2015 was an insane year. Like, wild wild west, insane. Folks shook hands with complete disregard to social distancing. Six feet apart was no consideration when engaging in those awkward hugs that none of us really enjoyed, but so desperately long for now. You could see everyone\u2019s entire face. Toilet paper abounded, and while hand sanitizer flowed freely, hardly anyone used it. Working remote was a luxury. It was absolute anarchy.<\/p>\n
Given today\u2019s world, you wouldn\u2019t think those circumstances could move an entire team from office work to remote work, but it happened six years ago in my pre-Centric Consulting days when I was managing a 24\/7 hospital system call center. Despite adopting a remote model in less challenging circumstances than those we\u2019re experiencing today, the lessons I learned as I led my team to a new remote world<\/a> are still true.<\/p>\n Spoiler alert: Success in a remote world isn\u2019t rocket science. However, as my colleagues at Centric write in their new white paper, \u201cBusiness Anywhere: Our Guide to Becoming a Digital-First Organization<\/a>,\u201d you need intentional, regular interactions to create connections when working remotely.<\/strong> This is especially true when your employees may have spent the last year feeling like they\u2019re on a virtual island during a pandemic.<\/p>\n Before we get into the lessons learned, I should probably give you some background. Just so we are clear, I have no crystal ball or future-predicting abilities. If that were the case, I would be writing this from my private island in the Bahamas, rather than my basement in the Midwest.<\/p>\n The call center I managed in 2015 received after-hours calls for roughly 500 pediatricians and 250 adult primary care physicians across the St. Louis<\/a> region in Missouri and Illinois. We had a team of 25 individuals, and we were doing pretty poorly when it came to nationally recognized call-center metrics. Our average speed of answer (the time it took our agents to answer an incoming call) was three or four times the national benchmark, which resulted in painfully long wait times for patients to speak with a clinician.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever put your child to bed at night and noticed that something seemed \u201coff,\u201d you can understand how any amount of time spent waiting for someone to respond or speak is unbearable \u2013 let alone waiting for several minutes.<\/p>\n In our quest to get better, we realized we needed to overhaul our schedule and move to a remote model. We knew becoming a remote workplace would be the elusive \u201cgame-changer\u201d that would allow us to serve our patients better.<\/strong><\/p>\n We started by creating remote working policies that would allow us to flex staff when we saw increases in call volume and schedule regular \u201chalf-shifts\u201d for predicted busy times. Then, we communicated our new policies to employees.<\/p>\n But this was only the beginning. At the time, I didn\u2019t fully grasp how I\u2019d have to change my game to be a better leader of remote workers \u2014 one who provided clear guidance to remote workers, ensured they had the necessary tools and skills, and modeled good remote-work behaviors.<\/p>\n The goal was not just to improve our metrics but to create a people-centric workforce. We design people-centric workforces for collaboration, productivity and team effectiveness, but they also enable employee well-being and personal engagement.<\/strong><\/p>\n For me, the first step toward creating a people-centric remote workforce was becoming more intentional about interacting with my team. When we were in the office, I could easily stop by people\u2019s desks to say \u201chi\u201d and chat with them to see how things were going.<\/p>\n In my new remote environment, I initially found it easy to forget about the people I served as a leader. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Looking back on the first couple of weeks, it was as if robots had replaced my team of humans, who were now just names in my chat program.<\/p>\n I quickly realized that my team craved meaningful work interactions just as much as I did. So we took steps to ensure we all enjoyed those interactions:<\/strong><\/p>\n While these additions to my day took time away from the other thousands of things I had on my plate, they helped me model good remote-work behavior. The group chats showed I cared about how we were all doing. The jokes showed I wasn\u2019t afraid to put myself out there. My hasty exit showed I trusted them to get the job done. Check-ins and 1:1s demonstrated I cared about them as both a group and as individuals.<\/p>\n Being intentional about my interactions with the team paid major dividends in the long run, which we\u2019ll get to later.<\/p>\n Our new remote world also meant we had to be creative with our meeting structures. That meant moving from in-person meetings to conference calls or video conference meetings (sound familiar?), and it meant we had to do more planning for team-building activities. At that time, it was possible to have luncheons or shifts where folks could work in the office, and we\u2019d have food or fun events.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s world, getting creative might look like a team virtual happy hour, lunch, or an early morning group coffee. Whatever it means for you, the end goal was to bring us together for something other than work.<\/strong><\/p>\n A final lesson I learned was that having and building trust with my team was more important in a remote model than ever before \u2013 and the trust had to go both ways.<\/p>\n I had to trust the employees that they would do their jobs and not be on the clock while binge-watching their favorite shows. We benefited from having individual metrics in place before moving remote, and I made it clear we were still tracking those metrics by reviewing them during my 1:1s with every employee.<\/p>\n Still, we needed to emphasize that we wanted them to have autonomy and flexibility. We wanted them to feel supported. We wanted them to have a shared sense of purpose beyond the metrics. It was a fine line to walk, and we walked it by showing good remote work and communication practices.<\/p>\n On the flip side, my employees needed to trust that I, as their leader, would not leave them stranded on a remote (virtual) island. They also had to trust I was open to shifts in their workday that would help them maintain work-life balance and healthy boundaries \u2013 which was easier to achieve in the remote model because we had more flexibility in our staffing.<\/p>\n I first began building trust by ensuring I set up each individual to be successful as a remote worker. That looked different for each person on the team. Some just needed to have the equipment, while others needed extra care and attention.<\/strong><\/p>\n As time went on, sometimes building trust meant something as small as following through on little things, like expediting a new headset when the old one wasn\u2019t working. Simple actions such as these also demonstrated empathy for my team members. As the \u201cBusiness Anywhere<\/a>\u201d white paper notes, trust and empathy are two of the most important qualities a remote leader can have.<\/p>\n Now, about those dividends. The team produced its best metrics in 25 years. We saw the lowest abandoned call rate (the percentage of calls people gave up on because they were waiting too long) and the lowest average speed of answer ever. We also saw the lowest employee turnover rate in years.<\/p>\n More impressively, these trends remained for several months, proving they weren\u2019t one-time phenomena. I will be honest and say we were not perfect by any means, but the team performed better than we had in a quarter of a century.<\/strong><\/p>\n I wish I could take credit, but the team truly did all the hard work. All I needed to do was make sure they had what they needed \u2014 be it human connection, trust, or technology \u2014 and let the team do the rest.<\/p>\nWhy We Transitioned to Remote Work<\/h2>\n
Creating \u2014 and Leading \u2014 a People-Centric Remote Team<\/h2>\n
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Getting Creative in Our Virtual World<\/h3>\n
Building Trust<\/h3>\n
Hard Work \u2014 Big Dividends<\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n