Blog

Just had a great conversation with a friend who works at a big bank who is struggling to get her HR group on board policy-wise with the worker mobility program her real estate team is rolling out throughout the company.  The HR group currently has policies supporting when and where people work and has their performance measurement program largely based on people being in the office.  And there’s the rub.  Measuring and motivating the performance of mobile workers is separate from time and place.  Here’s why.

Like it or not, most managers “manage” by walking around and seeing what their folks are doing, calling them into their office for a quick chat, getting updates in relentlessly frequent meetings, etc.  Not bad.  Spottily effective.  Difficult to measure.  But based on place and time.  This management style simply does not work when your people have choices to work from home, on the road, in another building and at hours other than 9-5.  And formal mobility program or not, that’s how people work now.  Performance measurement programs and management techniques that are dependent on the employee being visibly in the office and working from 9–5 are outdated.  Just as the design and deployment of our workplaces needs to catch up, so do HR management policies.

For worker mobility programs to be successful they need to be supported by management and measurement programs that transcend time and place.  If an employee works best between 11:00PM and 2:00 AM, let her.  If an employee needs quiet heads-down time to complete a project and chooses to work at the Library, let him.  Enabling workers to choose where and when they will be most productive is good for the company from both a productivity and recruitment/retention standpoint.

One effective technique has been around for 50 years - Management by Objective (MBO).  With several prescriptive processes (go check it out), MBO keeps the employee and their manager focused on activities that lead to results.  It’s not about time in the office or hours worked.  For the modern mobile worker, MBO needs to be tweaked a bit.  Instead of semi-annual goals reviews, do it monthly.  Use MBO to define worker/manager communication – what it is; preferred medium; how often; agenda driven.  Use MBO to foster frequent, predictable and useful conversations that drive to desired outcomes.  Use MBO to engage workers to drive to new personal challenges, because engaged workers are happy workers and happy workers are – you know – more productive and loyal.

Mobility programs free workers from the constraints of time and place to make them more productive on their own terms for the good of the company.  But outdated HR policies keep workers constrained. 

My friend at the big bank is heading in to work with HR to make sure the right policies will be in place to support mobile workers. I actually think HR will welcome that conversation.