Hybrid and Virtual is the new Normal
For Project Management the most vital change in recent years has been the rise of Virtual Teams. With COVID, many collocated organizations have been forced to make the jump to remote working and online project management. Remote work is not a new thing. But where the employee needed a good reason to deny the colleagues their presence before, they now seem to expect you to explain the reasons for the type of interaction chosen for your project. Collaboration and communication in a combination of on-site, hybrid and virtual environments presents project managers with new challenges as they are required to stretch their team management skills to the maximum.
What is best for the project? - team members? - other stakeholders?
Since the increase of hybrid and remote work most companies have seen an overall increase in productivity. According to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 73% of CEO´s considered their shift to virtual teams a success, which is a clear indication that the concept is here to stay. With the new dynamic of remote or virtual teams the concept of working 9 to 5 is being replaced with individual planning with focus on the assigned tasks and their due date.
Success in working with virtual teams largely depends on whether team members are given resources to independently solve problems, and whether the project manager succeeds in creating a virtual environment that encourages contextual collaboration. Empowering teams in such ways will work wonders in virtual settings.
What to consider for Project Managers
What is necessary to make the project progress satisfactory has not changed. The way to go about it can still more or less be described in these three points:
Make meetings regular, talk about milestones
Track time, get purposeful insights
Control and report
But in the new era of remote work, the progress of work must be monitored in new ways. Especially the means and intents of control will have to change dramatically as team members´ work is not visible to the colleagues. The project manager will probably have to adapt to more data driven tools or apps. This might seem easy and achievable but setting up surveillance apps on team members PC´s or activating tracking tools of current project management software can be tricky if you fail to build a high level of trust. Trust is especially important as people do not enjoy being watched during their work – neither in person nor via digital technologies. Before you make attempt to increase control, you might do yourself a favor by asking:
Do I know why and what data exactly I want to track?
Do I have a tracking solution 'implementation plan' – do I know how to explain the need for it to my team members?
Do I really need a unique monitoring tool, or are monitoring features already a part of the PM software I am currently using with my team?
If the answers lead towards a digital tool, make sure that everybody understand the reasons and accept the work methods. You could benefit greatly from asking what tools will work for the team taking into consideration that they must be compatible with goals and frameworks. You have to take into account the data compliance (and common sense) – one thing is monitoring, and another one is spying. So when adding an external tool to oversee your team, make sure it is a GDPR-compliant one.
Professional and ethical tools usually work on the principle of monitoring the time your employees spend using apps relevant to their work while not digging into the history of their internet browser.
In conclusion
Since trust and responsibility have proven to be the most important elements in remote project management, you must involve your employees in the rationale, results, and benefits. This will take away their potential fear of surveillance and explain the benefits to them. Monitoring without follow-up on the results has no added value. So, to get the most out of the monitoring results, connect the output data with a set of your project management software tools. Monitoring your team's productivity is a legitimate step, not just in the post-COVID era. But you need professional, GDPR-compliant tools rather than invasive apps. And you need to bear these principles in mind:
Transparency – be open with your remote employees and tell them monitoring activities are running.
Signing documents – get your monitored employees a fully GDPR-compliant monitoring policy and let them sign it if they agree.
Test and explain – tools are there not only to watch but also to collect data that you can use in moving your team in the right direction. Show the results of monitoring to your teammates regularly, present the learnings.
Optimize – it can also happen that you will not need to monitor your team anymore or that you will need to change the monitoring settings. Make sure that the data you collect is relevant and makes sense for the development of your team and project delivery.
The change into hybrid and remote work due to COVID-19 is probably the greatest disruption in recent history. But it bears great opportunities for peoples´ work-life balance, sense of belonging and efficiency. It also implies big challenges to project managers. But none that can´t be solved if you use your people skills and your technical flair.
Thanks to
Shah, Bhushan: Emerging Trends for Project Management in Post COVID-19 Era in 2021
Jan Pavera and Adéla Sýkorová: Are You Ready for These 7 Project Management Trends?