The workforce has changed dramatically over the last five years, but employers are struggling to help workers transition toward flexible work arrangements. At least this is what we discovered in our recent 2024 Workplace Flexibility Trends Report. Despite 58% of the 900 participants stating they work partially or fully remote, almost 3 out of 4 respondents indicated their employer has not trained managers to lead a distributed team, established team or meeting norms, or adopted best practices to support working across distances.
This isn’t necessarily negligent, as many organizations simply don’t realize a different way of operating is needed to work successfully across distributed teams. It’s an easy problem to overlook with all the challenges organizations deal with on a daily basis. Managers need guidance and support from human resources (HR), training departments and from the executive leadership team to build and navigate a solid framework for flexible work. Here are some of the most fundamental areas that training can help address.
Develop Communication Norms
The first step toward helping managers lead distributed teams is encouraging them to establish a clear communication policy that outlines the ideal type of collaboration for certain work situations. It’s natural to allow managers to “feel out” what works best for their teams, but this lack of structure can create major disorganization and zero accountability when confusion occurs. With no company reference of how to communicate during a situation, employees will often default to whatever makes sense to them without consideration of whether other people agree.
An example of one type of communication guideline is breaking down when it is appropriate to have full in-person, synchronous (virtual or hybrid) and asynchronous interactions. In-person represents the richest form of collaborative work and should occur when the goal is to build and maintain relationships (e.g., onboarding, team bonding, celebrations, etc.) and when working on a single project or problem to completion. Synchronous communication is beneficial when immediate feedback or time-sensitive decisions are required, or when there is a lot of ambiguity or sensitivity to the subject matter where emotional intelligence (EQ) is critical (e.g., discussing a new problem that spans multiple teams, an IT fire drill, etc.). On the other hand, asynchronous is best fit for when collaboration isn’t immediate and doesn’t need to occur in real-time (e.g., soliciting feedback, content reviews, etc.) or when there is a one-way share of information (e.g., sharing quarterly updates, campaign results, etc.).
The way communication guidelines are defined will vary based on industry and organization. But having them in any capacity will help managers create a baseline standard for their team members to follow when a specific interaction must take place.
Develop and Document Expectations
Before managers can set expectations for their distributed teams, they must have some guidance and training on what those expectations are in the first place. When employees primarily worked in a single location and time zone with set work hours, those bare minimum expectations of what/where/how to work were clearly defined. Now, companies with knowledge workers are supporting staff across different locations, time zones and hours and need to compensate for the lack of clarity.
When expectations are not set, they can’t be met. Employees with unclear expectations have no way of understanding their performance or progress. This can lead to major work issues over time like absenteeism, mental health concerns and just general disconnect from their role. This is especially true for a distributed workforce across many time zones. The need for additional expectation setting such as hours between task issuance and completion, establishing recurring check-in times with managers and team members need to be expressly stated. Without these, managers don’t have a clear reference for comments like “You aren’t being responsive enough” or “You’re underperforming.”
Training professionals should reiterate to leaders that expectations should also be shared with the whole team for transparency and easy recall. Everyone should have a place where they can access someone’s work hours, communication preferences and how long they may take to respond to a message, email or call. If a manager feels someone is performing to the level expected of them but has fallen short of the desired outcome, then it may be appropriate to revisit and redefine those expectations (as opposed to faulting the employee).
Define Flexibility
Whereas in-person, hybrid or remote work are designations, flexibility is a spectrum. Everyone has some degree of flexibility whether it’s the “five-days-a-week in-office” person or the full-time remote employee. This is why flexibility must be clearly defined for managers of a distributed team so they can understand and communicate what is allowed and what is not. It is easy to overlook how subjective the term “flexible” is to each individual and organization. Defining the type of flexibility (i.e., core working hours, location-based or compressed work weeks, paid time off, etc.) and the degree of flexibility is important to help managers and their teams understand what is expected of them.
Another element of flexibility is the number of meetings. The more distributed the workforce, the less reliant organizations should become on them. According to the aforementioned study, respondents considered ad hoc and unplanned meetings to be of the lowest value meetings at 7%. Unsurprisingly, it also found that in-office workers are nearly twice as likely to be interrupted more than 25 times a day (83% higher), and more than three times more likely than full-remote workers. Nearly one-half of respondents (46%) indicated that unwanted interruptions more than six times a day reduced their productivity or increased their stress.
As the workforce continues to evolve toward greater flexibility, it’s imperative for organizations to equip their managers with the necessary tools and guidance to lead distributed teams effectively. The findings from the 2024 Workplace Flexibility Trends Report underscore the need for proactive measures in training and developing managers, establishing clear communication norms, documenting expectations and defining flexibility parameters.
By providing structured support and resources, training professionals can empower managers to navigate the complexities of leading distributed teams, foster productivity and enhance employee well-being in an evolving future of work.
