This week, a large majority of companies and individuals have seen their everyday life turned upside down by a small yet impactful entity: the Covid-19. While governments are trying to define a new order in these times of crisis, health professionals going beyond their limits to handle the epidemic and other key activities doing their best to ensure service as normal as possible, companies are getting organized to keep on their activities if possible.
With the confinement measures – imposed by governments in some cases or decided by the top management in other cases –, teams are massively experiencing working from home, sometimes for the very first time. Here are 4 pieces of advice for first-time WFH managers.
1. Implement a team routine
If your team is used to office work, the change may be brutal. Contrary to remote workers, who (usually) choose the situation and have time to prepare and organize, the epidemic has forced everyone to react quickly with little anticipation.
Your role as a manager is crucial to help your team members adapt to the new situation. Make sure everyone communicates regularly, even more than they used to do before the confinement. For instance, you can implement a team routine, with a daily call or chat to start the day, a time to celebrate individual successes or “teach-me-something-new” sessions during which a team member shares his or her passion to the rest of the team.
2. Check out your team morale
Between the stress caused by the virus and the new organization, chances are that your team morale isn’t great. While daily interactions used to help you identify low morale and jump in to listen to your affected team member (and find a solution whenever possible), the distance makes it harder to play this role.
That’s what TeamMood was designed for in the first place: a safe and anonymous tool to share individual moods and bring up feedback. In these troubled times, TeamMood can help you:
- gauge the feeling of your team on a daily basis,
- track the evolution of your team’s morale,
- encourage feedback and ideas for improvement,
- while ensuring people anonymity,
- and openly discuss the feedback with the whole team.
3. Organize daily challenges to “motivate the troops”
As a team facilitator, your role is more important than ever to motivate and support your team members during this complicated period. Part of your time life used to happen at the coffee machine or during lunch break. In times of confinement, you can replace this chatter with daily challenges and games, such as:
- Mug Competition: Elect the best / funniest / most ridiculous mug among your team members
- Letter Game: Someone picks a letter in the alphabet and everyone tried to find and object starting with this very letter
- Green Thumb Challenge: who will manage to grow a plant during the confinement?
You can ask your team member to contribute to ideas too :)
4. Be flexible
Companies and team members have been forced to massively adopt working from home without being prepared. The situation is less than ideal to adjust to new habits. Some workers may have to take care of their children or to go out for groceries for themselves or someone else (a “person at risk”, a healthcare worker, …). If the virus has had any good impact, the wave of solidarity showing all over the world is truly touching.
As a team manager, show some flexibility and understanding towards your team members. They will be grateful when times get better.
Facing such a crisis, looking after each other has never been so important. TeamMood can help you give the lie to the proverb “out of sight, out of mind”. Try it out for yourself!