Employer POV - not sure if its WFH problems or just me

Do yiz have phones? If you're waiting for stuff, give him a ring and tell him you're waiting for stuff and ask him when you can get the stuff.

The WFH element is largely irrelevant here. You need to start putting together deliverables based on realistic timeframes. That's a significant part of what being a manager is. If an employee is repeatedly not delivering, that's when you need to have a discussion with them.

You need someone in the business who can do these things. If you're not willing or able, you need to find someone else who can. No business is going to do well without anyone in that role

I work in software too, but for a massive company. Practically all my tasks are trackked including an estimate of duration/time to completion.

I work 95% remotely and love it too. It does give you lots more freedom, but some people have difficulty utilising that freedom.

On a any given day when I have no meetings, I could in theory go shopping, or to the cinema in the afternoon and no-one would miss me. I don't. I carry on with my work as normal. (Our project is already way behind schedule) Once a person tries it once and isn't missed, they might try it more often.

We use MS Teams(which I hate by the way), but from a status tracking point of view, it is quite good, in that, if you dont move the mouse or execute a key press in a couple of minutes, it shows you as away. So if one were to go to the cinema for the afternoon, they would show as being away for 3 hours. It's years since I last used Google Chat, but from what I remember, you can set your status as available and then walk away from your PC.

Obviously, you as director knows exactly what the work you want your employee to do looks like. So it is going to take him longer to do it, as he doesn't have the same picture as you. When I'm having a good day and properly "in the zone", I can get more done in an hour, then I get done in four hours on off days.

I am naturally suspicious though, so you sending a message at 2pm to your employee who shows up as online, but you don't get a reply until 4pm looks suspicious to me.

When I started in this company, my boss said to me "Im not a micro manager, all I care about is the work getting done", which almost gives me the greenlight to go to the cinema during work hours, so long as I log in in the evening and do what is needed of me. For one of my tasks, I have an SLA of 3 days, but I aim to complete the tasks for it within a couple of hours. I could probably tell her I'm off to see Openheimer and her first question would be, "are you on top of all your tasks?" if I said yes she would probably be cool with it, but with my current project, I'd never be able to say yes as, as I said, it is massively behind schedule (nothing to do with me though!). When I finish work on a friday evening, it's not because I have completed all my tasks, its because I've run out of time. By the way, this past Friday, I finished at 10pm.

You do the daily meeting, thats fine. In future, if you are expecting a specific task from one of them, why not schedule a meeting with them to go through the ask, explain exactly what you want on the call and ask for an ETA. If the employee is showing as online, but the meeting invite is not accepted or attended then you will know you have a problem.

Are the morning meetings jousts stand ups? Here's what I done yesterday, today's work, blockers etc? If you're using Jira or Gitlab you can make use of kanban tracking, there's plenty of solutions online to suit your needs.

You might need to take a step back and either allow someone to be the lead on stuff or hire one. Focus more on management and less than development. If this is something you've come up with yourself then you have the vision of where you want it to go. It can be hard to both develop and convey this to a team at the same time.

Granted communication could be better, maybe. You are holding yourself to a very high standard and it could be unfair to hold others to that.

Remember, treat failure and problems as opportunities to develop the skills on your team. In my experience it's almost always a lack of knowledge or confidence that leads to deadlines, hard or soft, being missed. I think it's probably been twice out of malice or laziness.

Break tasks down into workable chunks and dont be afraid to push delivery times. Ensure you have a fully functioning CI/CD process where you can bake in testing, security checks etc and containerise your work if possible. Aim for a minimum viable product and improve on that and definitely avoid feature creep in your early builds. Get it out the door and put them into your planned improvements.

The WFH element really is irrelevant.

I remember at a former company I worked, I was doing security testing for a client however, the firewall was blocking my outbound requests, so I asked could I work from home for the duration. My manager: "No.. I like to keep an eye on people".

Me: To myself: OK, keep an eye on this...

For the next couple of days I used a console based web browser and spent the day working from the office, reading and posting on boards. As far as my eagle-eyed manager could see I was working feverishly in a Linux shell, but actually, I was not doing a tap of work. Then I went home and did the testing from home.

My point is, if some one decides they dont want to work on a particular day, they won't whether they are in the office or at home. Thats where project tracking and reporting comes in. In the massive technology company I work in we are about to move over to Jira. It might fit your needs. They have a free option up to I think 10 users and there are lots of other free and open source software devlopement tracking tools out there too.

A big part of my management style is encouraging people to have ownership of their work. I generally try to avoid communicating by messaging and have daily short meetings and one or two weekly meetings with a clearly defined agenda and rotating minute takers. Our tasks are clearly outlined and if people dont make the deadlines we explore why.

Multi-site working (whether it's WFH or multiple offices) is a lot more work for managers. You absolutely need

measurable targets

processes for actually doing the measuring

processed for follow-up adjustment if targets are at risk of being missed

processes for regularly checking employee wellbeing

In co-located working, you'd still be doing these things but usually get away with more informal, lower time-cost processes. There's a reason the Agile manifesto prefers co-location to multi-location.

I agree here that this is a management issue (not WFH) to an extent, but the reality is for low-accountability/motivation/performance employees WFH gives a lot more temptation to slack off then working in an office where you are stuck there for the day so doing a couple of hours will probably help the time pass, plus you are in an environment surrounded by mostly others working. This sets the tone, more than WFH.

Op is obviously a high performer, and the mistake you make is that most others are like you

High performers have no issue wherever they work - they will be driven to achieve and do the job but the reality is 80% are not high performers and are just humans who will give in to temptation if there is a big payoff (more free time) and zero consequence -why wouldn't you? Especially when people are way less focused on career post-pandemic

Low performers will call any kind of management "micro management" to get themselves off the accountability hook. Don't fall for the emotional manipulation and guilt-tripping. Setting clear targets and expecting them to be met (and when they are not, checking in on it) is not micro-management, it's the job. If targets are being met and delivered and you are constantly checking in that's different. People want the freedom without the accountability - hell, we all would - but that's not what a job is.

I think if you are constantly have to defend against micro management or is the first thing you jump to, that's something else entirely. No smoke without fire. For me it's got nothing to do with the OPs query.

You set a work item and a schedule for it. It either gets done on time or it doesn't. If it not getting done you investigate why.

Rather than tracking time. I'd be tracking output. Someone might be in an office all day put produce nothing. Someone else might seem to never be around, but always has their work done.

For me with a small team I'd be getting together with them and thrashing out your problems with the current arrangements. If it's not working keep adapting until it does.

It not explicitly stated but it was ok before wfh. But perhaps its something to do with wfh.

But maybe it not wfh, perhaps its something what was an issue before, and not realised then. But wfh has highlighted it.

You need to get people to commit to timelines and hold them accountable if they do not.

This is what we do.

I delegate tasks in a weekly meeting. I ask people how long they think a task will take. We may negotiate if I think they're over or underestimating the time.

We catch up every few days to see how tasks are progressing and track timelines. People need to have a good reason why they haven't hit a target they themselves have set. It keeps people honest.

Sometimes I get the excuse "well X wasn't ready", which is fine, but they should automatically move to the next item on the queue. Then I'll ask whoever was responsible for X and get to the bottom of things.

If I need something from someone, then we will agree when it's due. If I need it by 4pm, I'll ask for it for 2pm.

You are the problem here 100%, and i say that having a lot of experience in wfh and hybrid the last 5 years.

Your red flag statement that really stuck out was saying if you want to wfh you should be doing more just to prove you can wfh...what a ridiculous and illogical statement. The whole purpose of wfh is to allow people to do their duties in a reasonable 8 or so hours day then log off and live their life without having to be on call 24/7. It sounds to me like you are totally projecting your workplace standards and long hours onto everyone else and you cannot do that.

Look. Some people will take the p!ss wfh and in office. Some are excellent in both situations. It varies. If you think dragging people back to the office to improve response time will work, you might be surprised. People will resent you taking that perk off them and will drag their feet even more so if i were you i would suggest not expecting other people to be the same as you and do a 15 min morning catch up to set expectations and response times and take it from there.

I work from home most days and my team also tends to be remote. The key to success is to set rules, plans, and expectations. I use scrum methodoligy and we have 2-week sprints. Everyone has their duties and goals and if they aren't achieved, we discuss them at the next post-sprint meeting to analyse why it happened. We also look at what was achieved and discuss how we can fine-tune certain things, or take note of the successes and what we should do more of.

Anything that isn't completed is carried over and this tends to ensure it gets done because we hate seeing something constantly being carried over. I also have monthly one-on-one meetings to discuss their job, their needs, and so forth.

I use both email and Teams - if something is urgent, I will call via Teams. If I want a trail of communication, then I will email. A lot of the time I use both as I may need to alert them but follow up with an email with more information. I leave my team to do their job and they know that I am trusting them to do it. I don't micromanage them but rather get stuck in, and act as a mentor or sounding board when they need it. I want remote to work and so do they, so it works for us. I also keep a work tracker (smartsheets) to see what projects are in place, what everyone is working on, and when it should be completed - this includes my tasks.

I don't think it would work if I didn't have the structure in place. Everything needs to be managed and our roles and projects must be defined and measured. I also try not to give them the answers but rather lead them down a path to the answer, or the way I want them to go. This way, they are figuring it out and learning from the process. If I just told them, then it would be a cycle of micromanagement and I want independent, free-thinking, and proactive team members.

There are lots of online courses but I would suggest Agile Scrum and ACT (advancing your coaching techniques)... or just a coaching workshop.

Similar to what others are saying, this sounds like better comminication is needed - was he aware that this item was due for Friday and that you needed to work on it after him so really the deadline for his work was say noon on Friday? If he was aware of that and still didn't deliver, then that's something specific you can discuss with him to understand what was going on.

It also sounds like it would probably be a good idea to introduce the concept of "core hours" if you don't already have something like that.

You're not wrong on your assessment, might be wrong on your response. Becoming big brother and pushing down micro management is further going to detach them from work.

I think what you need for a successful WFH is clearly defined responsibilities, outputs and expectations. And communication if those are falling behind. Your employees need to feel they have a stake and own their work, their processes.

If someone can do the job and then relax have a cuppa tea or throw on the match - power to them. If someone is falling behind on a project and stays over an extra hour but still gets off work at a reasonable time because they're at home, great too. I think what the move towards WFH exposed is that many employers have no performance standard in place, no HR, no management and just sort of use employees who should in their own right be treated as professionals and part of the group, as lackeys. The job of the lackey has and always been to just be there and be screamed orders at and once a person unconsciously realizes that's their place that's what they will be. They won't seek autonomy if you deny it to them. They won't work towards excellence if that's not their job.

Having a schedule of work and reviewing it on a regular basis is not micromanaging.

Micromanaging is when someone asks you to draft an email then stands behind you rewording it as you type. Or not allowing you to make any decisions that are part of your role.

Once I had to check why someone was being very slow to do a task. On investigation it seemed every step required their managers approval, who was very slow to respond. Thus that person was constantly waiting for approvals.

I was about to post something similar. I've worked with global teams for much of my career. Sometimes with overlap, sometimes not. It doesn't matter if the person you are working with is sat beside you or is in India, you need to know and respect peoples core hours. BUT, if you are working on something dependant on someone and you are getting nothing from them during their core hours, management get informed straightaway. Sometimes you might hear back "Oh such and such had a dentist appointment and his team lead forgot to update the time-off sheet", and sometimes the guy appears online and starts rapidly but sheepishly sending all the information you need. Usually suggests his manager tracked him or her down and they weren't where they were meant to be.

If the OP needed the information by 4, told the individual he needed it by 2, assuming they are based within Ireland that's within normal core hours. If the individual takes lunch at 1pm, it is perfectly fine to ask for a status update around 12.30. Aside from being on lunch, silence from the individual looks very bad.

Not entirely sure if you're dependent on someone else why you'd not check with each other the day before or that morning they are in and available. Or that's there no contingency cover.

It's not normal if you can't get someone to reporting them to management "straightaway". People can be away from their desk for many reasons.

We would always have scheduled a slot for such things. But would need a check-in before hand.

Just saying it a bit confusing to say "management get informed straightaway" if thats not what you meant. What do? I just send a post action report update (email) to the agreed circulation/contact list.

In recent years I've found some people (and/or companies) always reply in a responsible time and some consistently don't. To the point that its a waste of time chasing them. I will refuse to work with certain people or companies. I used to think its strange that some people (or companies) but its become so common I don't blink an eye anymore.

If its your own employee, I think the writings on the wall for them if they are consistently unavailable and missing deadlines.

I don't think that a WFH thing. But thats been well discussed above.

You need to separate feelings from reality. If output is down, this should be capable of being measured against output in other corresponding periods. If it is measurably down, you have every right to challenge your employees without coming across as a ball breaker.

You might reasonably point out that output was better before wfh and that if the trend isn’t reversed, you will have to consider going back to the old way of working. It may just focus the mind.

I would agree with having the agile approach and two week sprints, you are setting goals and what should be achieved in two weeks.

My manager told me he doesn't care what hours I work once I get the job done, and i am available for meetings.

We have a weekly half hour meeting to discuss work and also a catch up on things outside of work.

We have a weekly meeting with all the team with no agenda but just to chat about non work things.

We have a group chat and when anyone heads out for more than a half hour they let the team know.

We have a meeting two days a week to discuss how the work is progressing and any issues.

Setting two week deliverables make it easy to see if work is not being done.

I head out for exercise for an hour at 10am, and work an hour later in the evening, my manager doesn't care once he knows my schedule, works far better than forced work times with no leeway.