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Well, of course you can't just switch to remote work overnight without any preparation, and expect everything to work well immediately! But, for example: how do
by icebraining 7y ago
Well, of course you can't just switch to remote work overnight without any preparation, and expect everything to work well immediately! But, for example: how do you know those workers are treating it as a small vacation? You're not there to see them either! Managers can do the same, they don't need to know what the worker is doing instead of working; they can see the work is not getting done.
- hkai 7y agoI think one obstacle is that in practice, it is difficult to tell someone "your performance is bad today and you are not getting work done".
- pas 7y agoI agree, but. People skills. Allegedly managers have them. Plus until corps can fire and replace the slackers, they are not in danger. (Because it's unlikely to hire someone while the quarantine is in effect.) But simply tying pay to daily performance usually works.
- blowski 7y agoHow do you set daily targets? All known measures (e.g. lines of code, bug counts) produce bad software because they are gamed.
- asynch8 7y agoBy reporting progress, daily targets should not be a certain tangible goal necessarily, rather than that some progress has been done and reported. This isn't perfect of course but I think it's possible to evaluate whether or not the tasks/progress someone has made reflects a days work.
- raxxorrax 7y agoDaily targets are a waste of time in my opinion. Weekly targets make much more sense. But as a team meeting, not for a performance evaluation. That said, people constantly measuring performance should be replaced by productive people. It is always a management failure if your people are slacking off. Otherwise I would just do something that makes me look good on daily reports. That can have massive negative implications for general business interest. That creates the typical blinders that make large corps unproductive. Daily targets make sense in production, but not for evaluating employees, but because you need it for other business processes to allow supply and demand fit the productivity. The current trend for more employee surveillance is mostly a scam and doesn't even help productivity. On the contrary it tends to create unnecessary overhead, like daily meetings. It is one of the most non-creative employment of information technology. That said, daily meetings can be extremely important for remote teams. But those are mostly about other topics anyway.
- pas 7y agoAt the lowest level the team lead (you can call it manager or whatever) has to be accountable and needs a budget and the ability to freely hire and fire people to be able to meet objectives.
- nradov 7y agoGiving first-line managers the freedom to hire and fire would be a stupid way to manage an organization. Most of those managers lack the experience, competence, and perspective to make that type of decision effectively. Which is why competent organizations support them with a surrounding structure of corporate policies, senior management, and human resources to (hopefully) prevent first-line managers from making too many mistakes.
- pas 7y agoIf you don't have competent enough first-line managers to decide who they can effectively work with, your whole org will become a micromanagement hell. Which breaks down if you try to do it remotely. Of course the implementation of hire/fire does not mean that the first line manager does the interview alone, without any help, supervision, oversight and support from middle management and HR. But if you have no say in who you manage, who you work with, it'll be very hard to get work done. And in my experience this usually already happens informally anyway.
- pas 7y agoI haven't said target. I said performance. Working remotely both incentives and sort of mandates better visibility into one's working/thinking processes. Writing, explaining, documenting, committing, pushing, testing one's work is important. It helps others know what you are up to, and helps you to be able to better show your work.
- jdblair 7y agoIt's not difficult, though. It just takes practice. You use the same channels that you are using for remote work: chat, email, voice, video. I understand the desire to not put something like that in writing, but that's what voice and video are for.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoFor most modern work it's difficult to see if the work is being done, whether people are at home or in the office. For the stuff you can watch it's mostly impossible to do at home.
- flurdy 7y agoI would guess a lot are also not set up at home to work efficiently. I.e. proper desk in a quiet room etc. And if the kids are home from school as well, I assume it is very hard to concentrate on working from home. Also if there is the threat of an incoming pandemic, then my priorities would be elsewhere than work. I.e. securing family, provisions, medicines, etc. And checking news sources about the epidemic every 5 minutes is not good for efficiency...
- kenneth 7y agoEspecially in HK where people just don't have the space. Many people live with their families in tiny apartments for much longer in life.