How to control remote employees
3 min readMar 15, 2020
..that’s what all managers out there need to figure out now. But how do you control from a distance? Your workforce has turned into a bunch of slobs who sit in their pajamas and watch reality shows while pretending to work. Every manager’s nightmare!
Dealing with this is difficult, but not impossible. Here are a few pointers:
- Ask your employees to come in to the office if at all possible, despite government recommendations to work from home. Just tell them to keep it discreet. The best way to manage people remotely, is to avoid it.
- Make sure to have a long and detailed list about the rules of working from home. Don’t worry about making them a bit strict. You don’t have to follow them yourself. You are the boss, after all.
- Assign specific and challenging tasks to all employees each day. This way there will be no room for slacking off.
- Ask for status reports via email or phone at irregular intervals so everyone stay on their toes. When they report their progress to you, make sure to comment on lots of small details and make them redo it. This will show them you’re on the ball despite the distance.
- Suggest a permanent, all day video conference so they can get hold of each other if they have questions. Your real reason for doing this is of course that you can see with your own eyes that they’re at their computers grinding away. If this feels too intrusive, at least ask urgent questions via chat at random intervals. Then they’ll know that they have to stay close to their laptops.
- I assume your employees had to log hours even before this situation. Needless to say, you need more detailed reporting when everyone is working remote. A good rule of thumb is to take every existing category of work or project, and break it down into an extra 5–10 sub-categories.
- Encourage your employees to buy any necessary equipment to have a well functioning home office. Out of their own pocket of course. It’s the government who says they have to work from home, not you.
- Employees will take advantage of the situation and suggest that deadlines need to be postponed due to the less than optimal working conditions. This is of course yet another tactic to watch TV during work hours. Luckily we see right through this, and decline any such request. If anything the deadlines should be shorter now that they don’t have to spend time on their commute!
- Finally, if your employees need to care for children or help a relative during work hours, make sure they put in the extra hours to compensate. The minute you give them any kind of slack, they’ll take advantage at every corner! They can worry about family in their spare time. It’s not like it’s YOUR fault there’s a pandemic, right?
That should cover most of it! If you liked the advice above, please leave a response below. This will be helpful for potential employees, so they know not to come work for you.
