A common concern I hear from many managers is that they cannot manage people that they don't see working. While this may be understandable given organizational history and culture, it is not all that difficult for others. For example, instructors rarely see students working, except during class time and with today's virtual classrooms, there is no visibility at all. However, in either case, instructors can and do evaluate students based on the tasks assigned and deliverables submitted.
There are a wide variety of books on leadership and management with some common agreement on the tasks of manager. These tasks include planning, leading, organizing, and controlling and there are a variety of software packages available to help accomplish these tasks in a virtual environment. For example, while these activities (planning, leading, organizing, and controlling) may be performed by individuals, collaboration may be required as well. Tools that can assist in this effort include the World Wide Web and the various information sites available for research; Microsoft Project or other project management tools; Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, Slack, and others for collaboration; basic email for the exchange of messages; Zoom and GoToMeeting for conferences, and of course the ubiquitous telephone. BlackBoard, Moodle, and other learning management systems can be used to provide virtual education and training. Dozens of other tools are available as well and the tools mentioned above are just ones I have had some experience with.
Of course, managers and supervisors may say that they have to recruit, hire, evaluate, and fire people as well and this is certainly true. Do software and business methods to support this effort exist in the virtual world? Let's look at an example for performance evaluation.
Managers evaluate employees -- it's part of the job. There are clearly a number of ways to obtain information / data on employees in order to complete a performance evaluation. Fortunately there are a small number of methods we use to collect data such as observation, surveys or questionnaires, site visits, research, interviews, and sampling. For example, managers observe employees at work, ask for input from other people regarding how employees are performing, managers can read employee's memos, sample employee's deliverables, and so on. It turns out that much of this evaluation work can be performed in a virtual environment -- it just may be a little more difficult because managers don't see employees on a daily basis. It may also be a little more work if managers are not comfortable or familiar with computing technology. Let's take this example and drill down further.
Suppose we have an employee who will be working at home. We could do a site visit to determine if his or her home would be appropriate and if not, what it would take to make it so. The organization could then have technical support install the required hardware and software. Subsequent, but infrequent, site visits could determine if this environment were being maintained. In a sense, you might think of this as an audit.
The employee could be interviewed from time-to-time to determine how things are going or not. Daily communication via telephone, conference calls, and electronic mail are another way of collecting information as well as providing management opportunities. A "one-on-one" weekly telephone call helps both parties stay in touch. Work products could be sampled for quality. As a lot of work today is performed by teams and team mates could be interviewed as well to gain additional insight into performance. Then of course are individual deliverables. These may well be measured using meaningful criteria and metrics. For example, suppose the employee is developing software for a client. Management criteria may include meeting estimated costs, delivering the package within the estimated time, and meeting customer acceptance tests, and so on. Naturally, things can go wrong and estimates may need changing and daily / weekly communication exchanges can bring these issues to light for discussion well before any six month or annual review. Metrics such as dollars, days, and so on can be applied to established criteria. Almost everything just listed can be accomplished remotely using established technologies and modern business methods.
We really can manage people we don't see on a day-to-day basis.
Working virtually or at the office is not a binary thing. Many work activities, particularly those that are information based can be blended between office and elsewhere. Sometimes work may be performed primarily at home; while at other times it requires time in the office with other team members or working at a client location. Form follows function and location can be flexible to meet the needs of the assignment. Another comment I hear from time-to-time is that I can't trust my people to work out of my sight. Well, if that's really true, it's probably a good idea not to hire people you can't trust. On the other hand, it may be that it's a comfort thing that can be helped with training and experience.
If we believe that the future will be more competitive, more complex, with change occurring at an accelerating rate, with more demanding customers, and an increasing commute time then we may need to learn to do things differently if we want to thrive. Losing is an always an option, but most everyone wants to do better.
The virtual world is not perfect, but it has characteristics and advantages that may help our organizations perform better as we "compete for the future."