Over the past year, you’ve probably learned that when a team is “distributed,” it becomes more complicated to manage.
And we’ve focused a lot of attention on how being distributed out of a centralized office location has changed how we manage and work.
Distributed = greater management complexity.
But there’s a bigger lesson we should be learning.
Our teams have always been distributed, way more than we knew. And this distribution had largely been in our blind spot until now.
Ignoring it may be your downfall as a manager moving forward.
Don’t’ remove human touch all together…….it is critical for mental health and wellbeing.
I love the idea of compensating people not just based on job performance, but also on their circumstances. There has to be a system in place though, or this could get really complicated really fast. But it does demonstrate, in a very practical way, sincerity on the part of the company in caring for its employees. I have not heard this idea before and I think it’s a great one.
This also brings to mind health benefits. Do you care for an aging parent and need to pay a nurse to be there when you are working? Do you have a child or spouse who is dealing with severe mental health issues and needs something beyond the “30 sessions” with a therapist? What if a company could work with their insurance provider to craft a better way of handling this? Covering “the big stuff” will certainly lead to better care add to productivity since employees won’t be worrying and distracted all the time.
Today the moon and stars must be hatching a plot because I’ve read a couple posts asking questions about finding a different and better way to operate. The first, from Liz Ryan on LinkedIn, is about mandatory team-building off-site events and why they shouldn’t be mandatory.
There was another post from Kristi Faltorusso. also on LinkedIn about how maybe we should rethink our customer success metrics and timetables. We need a better way to think about things like “time to value.” Perhaps rigid rules around compensation should also soften. Make it employee focused rather than a 57-page list of requirements and exceptions. Lean towards saying “yes”
How to be fair? That is light-years beyond my pay grade, even my new compassionate pay grade. My idea would be to have the entire company vote on the wisest, fairest, most trusted, most like Ghandi / the Dalai Lama / Mother Teresa person in the company and each decision simply goes to them. Period. But that’s crazy talk! Maybe. Or, as part of the compensation decision, the employee is asked: “How much is enough.” How would you answer?
This wonderful idea that Jason spoke about will no doubt cause considerable arm wrestling, headaches, and animated discussions, but it will be well worth it.
First I think we should train employees and leaders on work life synergy then apply work life benefits to suit the individual.