How to Manage People Who Are Working from Home

Working from home is now much more common, but it does pose certain challenges for you as a manager. How do you know people are putting in the same commitment? How can you monitor their working hours and ensure they're not doing too little or too much? Managing people who are working from home can be tricky and requires a different approach.

The first thing you ought to do is lay down some ground rules when it comes to working hours and how people will communicate with one another. If employees are working random hours, there will be delays in communication and that can slow other team members down. You should set out the required 'office hours' and how long people should expect to wait for a reply to their emails and messages.

Of course, there needs to be some flexibility. If people need to go out for an appointment or to collect the kids from school, they should let colleagues know when they will be unavailable and for roughly how long.

You should also check in with people, individually and collectively. Hold a weekly one-to-one meeting for each employee, and a weekly half-hour meeting for everyone where you discuss priorities and problems. You should also have an end of the day check-in with each person, to see how they've been getting on.

Finally, remember to keep it personal. People feel rewarded by recognition, and working from home can become demotivating without much social contact. Keep them feeling positive and involved, by ensuring you put the personal touch into all your communications.