Let’s be honest, not everyone supports the notion of home working, particularly when coming across instances of workers being unproductive and producing little to no output when at home compared to when in the office.
We all know that poor performance could be due to a number of reasons so our first piece of advice is to sit down with the employee to ensure you identify any barriers while home working.
But what do you do if there seems to be no justifiable reason and you have evidence to suggest the person is just “skiving”?
Here’s our outlook + advice 👇🏽
🔹Before introducing home/flexible working, agree a code of conduct where you outline acceptable behaviours. Be clear on what behaviours are unacceptable. Be mindful on how you word this. HR Habitat Ltd can produce these for you keeping in mind individual roles and expected outputs.
🔹Sit down to agree outputs or project targets. Some roles cannot be clearly defined as people work increasingly autonomously these days, however, you should take some time to understand the scope of the roles to set expectations
🔹Be transparent in your measures, I.e., will you be monitoring the time it takes to respond to emails? If employees manage to answer phones within an agreed time scale? DISCLAIMER: these measures work for roles with quantifiable outputs such as telesales for example. You should not monitor calls and emails for performance based workers as this will quickly disengage them as they feel shadowed and untrusted. Contact us to help devise output scores, measures and performance reviews.
🔹Introduce engagement initiatives. Workers can feel isolated when at home and over a period of time this can affect performance. Hold virtual workshop days (contact us to book) that are fun and engaging and encourages productivity (again, that’s us 👋🏽)
🔹Have regular team meetings and 1:1 chats. These shouldn’t consist of “what have you done today?” but should be more around “have you got what you need to help you finish your tasks?”
🔹Of course, in some more extreme cases you will have enough grounds for disciplinary, HOWEVER, you MUST MUST MUST ensure you are being fair and have provided chances for improvement. Contact us to help, guide and lead you through such a process
👉🏽Need a work from home code of conduct?
👉🏽Need engaging, fun virtual workshops for home workers to keep up productivity?
👉🏽Require lawful + ethical guidance on your disciplinary process?
👉🏽Have a poor performer to review?
👉🏽Have no formal disciplinary process?
👉🏽Unsure how to conduct fair performance management processes against your current policies?
☎️ 03301335088
🌍 www.hrhabitat.co.uk
Founder of HR Habitat, award winner of "Best HR & Employment Law Consultancy, 2024" title. As featured in BBC Oline, BBC Asian Network Radio, Telegraph & more.
