The Headcount Solution : How to Cut Compensation Costs and Keep Your Best People

Alternative work arrangements also represent a big change for many managers and supervisors. Under the circumstances, they must manage two people sharing a job, work with contractors rather than regular employees, and delegate employees from a distant, remote location. This calls for openness, flexibility, and the ability to learn new supervisory skills. Managers who are used to frequent in-person progress checks and “looking over their employees’ shoulders” may have difficulty adapting to these new situations. A number of new skills are needed to match the required management and supervisory skills, including:

• Adapting styles to telecommunications from face-to-face interactions. Getting comfortable with less frequent face-to-face meetings and learning ways to effectively communicate remotely.

• Providing latitude for technical specialists to use their expertise to solve problems independently. Learning how to delegate problem solving, again in remote locations.

• Less frequent check-in on work progress. Adapting a style to review progress on a project with longer time intervals, sometimes called timespan of discretion . This is a skill for managing a project with fewer interim reviews.

The most important difference is that the pace of work changes from daily cycles of supervisory and management review to cycles of longer duration, sometimes up to a month for review.