Why Day 5 of the teams’ new Remote Working regime, is vitally important.
In the UK and beyond, many businesses are approaching the end of their first continuous week of remote work. Whether you or your teams are ‘tech-friendly’ or not, like isolation and lone working or otherwise,
I invite you to consider the possibility that your business activity is stretched right now, more than you know.
We all understand the reason for this; the overpowering crisis that is Covid-19 and the Pandemic globally. The situation has driven massive change within our businesses, a difference to which we can only respond. We do not control it, but if you are anything like me, you will try your hardest to do precisely that.
In software development of any kind, or any office-based delivery environment, we generally have the luxury and tools with the option to work remotely. Many sectors can’t, as we see by our frontline healthcare and supply chain teams. We are in a better position to function in a safer way for our people, but we must not be complacent, expecting this change in our operations to run smoothly and quickly is folly, and at least not yet.
If you have any business continuity planning, you will be leaning on it heavily now—internal tools, methods, risk management, to name a few of the actions. Many in my experience, especially in the games industry, have little in place, creativity and regular daily activity have been the focus. You will be doing your best to transition through this change, and learning will be key out of the back end of this crisis.
But why day 5?
Well, there are some simple reasons I have come across when teams and individuals get physically divided in a working environment.
- Many successful remote working businesses started that way, built their work delivery around that idea, and worked through the challenges over time - You are thrown into this situation, with none of those comforts.
- The novelty rapidly wears off after the first few days – You think you can do ‘other things’ while you are at home working, this is generally not true.
- Team members start realising how hard relevant, timely, and accurate comms are when remote – You underestimate or don’t realise how ‘available’ people are when they are in the same room and building. Remote working means trusting the glow of a green dot, or a status added an hour ago. This challenge becomes apparent by day 4.
- Frustration and also fear can set in on day 5, how do I get my work done? Am I doing the right thing? – You will start to feel a little isolated, disconnected from the ‘overheard’ information that fills the air in an office. You will question that written message and its meaning, and can you get hold of the person you need to ask?
Assuming anything is your greatest enemy.
It would be easy to assume that the team is ok, that as individuals, they are coping, adequately briefed, and feeling confident they are doing well on all fronts.
As leaders and team members, we must assume nothing and communicate powerfully and agree on everything. Let’s not see this as micromanagement though, that comes from a place of insecurity rather than a systematic and efficient approach to this situation.
What measures help?
- When engaging with team members, the work is a focus, wellbeing is another equally important one. Is the work brief clear? Connectivity? But also how are they coping with their environment?
- Create specific video calls (a must!) for dealing with problems and prioritising (triage as the medics call it) rather than asking for systematic problems to be discussed in calls focused on the delivery of specific areas of the business. For the triage calls, the right people to fix systems will be in them.
Be very clear on the remote working toolset, how they are used, and why. Focus on the powerful triangle of - communication – storage – delivery. Examples are
- Comms - Slack, Storage – Gdocs, Delivery – Jira
- Comms – Microsoft Teams, Storage – Dropbox, Delivery – Trello
Choose whichever 3 component tools work for the team. Familiarity is critical to get to quicker effectiveness. These systems do need best practice usage guidelines that teams can access that work for your organisation and delivery; these are ever-evolving. Proper naming conventions on storage areas, so search works well and not to lose track of where things are. For task management boards, Project Managers need to keep these updated daily or almost ‘live’ so remote workers know they are seeing and acting on the latest information.
Day 5 of every working week is essential, here’s why.
Expect remote working to expose gaps in your business and capability, these can be overcome.
For remote working to become more efficient and effective, the way the team gets used to communicating that improvement need has to be effective in itself. Incremental improvement every week through connecting with groups on day 5 (or whichever day is your last day of the week) will be essential to check in on their wellbeing and to improve how you do what you do.
When substantial changes like this smash teams, we go through clear phases. Let’s help each other get through the ‘denial’ phase that this situation is very likely over in a couple of weeks but how it will be for possibly weeks and months, but reviewed a week at a time.
Let’s know and realise in ourselves and others that we may be ‘resisting’ the change, maybe even trying to prove it doesn’t work. That may not help to find the solutions needed, even when some caution around pressure testing ideas is reasonable; deep resistance is a symptom of remote working activity.
Incremental improvement through communication, discussion, and an agreement will get the whole team to an 'exploration' phase of what could work.
The additional benefits?
We are learning a new way of working added to the arsenal of tools to make your business resilient. A methodology and response that will feature in the now critical ‘Business Continuity Planning’ that we were all a little bit guilty of thinking ‘won’t happen to us.’
Covid-19 proved us wrong; they won’t catch us napping again, let’s make sure.
Mark Lloyd - Consultant