As COVID-19 (Coronavirus) forces people to potentially work from home, managers and leaders need to reconsider how they manage their virtual teams!
The impacts of COVID-19 coronavirus are already being felt in every part of our economy and it seems those impacts may be with us for some time.
However, business and life doesn’t stop, so managers and staff need to adapt and support each other while continuing to function and contribute as much as we can during these changing and challenging times.
A specific need that ODI foresees arising from companies that are encouraging people to work from home, is the need for managers to suddenly be highly skilled at managing distributed, virtual teams.
While many workplaces have become increasingly flexible to accommodate staff who are working from home a certain number of days per week, those days are usually an employee’s quiet day to get things done and caught up, so the need to proactively manage the one or two from any individual team has not been overly significant in many cases.
However, this organic trend in workplace flexibility, that has been increasing over the last few years, is now about to be strongly encouraged, or possibly even mandated, for most or all staff in many organisations.
So, instead of having a few people working from home, leaders will find themselves managing an entire virtual workforce – which requires an entirely different set of skills, processes, routines and mindset.
Online Webinar-Style Training
As a business, to maintain agility and ensure operational success during these fast approaching changes, you can prepare and upskill your Leaders now, which can be done with a range of training available online via webinar-style delivery.
Some related types of leadership skills to consider would include:
- how to setup and manage online webinar tools like Zoom
- how to manage virtual teams
- how to maintain resilience and creativity
- how to use online collaboration tools like Teams in Microsoft 365
- how to be a coach and/or mentor
- how to delegate and/or supervise
All of these skills will better prepare leaders and managers to evolve their workplace environment and expectations in an effort to maintain a level of business continuity during these challenging times.
By setting the expectation that managers and employees will be upskilled during any time away from the office, the organisation is better prepared and focussed on helping staff use this time for improving communication and productivity.
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