Identifying Remote Team Saboteurs
Some "Red Flags" To Keep An Eye On
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
Remote teams require a different approach to management. If a remote team is working in a nearshore or offshore environment, the company typically has structures in place to ensure better follow-up on projects and team members. However, if the team is fully remote, the challenge increases a hundredfold. This isn’t necessarily due to project complexity, but because people management is significantly harder if (and only if) we onboard the wrong staff. Spotting the hints and signs that action is needed is key. However, gathering this information accurately is far from trivial.
I previously wrote an article about a case of bad recruitment that took too long to correct (Link below). However, there are more signs to take into account.
Why Remote Teams?
Remote teams are usually established for one of two reasons: Cost-effectiveness or Quality of Labor.
If a company decides to go “remote-first”, it can access budget-friendly staff more easily. For example, we are currently seeing a trend of Central European companies allocating headcounts to staff based in Eastern Europe. In these cases, it might be difficult to bring ten people under one roof or send leadership to a nearshore country. But without that flexibility, what was intended as a cost-cutting measure can become more expensive over time due to bad dynamics, unpleasant surprises, and poor communication, leading to delays and budget overruns.
If the target is the quality of labor, the risk is mitigated. Nevertheless, “bad apples” always seem to appear, especially in newly formed teams. Having the flexibility to put everyone under the same roof is vital and should be accommodated in annual budget exercises.
Having the Team On-Site - Fast
One key aspect of managing a remote team is ensuring the group works under the same roof for at least a few days. Establishing team dynamics is much easier in an office environment than in a remote context.
Some professionals truly thrive in a remote setting, and we barely feel the need to work side-by-side with them. This is mostly because these individuals take ownership and show the initiative to make things happen. They communicate well and in a timely manner. However, these professionals are not the majority. Other team members may struggle with issues that aren’t communicated to leadership until it is too late.
Having the team on-site for at least three days helps spot “rocks” in the team dynamics and eases the burden for those struggling with specific project aspects. One thing that truly bothers me is the resistance some professionals show toward coming to the office for a couple of days (even when they are clearly struggling). These cases are common, and they prove that some people are simply not ready to work in a remote context at all.
Faked Online Status
The most common trick to spot is the faking of “online” status by future “to-be-laid-offs”. The first sign is when leadership notices project components are late, and the excuses vary. Because projects are complex, it is often tricky to draw the line between “being comprehensive” and “this person is throwing sand in my eyes”.
When things fall behind, we start chatting with the person about status updates. This is when we notice the replies are taking a long time to come. Again, this might be because they are concentrated, or simply because they aren’t there. If it becomes a pattern where someone takes hours to reply despite their status being “green” or “available”, there is likely a trick involved. This practice is not uncommon, a link to a story here.
These issues are exacerbated because good leadership always gives the benefit of the doubt. Delays can be the result of poor estimation, unforeseen complexity, or unexpected events—all of which require support. However, these are the same excuses used when someone is faking it from home. If someone is late on deliveries and constantly takes more than 45 minutes to reply to a chat message, they are likely faking their status.
Another concern is how these fake statuses are achieved. Some companies have policies in place in Software to avoid having too much time set up to “away” status. This means the faking could be achieved by rogue software that is installed on the corporate laptop, which might not fulfill the basic IT security practices.
Be Attentive to Tricks — Especially from the “Office-Resistant”
When hybrid models were first introduced, I fought an uphill battle between people who wanted to work from home 100% and the institution that wanted people in the office a few days a week. It wasn’t pleasant. I had people with “pitchforks” protesting the return while management instructed me to coordinate office days.
During this time, I had a complex case (let’s call her Anna). She had developed a mild case of mysophobia (fear of germs due to the pandemic), combined with allergies she claimed were worsened by the air conditioning. This was a time when people were filing medical papers left, right, and center to justify staying home. Reality was hitting: working from home wasn’t a guaranteed 100% deal, and people were using every trick to avoid that reality. We handled these cases carefully with HR and Legal to ensure no lines were crossed.
We accommodated Anna’s request for full remote work, even though we weren’t legally obliged to do so. The goal was to make people comfortable, and forcing them back didn’t feel like the right decision then.
The risk of accommodating these special requests is the way these exceptions are seen by the rest of the team. Not only do we need to accommodate the special situation, but we also need to prepare a justification that can be accepted by the team. Unfortunately, these justifications are not easily perceived by colleagues.
However, as feared, a new issue formed. As the rest of the team came to the office, Anna stayed home. Working dynamics formed among the people coming to the office, and unfortunately, Anna was being excluded. She struggled immensely to coordinate complex matters. When her performance fell short, and she was confronted, she fiercely argued that her absence from the office was unrelated to her performance, but her colleagues.
Noting that these conditions are not great for anyone. Both the team and Anna. Managing exceptions becomes a second level of management on the team, and can be harder to manage with other high-performance staff who also want to work from home under the same conditions.
Eventually, we “agreed” that Anna would come into the office at least one day a week. Her being “left out” by colleagues had transitioned from a social issue into a serious project risk. Anna was an expensive senior hire brought in to take the team to the next level, yet her progress was slower than that of junior profiles. She wasn’t grasping the subjects as quickly as her peers, and it rapidly became a management crisis.
Anna’s seniority created a weird situation for more junior profiles to work with. Having a Junior outperforming a Senior profile is great to watch. But also, it might trigger the will to review the rates of Juniors, since in their view their performance is better than the seniors’ in the team. While in practice, the seniors’ profile is underperforming.
The decision to let her go was on the table, especially due to costs. The good news is that she resigned on her own terms. The lesson: If people are too resistant to coming to the office, they may jeopardize project performance in favor of their own preferences. Whether it is our decision or theirs, the result is the same. We will eventually part ways. If these kinds of decisions are not made swiftly, we are left with a bill of thousands of euros in the form of bad performance and unfinished work. The faster these decisions are made, the cheaper these mistakes are.
That’s it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur