Uhuru Malebo | Principal | Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | mail me |
As more businesses adopt hybrid workplace models and with lockdown levels now reduced, leaders are wrestling with unresolved concerns. Successful hybrid work poses a difficult challenge for leaders.
While many of the obstacles of remote working were effectively addressed, four remain that need to be managed to capture the benefits of new ways of working and propel organisations forward.
The ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks suggests that a hybrid way of working could become the norm. This is especially likely in service industries where in-person presence is not as critical to operations.
We interviewed 13 South African CEOs about their experiences with remote working. Three prevalent misconceptions regarding remote working, five essential success criteria, and four unresolved difficulties emerged from these conversations.
Three misconceptions
The expectation when employees work remotely is that performance, cybersecurity, and personal relationships are all likely to suffer. South African leaders on the other hand, paint a more complex picture.
Only 40% of our survey participants leaders said that efficiency and productivity declined substantially.
None of the leaders believed that data security and confidentiality would be greatly compromised for their companies specifically. This is likely due to them having significant IT support as the majority of interviewees head up publicly listed companies.
Five ways to mitigate challenges
CEOs highlight a wide range of issues that their employees face, including loneliness, particularly for those who live alone, back-to-back virtual meetings that don’t allow for bio-breaks or mealtimes, and burnout from staying up late to work after the conversations have concluded. They propose five viable solutions to these problems.
Firstly, leaders must make wellness a top priority for the entire company. Employees are able to re-energise as a result. They devise creative ways to communicate in person and disseminate personal thoughts and stories.
One CEO instituted ‘no-fly zone’ time intervals to give employees breathing room, resulting in increased morale. Another CEO started sending a weekly email with tips from colleagues, making employees feel more connected.
Leaders set clear standards for planning before key meetings and delegate some tasks to cross-functional teams. Delegating this way gives the CEO time to address the issues that require the most attention. Invitees can prepare ahead of the meeting, while non-invitees use the time for other tasks.
Pulse-check surveys, virtual town halls and personalised messages should all be part of the mix. Before the pandemic, one executive relied on infrequent mass emails for most communications. After the organisation shifted to remote working, a pulse-check survey revealed that these emails were missing the mark. The leader then started using targeted emails and monthly virtual town halls to share information and reaching out to individual employees with personalised messages. This increased the response rate to these emails, showing that employees felt more engaged with this method of communication.
Performance reviews used to be a closed-door affair, but now they are more inclusive and transparent. This was achieved by increasing the frequency of performance review discussions and getting a broader set of stakeholders to provide input. By inviting multiple stakeholders across teams to virtual reviews, allows for transparency and a more nuanced, diverse, and broader review process.
CEOs identified a set of the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) that they can have more real-time access to on-demand.
Before the pandemic, leaders would get performance updates through informal interactions. Now, KPIs are provided in scheduled formal settings and frequent ad hoc status offline updates, providing more real-time information and on-demand KPIs which allows CEOs to independently review performance as required.
Four unresolved challenges
While many of the obstacles of remote working were effectively addressed, leaders found four main issues to be more challenging to manage.
More than 60% of leaders observed that remote onboarding conducted remotely is less effective than in-person arrangements. None of them were able to provide an example of a successful intervention.
Remote working continues to exert a negative impact on organisational culture. Though some CEOs have noticed a positive change in their organisations, several think the decline will persist as remote working becomes a fact of life. “I’m concerned that this momentum will erode over time,” one CEO said.
Some CEOs say that remote working has made it more difficult to attract employees as some of the perks that they would normally have offered, like travel, have fallen away. They also noted that it was harder to retain employees as it is more difficult to detect when an employee is dissatisfied.
In conclusion
Many of the leaders envision a hybrid future that leverages the advantages of both remote and in-person models, though they are uncertain of how that will look. Leveraging the success of current temporary measures, leaders should aim to reduce reliance on in-person strategies, replacing them with more remote-based approaches.
Remote work is undeniably here to stay, and leaders need to focus on maximising the benefits while mitigating the drawbacks to best position their organisations for success.
