BUSINESSES ARE still struggling to understand which of the pandemic’s effects will be temporary and which will turn out to be permanent. Three new reports attempt to analyse these longer-term trends. One is from Glassdoor, a website that allows workers to rank their employers. Another is from the Boston […]
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Despite its advantages, a remote workforce, or one consisting of more outsiders, brings challenges for managers, as the third report demonstrates. The CMI surveyed 2,300 managers and employees. The results highlight just how important effective communication, and concern for workers’ well-being, is to good management. They also unearthed an interesting difference of perspective: nearly half of senior executives thought they were engaging employees more in decision-making since the pandemic, but only 27% of employees agreed.
The survey also shows that the experience of remote working has not been uniform. Of those working virtually, 69% of women with children want to work at least one day from home when the pandemic ends, compared with 56% of men with kids. These women have had less contact with managers during the lockdown than their male peers have had, suggesting they have been neglected.
… So managers have a lot more work to do in responding to the pandemic. Executives need to tailor their behaviour to individual employees’ needs. Ironically, though managers may have feared that remote working would allow employees to slack, it may be that managers have not been up to the challenge. Bosses may have spent too much time videoconferencing and not enough speaking directly with subordinates.