How to Motivate, Mentor and Manage People Remotely

It’s always a pleasure to come across managing directors who ‘get’ employee engagement. Leaders who apply the principles thoughtfully, creatively and constantly and in a way that enables their company to flourish or simply ride out one of the UK’s most challenging times. In this instance I refer to John Purnell, MD of Anglepoise, who kindly shared his secrets of how to motivate, mentor and manage people remotely during the lockdown as part of our 18^th June Engage for Success online forum.

You know Anglepoise, they make those enduringly desirable articulated lamps. Ninety percent of their 45 Portsmouth based employees were forced to work remotely when the lockdown started, like most companies.

So what helped Anglepoise manage the transition so well? 

Clarity, communication, transparency and trust; leading by example and planning, according to John.

Let’s shed some light on this. Research shows a major stress for people working from home is that they’re not set up for it. At Anglepoise John champions the principle that employees can work as they see fit as long as the company has happy customers and happy employees. The prescience of this is that many of Anglepoise’s workforce were already set up to work remotely with the appropriate equipment and risk assessments. Big changes become smaller changes when you prepare for them.

But not going into the office for weeks on end has its challenges (as we’ve discussed in previous forum blogs). Being stuck at home, managing childcare and missing out on the traditional office buzz can lead to people losing work-life balance. In addition, some people end up stretching five days work over seven and suffering poor mental health. Performance can go up in the short term, sure, but long term it tends to leave people demotivated. Sound familiar? Here are some of the things you could replicate from John based on his advice.

Some ideas you could replicate to manage people remotely

• Create clarity – over the situation and the leadership team’s proposed way of managing it. Be clear on the company’s mission and purpose, what the government’s guidance means and how it’s affecting the company. What support is available for people and their opportunities to input (employee voice). 
• Step up communication – at Anglepoise they increased one to ones, check-ins and board meetings. They encouraged managers and staff to pick up the phone to each other more to make up for missing those little informal chats that take place as a matter of course in a busy office. Managers also fed any relevant issues and concerns from their conversations with team members upwards, (and advantage of being small – you can often manage without pulse surveys).
• Role model the behaviours you’re championing if you’re in a leadership role by not working weekends, booking time off and mentoring or coaching people who are struggling.
• Personalise and individualise staff engagement, by asking what works for people and following through on what they say.
• Identify the little things that make a difference and amplify them. When people are remote working things like feedback and praise can become more important.  At Anglepoise they encouraged managers to put more emphasis on this (all part of being an engaging manager). They also made a bigger deal of birthdays and special dates and did more to share and celebrate via competitions and rewards.
• Support employees’ mental health by making the topic a regular part of the discussion, by providing plenty of advice and information, ensuring everyone has a health action plan, advising people to speak to whoever they feel most comfortable with about issues, and offering free training in techniques such as mindfulness. 

Start with trust

• Help people stay connected and informed by making more use of collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams (which Anglepoise use) or your staff intranet.
• Encourage best practice in running virtual meetings to mitigate the inevitable meeting fatigue.
• Share everything. Information empowers and transparency shows you’ve nothing to hide. It’s why Anglepoise make nearly all information (bar salaries) freely available to those who want it.
• Have a ‘great place to work’ action scheme and focus on employees’ development right from induction. John is a great fan of helping employees raise their awareness with tools such as Strengths Finder, Belbin and 360 feedback.
• Give teams lots of autonomy and trust people to perform their role as they feel best. Start with trust, John says.

Follow these recommendations (which correspond closely with the approaches Henry Stewart recommends in his excellent book The Happy Manifesto) and there’s a fair chance you’ll perform as strongly as John and the team at Anglepoise. 

Helpful?

Our Engage for Success online forums are giving managers and leaders the insights vital to supporting people to perform and engage during this challenging time. To find out more or sign up to our next forum please go to our events.

At ClearVoice, we are experts in delivering people analytics, engagement and culture change strategies that inspire your people and transform your business. We influence change through the power of insight to improve your company’s performance. For more information on how we can help with motivating, mentoring or managing people remotely, call or email us today and let us show you how the power of communication can change your business.