Navigating Work-From-Home Resistance: Strategies for Success

As the debate between remote work and returning to the office heats up, many professionals find themselves advocating for the flexibility to work from home. Despite its proven benefits, there's a significant pushback from managers who are inclined towards traditional office settings.  This friction requires a strategic approach to convince higher-ups of the merits of remote work while ensuring productivity and effective communication. Let's outline three critical strategies to overcome resistance, excel in a work-from-home setting, and reassure your manager about your productivity: establishing clear contracts about work outputs and goals, managing communication with multiple stakeholders, and ensuring your productivity is visible to your manager.

1. Craft Clear Contracts about Work Outputs and Goals

The cornerstone of a successful work-from-home arrangement, especially in the face of skepticism, is clear expectations. A well-defined contract or agreement outlining your work outputs and goals can be a game-changer. Many news articles over the past 2 years have outlined managers’ concerns about work-from-home, and many of those concerns boil down to “I’m not convinced that employees who work-from-home are as productive as those here at the office. This requires you to work with your manager to set clear goals, update your manager regularly on your progress, and demonstrate your adaptability to changing needs.

Set Specific Goals: Collaborate with your manager to define SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). These goals should include project deliverables as well as stakeholder satisfaction metrics (e.g. what do your team members, customers, or other stakeholders think of your work and how you treat them?). Make sure that you have opportunities to collect data on these metrics periodically, to give yourself time to adapt and improve. 

Regular Updates: Agree on a framework for frequent updates. Whether it’s through weekly virtual meetings or reports, these check-ins are vital for staying aligned with your manager's expectations. These updates should include time for you to briefly discuss your progress, as well as raise any difficulties you are experiencing. Don’t flinch away from these problem areas or attempt to hide them, but instead raise them with your manager along with your thoughts about the best way to go about solving the problem, while asking your manager for their thoughts and feedback. 

Finally, be prepared to be adaptable. Your colleagues who work in the office are exposed to and participate in a number of real-time conversations, both formal and informal, about changes to products, projects, and internal procedures. Remote workers often miss out on these conversations, especially when they are not yet formalized. This means that you may get caught off-guard by certain changes. Your ability to successfully roll with these changes and adapt to them in a positive manner will be critical for your manager to develop trust in you as a remote worker. 

2. Manage Communication with Multiple Stakeholders

When advocating for remote work, emphasize your communication strategy. With stakeholders ranging from team members to clients, clear and consistent communication is essential.

Diverse Communication Tools: Use a mix of communication tools appropriate for different types of interactions, such as emails for formal communications and instant messaging for quick queries. When possible, choose real-time communication tools that allow you access to non-verbal information (e.g. facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.). But this doesn’t mean that everything needs to be a videoconference – sometimes a short phone call can work just as well and, for most of us, this feels less formal. 

Establish Communication Norms: Set clear rules about your availability and expected response times, balancing transparency with the need for work-life balance. This is especially important for those who work with colleagues in different time zones, or those who rely on work-from-home to care for other family members. 

Proactive Engagement: Actively reach out for feedback, participate in discussions, and offer assistance. Similarly, reach out to your manager and colleagues to learn about different aspects of the project, not just what you are working on. This proactive approach keeps you connected and demonstrates your interest in and dedication to teamwork and the project itself.

3. Keep Your Productivity Visible to Your Manager

In a remote setting, ensuring that your contributions are recognized is crucial. Visibility can be a key factor in reducing managerial concern about work-from-home arrangements.

Track and Showcase Your Progress: Utilize tools to track your tasks and share your progress. Regular updates can provide tangible proof of your productivity. This can through project management tools, sharing customer feedback, or just a simple spreadsheet. Share this information periodically with your manager to keep them informed and to ask them for feedback.  Similarly, make sure to be vocal about specific successes you had. Whether you beat a challenging deadline, used or developed a new solution to a technical challenge, spent time assisting a colleague or received a rave review from a customer, make sure your manager knows about this!

Conclusion

Overcoming resistance to work-from-home arrangements requires a strategic approach focused on clear communication, goal alignment, and visibility of productivity. By adopting these strategies, you can effectively negotiate for remote work and excel in your role, demonstrating that productivity and success are not confined to the traditional office space.