Five Things Every Manager Should Know
No one will be coming through this year’s tech industry crisis unscathed. Companies are planning ahead, trying to survive the crash. What changes should they implement in order to stay afloat? With management busy assessing losses and employment reduction, all eyes are on managers.
Middle managers fulfill a double role. On the one hand, they are the link between those above and those below them in the corporate hierarchy. On the other, they are in charge of supporting, training, and retaining their teams. They are leaders in charge of coaching and mentorship. However, the pandemic has been hard on everyone. Most people in middle management positions (just like at other levels within companies) weren’t trained to manage remote workers. This isn’t their fault: they haven’t been given the right tools to ensure that work is being done properly and everyone else is working hard enough. The solution is to start paying proper attention to middle management. Otherwise, the outcome could be poor productivity and burnt out workers.
Here are five things every manager should remember:
1. It’s all about the people
Identify your community. Contrary to popular belief, in this modern world, a company’s worth is not about who their clients or consumers are but rather the talent of the people they work with. When we start thinking in terms of fellow community members as opposed to employees, there’s a shift in perception that allows for a more collaborative work environment. When dealing with remote workers, especially in the tech business, it’s easy to lose sight of this. Remember: talent is important and attrition is costly.
2. Communities aren’t built in a day
If a community is where a company’s true value lies, then it makes sense to spend time, effort, and money building and strengthening its bonds. While this happens fairly naturally in physical offices, it might take some extra effort to promote a specific type of work culture in a remote dynamic. The manager is a key figure in this whole process. They are the coach that pushes their team and challenges their players. Managers account for 70% of variance in engagement. A good manager never forgets that people come before productivity indicators. While community building is a task that involves everyone in an organization, managers are the bond between upper management and workers. The biggest challenge they face is to find and nurture the emotional bonds.
3. The right tool for the job
Why is building and maintaining an engaged community so hard? Oftentimes, the problem is that companies don’t know how to handle large groups of people or don’t have the right tools to do it. How can we harness the passion of workers? This question seems larger than any other problems a company might be facing. It’s a complicated puzzle with intricate little pieces. Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right tools: efficient meetings, the right platform, and an adequate work methodology.
4. Mind the environment
While each company has its own work culture, everyone should be asking themselves the same question: do team members in the company feel safe taking risks? Can they be vulnerable with each other? Do they feel connected to each other? The answers will point to the actions needed.
5. It’s about time (and budget!)
A community thrives when people work together towards a common goal. Whether it’s a client assignment or a spontaneous peer-to-peer activity that blossomed in the company’s Slack channel, fostering and encouraging community-led activities will go a long way. Allocating time and budget to these kinds of activities will deliver a variety of positive results. Some won’t be measurable with numbers but will provide another kind of return.
These five points summarize our view of the core problem right now. We know that new possibilities are coming, thanks to advances in tech that are becoming available every day.
Making the best of these tools is a matter of priorities. If we focus on the human factor, we can’t miss.
