How to Stop Micromanaging Remote Workers

With the adoption of remote work by a greater percentage of the workforce post-pandemic, most companies face issues that were not necessarily present before now. One such bugging issue is the micromanagement of remote workers. Micromanagement stems from remote team management challenges. Challenges like this have forced several remote companies to turn to innovations in a bid to effectively manage remote teams. A good example is Jonathan Siddharth’s Turing which uses AI to manage remote Software Developers.

Micromanagement is a managerial behavior pattern that involves excessive supervision, limited work delegation, and total control of work progress and patterns. When dealing with an in-office workforce, it is easier to track everyone’s work progress, efficiency, and outputs without interfering with the work process and constantly breathing over workers’ shoulders.

However, with remote work, this has become harder. To successfully manage a remote team, remote team managers need activity trackers such as ActivTrak, iDoneThis, and Hubstaff; time trackers such as ClickTime, ProofHub, and Timely; and task management apps like Everhour, Trello, Asana, and nTask.

The use of these applications is needed to balance workloads, reward exceptional performances, keep employees on task, keep employees accountable, track ROI and make strategic plans, and improve hiring flexibility. However, even with these applications, things can quickly go south in a remote setup. Some remote team leaders fall into the trap of micromanaging remote teams when they do one of the following:

• Hardly delegate tasks due to mistrust of team members
• Hovering around and constantly asking for updates on work progress
• Always peeping into system records to find out if a task was done
• Limiting others’ authority to keep themselves (team managers) engaged with initiatives
• Always have concerns about team members’ productivity

According to Statista, there is a global average of 48% of remote workers who indicate that they experience micromanagement in their jobs. With the highest percentage of 68% and 64% coming from remote workers in India and the U.S.A. respectively. This shows that a significant percentage of remote workers are under the yoke of micromanagers, and the effects of this on individuals and companies are dreary.

Effects of Micromanagement on Remote Teams

As explained by Gartner, “Micromanagers do not trust employees to churn out the same level of productivity away from the physical office environment. Employees who do not feel trusted lose self-confidence and thus, contribute less. In the long run, Micromanagers stifle creativity and growth..”

When micromanagers do these things, they produce:

1. Lack of engagement: Lack of engagement formed from poor relationship development and insufficient motivation can directly lead to employees not being involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to the work and the company. These are the ‘cause and effect’ cycle of micromanagement.

2. Lack of trust: Remote employees may feel very scrutinized and distanced from their team leaders due to excess scrutiny.

3. Higher turnover rates: Turnover rates may increase due to dissatisfaction with the job and this may increase the workload on other workers when hiring to fill in vacant positions is not speedily done.

4. Lower self-esteem and self-confidence: When team members are not allowed to make decisions by themselves, they may feel like they are not enough or their decisions do not matter and this will stifle their self-esteem and confidence.

5. Depression and reduced productivity: Stifled self-esteem and confidence can gradually lead to depression which will, in turn, lower productivity and cross-team dependence.

6. Higher stress levels: Some remote team workers may feel like they are spending more time reporting on what they are doing than actually doing it. This will increase their working time and stress levels.

7. Stifled creativity and growth: This is the end product of all micromanaging processes. It cripples the quality of whatever service or good the company is offering and reduces the creative mindset of employees.

Guardrails to Curb Micromanagement

There is a thin line between proper management and micromanagement. Most managers may cross that line without knowing, or some may even be reluctant to accept that they have.

To curb micromanagement, two typical actions can be taken. These are actions directed towards self and actions directed toward team members.

• Actions directed towards self: This is a self-reflection process where team managers have to work on themselves. There are a couple of approaches that can be implemented in this method and they are:

  • Setting a perfection scale: A perfection scale can be set from 1-10 to determine the functionality of a project after launch. When a perfection scale is set, it gives the team members a goal to work with. Sometimes, remote team managers will always push for a 10 when a 7 is enough for a start. Team managers should avoid setting very high targets, especially for inexperienced teams.

  • Adamant methods: Team managers should realize that their ways or methods are not the only way and they will not always be adopted. Instead, the 80/20 rule can be adopted. In the 80/20 rule, the employee has the liberty to tackle the challenge in their way 80% of the time, and the team manager can guide the employee 20% of the time.

  • Self-reflection: Remote team managers should intermittently reflect on some key questions that can help them analyze their performances towards their team members. Some pertinent questions are ‘Am I spending too much time supervising my team members?’, ‘Can I dedicate this time to something more productive?’, ‘Are my team members comfortable with my methods?’, ‘Would they love to give in more inputs or suggestions?’

• Actions directed towards others: On the other hand, team managers have to follow the golden rule of remote management which is ‘default to trust’. This means that remote team workers have to work through team challenges on their own most of the time and team managers should be more concerned about how much team members profit from their participation in activities instead of how much they, team managers, gain from it. The following are efforts that can be directed toward team members to reduce micromanagement

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  • Flexibility: team managers should allow team members to have the liberty to choose how, when, when, and with whom they can be most creative and productive.
  • Expect the worst but hope for the best: Team managers should make team members know that if they fail, it is not the end of the world and that they can always try again
  • Concentrate on results: Concentrating on results and giving team members significant work process autonomy, builds trust and confidence in the workers.
  • Communicate and provide resources: team members should be clear on what is expected of them and how their contributions are crucial to the company’s goals. They should also be provided with the right and necessary resources to achieve their work targets.
  • Absorb blame: When teams fail, the blame should be quickly apportioned especially in public. Blames kill self-esteem and confidence. Instead, the focus should be on lessons learned, how to grow from them, and suggestions from team members.

Synopsis

As remote work is becoming the norm, companies are having concerns about the productivity of workers working from home. Team managers may be tempted to believe that team members are not reproducing the same amount of work remotely as they did onsite. This can force them to micromanage but micromanagement comes at the expense of productivity and employee wellbeing. When managers feel they may be micromanaging, a simple self-reflection can help them to be sure. If they are, they can apply the leadership techniques stated in this article, to increase productivity and build trust among team members.