboratively as much as possible, and if you treat them with fairness, rather than using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You might get your team in the office twice a week but I can assure you they will find ways to express their displeasure - your level of leadership and managerial inexperience will be tested to the limit and you’ll have far greater problems to deal with than someone not clocking an issue straight away.

Tbh there's alot that doesn't make sense.

Office worker picks up most client queries, which suggests the role has a lot of face to face communication. In which case, how did the higher up allow someone who lives 200 miles away to be given a job? If there's lots of client face to face queries, it makes no sense any of them are at home.

If its phone or email queries, technology allows for these to be divided up equally. I suspect these client queries are few and far between. Op seems far more concerned with the office workers feelings, than the rest of the teams feelings.

If Ops manager really thought they could force the staff back to the office, they would have done. Which means they either arent that bothered, or they can't.

Having them all in the office isn't a guarantee of good communication. Plenty of offices are full of teams that don't get on and are better apart. It could easily get worse.

My experience of managing office based, hybrid and home based teams is that the ones who take the piss at home take the piss at work. Instead of doing washing or going for a walk, they go make coffees, stop by someone's desk for a chat, go to the toilet then come back 25 mins later then start it all over again an hour later. And when it's right in front of someone's face, then it causes more resentment.

Op your senior managers need to tell you why they haven't enforced regular office work, why they employed someone so far away and what their working agreement is, how long these people have worked like this, why they actually want them back (team work, collaboration, community aren't reasons they are buzz words), look at why you want them back. And you need actual reasons, not buzz words too.

And it can't be because office worker is lonely or the worker far away might not be working when they should be. Then look at othwr ways you can improve your management, it might be technology to see if people are available when they should be. It could be accepting output is more important than input and despite people not always being at their desk, they are achieving the output. It could be just speaking to them individually and communicating your expectations.

Then look at what options you do have and think about what happens if all 3 had their notice in. What's the back up plan?

But you also need to think about what happens if 1 or 2 come back in and what that might do to culture if they do it but aren't happy.

I have seen it at my own work where a team was forced to come back in because their output was poor. Really poor. Its actually negatively impacting anyone else who is in, on a given day. Because they re all so negative, bicker, moan about each other/customers/other teams etc.

Bloody hell, you’d need months at least to arrange childcare where I live! Not everywhere has lots of childcare going!

Asking people to make such a dramatic change to their work schedule is not likely to be met well. If people are underperforming, you should address that with each individual, not punish your team with arbitrary face time. If you are bringing people to the office it needs to be meaningful not just so people can chat about the weather.

@Daisythedonkey Don’t dare say anything negative about wfh on here even though everyone knows it’s shit and kills team spirit.

Everyone doesn't know that.

I work from home, have done since before Covid, as do my team and approx 90% of the people on the global organisation I work for. In my little team WFH has enabled us to have people from all over the world working together as a cohesive team over 10 different time zones. But across the company we operate in almost every country worldwide. We have regular team meetings and company update online where we get to collaborate and share information, we have communication channels established to enable 'water cooler' chat and sharing of information, use technology to collaborate on documents and workshop ideas. We do team activities, secret Santa, all sorts of team building and we get on really well.

It not being a suitable work environment for you, doesn't mean it's not a perfectly good model. It just means it doesn't suit you.

@dontlookbackyourenotgoingthatway yes because some jobs are
My job is input based - I'm paid to be sat at my desk for the whole day, handling calls
It's also output based too but in the main I can be staring into space or doing whatever between calls provided I'm at my desk

Ffs. Try growing the team spirit remotely OP. Don't piss EVERYONE off for no reason!

Everyone doesn’t know that.

What everyone does know though is that the people who whinge on about lack of team spirit are the ones who love a chat across the desk and seem to spend an awful lot of time grabbing coffees while they ‘communicate’ and ‘network’.

Can you set targets and measurable output for them? Obviously if their job is the same as the others you have to do that to everyone too, unless you can identify specific shortfalls and put them on a performance improvement plan.

If you randomly message them with a work question and don't get a response within a few minutes and that happens a few times, then would you have enough evidence to base a performance discussion on...?

People only become experienced by getting experience and asking questions of people who have more experience. OP sounds open minded, fair and is also under pressure from her own management to get people back.

You have to make it work. I went from running a 40 strong team in the office to having a team in the office, at home, at home in the same city, at home miles away and at home in Europe. It's your job to figure it out. I use Teams video calls and Teams messenger chats a lot.

But you need to focus on tangible outputs rather than presenteeism.

Otherwise, you'll find you might get presenteeism but not tangible outputs.