🤛🏾 🤸🏽 🥜 Will companies abandon udalenki at the end of the forced period? 👐🏽 🚍 🧙🏼

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion of forced remote mode for companies. One of the most interesting questions in my opinion: “Will companies continue to adhere to the remote mode or not, when the forced mode ends?”.

To express my thoughts on this subject I was prompted by the statement of one of the speakers of the online conference on the organization of remote work. The essence of the speaker’s statement was that after trying in practice the remote, most companies will feel its advantages and will not want to abandon it. I do not share such optimism, but I am interested in hearing other opinions on this matter.

In general, in the implementation of the current mode of remote work, I see a lot of similarities with the introduction of Linux in schools in the recent past, at least in the initial stages there is a similarity:

For both schools and enterprises then, the need for immediate implementation came as a surprise. Formally, of course, schools had more handicaps, but in fact, everything was decided at the last moment.
Implementation initiators did not explain how to introduce a new approach, what difficulties may arise, how to solve them, and whom to turn for help.
Since there are quite a lot of difficulties in this and in the other case, as a result of surprise and unpreparedness, the implementation has undermined the credibility of Linux in schools in the past and will probably discredit remote work in enterprises now.

Attempts to structure thoughts were unsuccessful, so I will leave the fabrications in the form of separate, partially overlapping notes. As usual, I consider it in the context of development companies, but most likely, most of the comments are true for other industries.

Company specifics

Here I include all the circumstances caused by the specifics of the enterprise, which objectively impede the introduction of remote work of employees.

For example, an enterprise specializes in integration with certain equipment: ATMs, trackers, electronic keys, etc. In this case, it can be difficult to provide all participants with their own instances of devices for work, and it is even more difficult to provide the opportunity to work with a common instance. In addition to equipment, these can be developments requiring debugging in public (for example, software for people with disabilities), animals, or in certain places (for example, AR guides).

In such cases, the organization of remote work can objectively become difficult to organize, or even impossible task.

Within the framework of a forced udalenka, it is most likely possible to carry out some isolated tasks, or to work “blindly,” but you cannot call such a regimen full-fledged, work will only go full speed again only at the facility or in the office .

Lack of tools

The lack of necessary tools can be considered an objective obstacle when the requirement to switch to remote work arose suddenly.

This includes the impossibility of accessing the corporate network or individual resources from outside, a significant amount of communication on offline media (it happens today too), the lack of integrated task trackers, tools for voice communications, joint editing of documents, etc.

All this is solved, but not suddenly, requires preparation, evaluation, development of instructions for employees and an implementation plan.

This task requires a significant amount of time from the company’s management, and can only be done qualitatively if the company has deliberately decided to put the remote business into practice.

In such a situation, significant time will be spent on providing tools for work, most likely they will be selected and implemented hastily, which will undermine the attitude towards them and remote work in general .

Lack of employee self-control

In my practice, I often came across employees who, when working in the office, produce amazing results, but on a remote site they solve trivial tasks for a long time. The reasons are known, including by themselves:

The situation at home, in the form of noisy children, dogs, neighbors.
Recently trendy procrastination, especially manifested in a cozy home atmosphere.
Lack of working pace, which is set by others in the office.

Such specialists most often themselves are aware of their limitations and prefer to work in the office, at least periodically.

What can management do:

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And the top of skill is to create an atmosphere of community of the team and involvement in the enterprise. This is really difficult in remote conditions and a separate topic for conversation.

What will happen on our forced vacation? Many companies will not pay attention to such risks, as a result, management will decide that some employees are not able to work remotely. The employees themselves will make sure that the udalenka means uncertainty in the tasks, lethargy of the leadership, unfounded claims, loss of their own motivation .

Employee dishonesty

Until now, we have approached from the point of view that all employees conscientiously approach their work: they try to do it more, better, feel responsible for the result. However, in many enterprises there are unscrupulous employees, at different levels, in different quantities. Pursuing their own goals, they reduce the scope of their tasks and responsibilities whenever possible. If in the daylight, in the office it is more difficult for them to avoid control, then in the remote mode they can completely hide in the shadow of conscientious employees.

The existence of such employees in the company is the responsibility of the management, and if in the office mode the head of his department did not find or ignore such an employee, then in the remote mode, he will not even detect or will not take any actions regarding him.

What is the result of our experiment? Surprisingly, the consequences of this incident are unlikely to occur: if an employee avoided work earlier and began to work even less, most likely the company will not notice this. But there may be trouble if such an employee will be assigned important tasks and left without control. Such people will surely find an excuse for failure, and the most convenient reason is an udalenka. The manager most likely also will not want to admit his mistake and confirm the reason .

Lack of implementation plan for remote work

We have already discussed that there is no time to work out a high-quality plan for the implementation of udalenka, risk assessment, and training. But this does not mean that you do not need to plan at all. At least you can:

Gather information about the solution of what problems may cause difficulties when switching to remote mode. Think about it to the head yourself, ask the opinions of employees.
Assign responsibility for implementing tools and training employees to use these tools.
To develop rules for employees on the remote site, including the already mentioned daily routine and the arrangement of the workplace.
Solve the individual difficulties of employees when working on a remote site.

And again, in many cases, companies go to a remote place without a plan, without realizing the need to control this process.

As a result, we get uncoordinated actions, failures in the infrastructure and the loss of employees from the processes. It is unlikely that anyone will voluntarily write it off for their own oversight, the udalenka will be to blame .

Management incompetence

Finally, in my opinion, the real root of potentially overcome problems, which could be seen from the previous paragraphs, is the inconsistency of managers with the requirements of their position in many enterprises at different levels. For line managers, this is primarily the inability (or unwillingness) to manage employees and business processes. For project managers - inability (or reluctance) to formulate project goals, set tasks and monitor progress, create a single information space for the team.

Such discrepancies arise for various reasons, but to a greater extent due to the lack of awareness of such a discipline as the “management” of many leaders in principle. In addition, many managers do not consider it necessary to sufficiently dive into the essence of the work of their units and as a result, even with all the desire, they cannot evaluate the result of the work of employees.

When working in the office, employees can actually organize themselves, coordinate, even control each other.

In the office, all this somehow lives, employees solve problems on their own, adapt to changes.

In the conditions of udalenka, the function of the leader becomes more important. And if at the same time the implementation is sudden, like ours, then a leader is needed.

Already now I notice or hear from others about some leaders who suspect that they are losing control and are frantically trying to strengthen control by increased reporting, pressure on employees and other “obvious” measures to “strengthen control”, which causes resistance conscientious employees and their loss of motivation and trust in management and the company. In turn, the lack of trust will lead to an even stronger suppression of problems, which will exacerbate the impact of these problems.

As a result of this paragraph and a generalization of all that has been said: throughout our sudden forced regime of remote work, trust in the remote work will be undermined by both employees and management. Responsible for this will be primarily the leaders of different links, but many will not even be aware of this, others will not want to admit their responsibility. The attitude to any remote work initiatives will long be perceived negatively in many companies .

Why is this all.

If the udalenka didn’t get along somewhere, then maybe because the process was left to chance? They probably didn’t do it now, maybe the gravity run was launched a long time ago, but the udalenka only showed it?

I would be grateful for your opinions!