Effective Homeworking after the pandemic

The current pandemic has brought homeworking kicking and screaming to the top of many organisations’ agendas – whether they wanted it to or not.

But whether future homeworking in your organisation is a by-product of the pandemic or the culmination of a long considered plan, there are many things you need to take into consideration before you take the plunge.

The sudden nature of lockdown meant hunderds of thousands of people started working from home, overnight. Normal rules and regulations about working from home were suspended/waived in the face of a national emergency.

But that was then, and this is now…..

As a first consideration, any decisions you make, based on the world of work since March 23^rd, need to take into account the fact that Lockdown is not the real world

As lockdown is slowly released, organisations are already considering extensive, ongoing home-working for a variety of reasons:

1. The potential to save on the huge fixed costs of office space.
2. The impact of social distancing meaning that they can no longer accommodate the number of people they had before in the space available – but can’t/don’t want to reduce headcount.
3. The realisation that the old ‘way we work around here’ can be just as effective with employees working from home most of the time (knowing they actually do work!)

The first thing to consider is the legal framework for working from home which is somewhat different than during lockdown. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) has a 43 page document (click here) outlining an employer’s obligations and suggested action they might take.

When you realise it covers topics such as…

• Whether current contracts of employment cover homeworking (and whether employees can refuse)
• What the financial implications are for the employee (additional heating and lighting costs, paying business rates, whether the terms of their mortgage and home insurance allow them to work from home full-time)
• Employers’ responsibility for Health and Safety at Work even when work is done at home (including questions like whether the employee has a readily available fire extinguisher!!)

..you begin to realise that setting this up for a sizeable workforce isn’t as easy as giving someone a laptop and phone and telling them not to come into the office any more.

But, even if you manage to scale this mountain, get everything in place in compliance with the law, there may be one fundamental thing you’ve forgotten.

Are the people you’ve designated to work from home willing/able to do it long-term?

Buffer.com publishes an annual global survey on homeworking and discovered in 2020 (like in previous years) that the top 3 difficulties people experience with homeworking, worldwide, are not necessarily related to the pandemic and lockdown.

It suggests that many individuals will either need help to overcome these problems or even that, for some people, Working From Home is not a viable option.

As the ACAS guide says, the personal qualities required are likely to include:

• Self-motivation and discipline.
• Ability to work without direct supervision.
• Ability to complete work to a deadline.

And it’s possible/likely that you won’t know this from the lockdown experience.

Compulsory homeworking during lockdown, while coping with the fear of job loss, fear of the virus and  family issues, means that, while recent months give you an indication of what a long term policy might look like, you shouldn’t take it as proof of concept.

A London School of Economics study of more than 500 staff and managers[1] on attitudes towards flexible working found that many of the positive effects waned over time.

Employees no longer viewed working from home as a privilege and began behaving no differently to office-based staff, producing similar results. Supporting this research, major corporations such as IBM and Yahoo have both reversed remote-working policies, having seen a dip in productivity[2].

Part of the issue with working from home is that it doesn’t fundamentally change human psychology. If you are an unproductive person in the office, then it’s unlikely to change when you work from home – where there are plenty of other distractions. You still need tactics and strategies in place to help you work effectively.

So how do you find out who is best suited to homeworking?

Most employees (and employers), when asked if they would like to work from home, will answer yes – because they are only looking at the positive aspects of doing so. But this is the homeworking equivalent of asking someone ‘How are you?’ and accepting the answer ‘Fine.’ as confirmation that all is well.

You need a much more scientific approach if you are embarking on an enterprise-wide plan to introduce homeworking. There are certain factors that will help employers understand if, and where, their people will need help.

But what are those factors? And how do you measure them?

As an assessment business, Great People Inside is used to creating assessments for the development of employees and teams. Although the size of the homeworking challenge is unprecedented, the essential work of analysing and developing your WFH team hasn’t changed – it’s what we do, all day, every day.

And because we customise assessments for specific purposes, we’ve developed a series of new assessments, informed by extensive, independent research, into the characteristics required for people to work, successfully, from home.

These assessments will allow you not only to undertake a ‘health check’ of all your people, but to respond to what it tells you. With our Partners, we offer individualised online development, provided by subject experts, to help your people cope with a situation that is far from their ‘old normal’.

Our new assessments are:

Great People Inside’s Remote Employee assessment helps you discover if your current employees have the skills needed to be productive and motivated when working remotely.

Great People Inside’s Remote Manager assessment provides key information on the efficiency of managers leading a remote team, assesses their ability to manage different work styles and create vision, motivation and momentum in a remote team.

Great People Inside’s Remote Team Member assessment provides important information regarding the efficiency of a team when working remotely. It shows the way members interact with one another and, at the same time, presents the optimal conditions in which that team can reach the highest level of productivity.

If you are planning to introduce long-term homeworking in your organisation, do you know if your people can cope with the isolation? Would you like to know? And if you’re recruiting additional people directly into homeworking, wouldn’t it be good to be able to measure them against your existing successful homeworkers.

Contact Great People Inside on [email protected] or call us on 01494 573572 and let us help you develop and introduce the most effective (and cost-effective) Homeworking Policy possible to ensure you get it right first time.

[1] http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3349/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2017/10/12/why-ibm-brought-remote-workers-back-to-the-office-and-why-your-company-might-be-next/#6350779316da

Developing your High-Performance Salesforce

If you were starting from scratch, would you design the salesforce you’ve got today? Probably not but then few of us start with the luxury of a clean slate.

Instead, the group you have is an amalgam of the people you inherited and the people you’ve recruited since you took over the team. But, all too often, performances within the team vary greatly.

A typical salesforce will look like this:

But where did the Poor and Average performers come from – and what can you do about it?

What can you do?

You could sack all the Poor and Average Performers and then recruit only Top Performers. But unless you’ve dramatically changed your recruitment process (a topic for a different blog), that didn’t work out too well last time, did it? You risk ending up with the same graph but with different names attached to the tags ‘Poor’ and ‘Average’ Performers.

What’s the alternative?

Develop your own High-Performance Salesforce, based on people you already know and employ. But it helps to know what’s achievable.

Poor performers are unlikely to rise to the performance level of your best people. But you can improve their performance if you identify where the performance gaps are. Any improvement will contribute to your target.

Average performers may well be Top Performers-in-waiting – IF you can remove the obstacles that currently prevent it happening. If you know where the gaps/obstacles are and provide them with targeted Learning and Development, it will bring them closer to, even alongside, the best people you employ.

How do you do this?

Your sales numbers tell you who’s performing well – but they don’t tell you why?

You need to understand what it is about your top performers that sets them apart from the rest.

Why are they able to:

• Quickly identify opportunities?
• Delight their clients?
• Close sales quickly?

… and most importantly – why can’t everyone else do it?

Great People Inside’s Dimensions assessment tells you:

• what makes your top performers so great
• why your average performers are less effective
• how to improve your least successful performers

By working with you, we create an assessment tailored specifically to your organisation. This includes a benchmark created from your top performers (not a random collection of external organisations).

This assessment is then used to measure all of your sales team.

By doing this, you are able to provide the individual development needed to improve your sales figures, in the middle of a recession, with the team you already have.

What’s more, the same benchmark will help you recruit better when you have vacancies to fill.

Use your development budget to Develop your High-Performance Salesforce. It could be the best money you’ve ever spent.

Email me at [email protected] or call 01494 573 572.

Poor sales recruitment? It’s not my fault!

If HR is responsible for recruitment in your organisation – but keeps recruiting poor sales people – it may not be your fault – but it IS your problem.

And if it’s your problem shouldn’t you have (a lot of) input into getting it resolved? That’s unless it provides a convenient excuse (‘we would be doing better, boss, if HR didn’t keep recruiting these ****** **** Sales Execs.’).

As a Sales leader, you’re responsible for the performance of your team and need to improve your recruitment process so that you can ensure successful salespeople keep coming into your company.

A typical sales force

Often, your sales force will look like this:

Think about the last time you recruited a top performer. Now, think about the last time you recruited a poor performer.

Did you do anything different in your recruitment process?

Probably not, yet you got very different results.

You need to be able to identify why some salespeople are more successful than others. Your current recruitment process is clearly not doing that so is no longer fit for purpose. If you want better results, you must fix your hiring process.

When your process doesn’t identify who will (and won’t) perform, you waste:

• Time
• Energy
• Money

You can save money immediately by adopting a new selection process.

Improve your chances of success

Flipping a coin gives you a 50/50 chance of success – although, clearly, this also results in failure half of the time.

But taking a more scientific approach to recruitment, you remove much of your operation’s downside costs.

These include:

1. Frequent employee turnover – even from good people
2. Recruiting & training of replacements
3. Lost sales through an empty seat during recruitment & induction training
4. Wasted investment in salary & training for someone that doesn’t make it

If you’re happy with the status quo, good luck!

If you want to improve your likelihood of success even further, talk to Great People Inside about our Dimensions assessments. Dimensions has been designed specifically to increase your success rate when recruiting sales people (and it might improve your luck too!).

Get in touch now at [email protected] or call 01494 573 572.

Want more sales? Improve information when you recruit.

Picture the scene: you’ve just recruited an amazing new salesperson from your competitor. They’ve always been a highflier for your rival, and now you want them to work the same magic for you.

Yet, despite a huge contact list, the sales figures don’t materialise. Your new recruit isn’t as good as your best current salespeople. It’s a recruitment disaster.

But why has it happened?

It’s easy to believe that sales success in one place can be translated anywhere. However, company culture also plays a major part.

Success in your company depends on:

• Redefining the role
• Offering great training
• Selling differently for your company

There’s nothing wrong with looking at prior sales success – unless it’s the only thing you base your decision on.

What sales excellence looks like depends on your:

• Company culture
• Customers
• Products & services

Use your top salespeople to create a benchmark against which existing and future staff are measured. Hire more people like those who are already successful.

Research shows that fitting people to the job you’re offering is the only proven method of predicting success in that role.

Great People Inside’s ‘Dimensions’ assessments allow you to:

• Set your professional standard
• Measure top performers against a benchmark
• Recruit & develop salespeople to grow your business

If you want to know more about the ‘Dimensions’ psychometric assessment, and how it can help your company to measure every potential recruit’s suitability before they join your sales team, then email me at [email protected] or call 01494 573 572.