face-to-face communication whenever possible, and that means to get together with an online chat app such as Zoom. That’s no substitute for meeting with people in person, but it still helps fulfill the human need to see the other person you’re talking with.
Listen and pay attention to what people are saying.
Make eye contact as much as possible to show you’re engaged.
Pay attention to nonverbal messages. Online, you can’t see all those messages someone else’s body is telling you, but you can still learn a lot by their facial movements and even body movements, like someone moving around in their chair when they’re uncomfortable.
Participate in the conversation. Everyone in the meeting needs to contribute if it has a chance of being effective.
Speak calmly and openly — you know, like a professional.
Acknowledge people’s time and thank them for talking with you.
So what, you ask? That’s basic stuff. But working online has also required a greater understanding about boundaries during work hours. After all, when someone works from home, their entire workday isn’t taken up by work. They have to manage their family (called the real job by some), go to appointments, and try to juggle the bowling ball, chainsaw, and dinner plates as best they can.
Every employee and every manager is different, so you will experience policies created from your company’s unique priorities, expectations, and boundaries. Those include how you will communicate with one another, such as using Zoom for online meetings and using an app like Slack for project communication.
If you’re a manager who will be developing your online communication policies, you need to resolve several issues:
What the at-home job duties and responsibilities are
How you want to create work-from-home schedules
When and how you can contact people after work hours
Whether you want to give people the option of working on weekends and holidays
How often the communication policy needs to be changed and who’s responsible for reviews and changes
You may have guessed (correctly) that you need to bring your ideas to your managers and to your employees in order to craft an overall policy. That's best done in a meeting setting — maybe even more than one meeting — where you can finalize that policy. Be sure to come prepared to every meeting and communicate to your team that you expect them to do the same.
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FIGURE 2-9: The We Work Remotely website lists current remote jobs on the home page.
Communicating with employees in general
When you’re communicating with employees, you find out pretty quickly that no two of them have the same two communication styles. (And, if you try to use the same styles for everyone, you may learn this lesson the hard way when employees walk out the door.)
Before you start putting together your policy, it’s Business 101 to talk with each of your employees individually to learn how they like to communicate. More importantly, you need to ask them what their boundaries are — including not only scheduling boundaries, like having to take time off for an important medical appointment, but also mental boundaries.
What do we mean by mental boundaries? Here are some examples:
Setting your work hours, especially when working from home.
Blocking out time to work and other times for other responsibilities — including relaxing and enjoying other activities.
Not participating in (or just not holding) meetings that can be better communicated as email or Slack messages.
Knowing when you “get into a groove” and want to continue working to get something done without interruptions.
Learning what employees like and don’t like to do with work. For example, if someone doesn’t want to get together with other employees because they’re an introvert and being social means being stressed, don’t force the employee to join the others.
In sum, mental boundaries are set to make sure that your employees are the most effective and productive they can be.
Letting technology lend a hand
When you’re communicating online, no matter whether you’re in the office or working remotely, technology can help you set those boundaries. We can’t guarantee that you won’t be bothered, but these solutions can help immensely:
Take advantage of email out-of-office messages, better known by its acronym, OOO. After you set up the OOO in your email app, whenever someone sends you a message, the email app sends the OOO message automatically. That OOO message can also include a link to the person handling your work while you’re out.
Create an OOO voicemail greeting that will tell people you’ll get back to them when you can and whom to contact in case of an urgent matter.
Use your online calendar to block off time to work. If someone tries to set up a meeting with you in your calendar app, they’ll see that you’re busy.
A shared calendar app can also set days and times for your normal work schedule when you’re available to chat.
In a shared messaging app like Microsoft Teams, you can create and publish an Away message so that people will know you’re unavailable when they try to reach you.
Responding to boundary crossings
Naturally, some people will cross your boundaries because
