{"id":6599,"date":"2020-05-22T11:17:34","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T18:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bwblogdev.wpengine.com\/?p=6599"},"modified":"2022-12-14T13:15:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T21:15:28","slug":"the-right-wrong-ways-to-engage-unify-motivate-a-remote-workforce-big-brother-need-not-apply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betterworks.com\/magazine\/the-right-wrong-ways-to-engage-unify-motivate-a-remote-workforce-big-brother-need-not-apply\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right & Wrong Ways to Engage, Unify & Motivate a Remote Workforce: Big Brother Need Not Apply"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pandemic \u201cWork from Home Forever\u201d journalism is taking us back to an era I thought we\u2019d buried long ago: top-down, hierarchical management. For example, on April 18 The Wall Street Journal<\/em> published <\/a>\u201cYou\u2019re Working From Home, But Your Company is Still Watching You,\u201d about the accelerating demand for various kinds of surveillance tools for bosses who don\u2019t trust their remote employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The piece reported 10X order-growth for keystroke-tracking software, applications that take continuous videos or intermittent screenshots of employees\u2019 laptops, minute-by-minute productivity analyses, and file-divers that let employers dig undetected into remote workers\u2019 hard drives. CNBC <\/a>and NPR <\/a>published similar dystopian \u201cThe Boss is Watching You\u201d reports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days later a writer for Forbes <\/em>asked my opinion of workplace software analogous to Sabermetrics <\/a>in baseball — now used in all sports — that breaks game performance down to the tiniest detail. Dedicated Sabermetricians can now predict not only whether a player will swing at a high fastball, but whether he\u2019ll spit sunflower seeds to the left or right depending on whether it\u2019s a night game or day game. What role, the Forbes <\/em>writer wondered, should this type of analytics play in a new world of universal remote work? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s some advice for nervous managers from someone who\u2019s been to a similar rodeo before — 2008\u2019s global financial crisis. Calm down and trust the people you hired so carefully to execute your business strategy. Better yet, calm down and act out the Russian proverb popularized in the U.S. by Ronald Reagan: trust, but verify. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business leaders I talk to report their early concerns about shrinking productivity in the WFH era are easing. People working from home are evidently maintaining <\/a>productivity remarkably well, despite such barriers as spouses or partners also working from home in tight quarters and children\u2019s home-schooling requirements, among other challenges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Productivity, though, is table stakes compared to deeper and more important issues that bear directly on organizational success. What the smartest leaders are concerned about as employees continue to work from home should be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n