I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you

Seriously, how can there still be managers out there that do not trust their employees if they can’t micromanage them? Who has even time to micro-manage?

Once upon a time prior to covid, it was quite common for people to believe that if a resource was working from home it’s because he / she was slacking and not being nowhere productive as in the office. It always comes down to trust and what you fear.

As if it wasn’t obvious, every single word here is based on my own opinion.

Anyway, I have indeed work with people that would slack from home and do very little, but let me tell you a secret – in case you didn’t know – you can be in the office pretend you are busy and in fact deliver close to very little! If you don’t believe your team is delivering, you should have a serious conversation with them to see why is that, and last comes to worst fire them (or get them moved to another team). I’m nowhere near an advocate of the american style of just firing people without having proper conversations and explore different alternatives. But like any marriage, if the relationship doesn’t work someone needs to move on.

If this isn’t clear already: I HATE MICRO-MANAGING

I hate being micromanaged, and fortunately throughout my career (mostly), I always had a great degree of freedom. I have no problem being sent somewhere else if people don’t trust me. But I can’t stand micromanagement. So I hate applying it too. I like to be able to trust my team and them coming to me for escalation when they need help. If the work is not being done on time, then we sit down and have a conversation about what’s going wrong and what can be done instead.

And why is that micromanagement is so relevant for the story of working from home versus forcing people into the office?

Well, you have seen some statements of some companies that really want everyone in the office. And this to be sits behind old school thought that employees that are not seen by their “boss” are simply not doing.

Good article on what happens to companies that force employees to return (when they could be flexible) here

Seriously, why on earth would you force your team to come to the office right now? First of all, we are not out of the woods yet (I don’t care about the 19th of July rule, precaution people, precaution!).

Many studies have been published that not only people get the work done, they are even more productive. Most people I have talked to are in fact working longer hours. They get some flexibility to deal with things like the kids are on quarentine (again!) and they end up blurring the lines between online and offline working. There’s always the last email to be sent.

A few articles here:

• Forbes
• Harvard business review
• Nice infographics from Deloitte (if you don’t know that already, I’m like the kids, pictures first, text after)

Seriously, why? I would say managers who feel the need to micromanage should go on coaching courses to address their own insicurities and what’s driving them to micromanage. Good article here.

If you want to retain the best talent, you have to offer flexibility to get flexibility back. As binary as that.

Would love to hear your own stories or views on the topic.