Middle Management for Remote Work
TL;DR
Middle management ideas to make remote work a moral necessity rather than a culture-killer.
- remote work is successful for old trusted employees with defined roles; new employees feel like they’ve joined a group chat rather than a company
- hard to promote a wholesome company culture
- easy to misunderstand chat messages & emojis
- less likely to have small talk/passing conversations
- causes more intra-team & less inter-team messaging so less serendipitous knowledge sharing & innovation
- virtual teams have fewer & less creative ideas
- harder to build trust (required for effective collaboration) virtually
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solutions (for middle managers to enact)
- decide why & when things need to be in-person vs async/remote
- form new groups for new ideas
- intentional structured mentorship programs
- plan retreats/events
- (not explicitly stated in the article but heavily implied) be international
- multinational (virtual) academic collaborations have become more innovative over the last decade than non-virtual ones
- (personal opinion) remote = no need to restrict talent to one city/country