Here are some of the most common challenges managers face and how to overcome them:

• Decreased performance levels
• Lack of communication
• Poor teamwork
• Time management

Decreased performance levels

Employees may experience periods of time where they are not as productive as usual. A decrease in productivity can sometimes affect other team members and overall goals, making it important to help employees feel motivated.

• Managers who consistently review processes and procedures within the company can increase efficiency. Perform a workflow analysis to review your current systems and restructure weak areas.
• One-on-one meetings provide a great opportunity for managers to reestablish work hours and expectations regarding work productivity.
• Another way to address this challenge is by introducing comparison or even better, gamification elements in monitoring best team performers. Unsizify provides attractive reports on best team performers in number of reviewed and approved PRs. Give them some symbolic prize like one Friday off for monthly winners or a fruit basket for best week performers and see how discrete competing could improve team’s spirit level.

Lack of communication

Another challenge managers face when overseeing teams is ensuring effective communication. Because every team member has a different personality, there is a chance for miscommunication from time to time.

• Increase the frequency of communication to ensure employees know exactly what you expect of them and when you need them to complete it.
• Consider implementing a messaging platform for the workplace that allows everyone to communicate quickly. Let them know if you prefer one form of contact over another.
• In case you are practicing daily stand ups, it will be welcomed if team members could easily prepare the overview of day spent and a plan for a new day. With Unsizify there is no need for wasting time on manual preparation. Every team member could easily show how the previous work-day is spent and what PRs or bug fixes are waiting for her/him.

Poor teamwork

Sometimes, employees may lose focus on collaboration when they spend a lot of time completing individual tasks. To re-establish teamwork, managers should revisit the purpose of a project. Managers who take the time to acknowledge their team's efforts and clarify the purpose of their work commonly see increased levels of motivation.

• Consider dividing your team members into partners so they have a chance to work with someone for a specific project.
• Team-building exercises are another great way to help everyone learn how to work better together.
• You could build a team collaboration by using Unsizify’s Team Status insights. It helps team to understand which are current occupations of the rest of the team members, nevertheless they are working remotely or in the office. The additional benefit is that they could join on common tasks when other team member start to work on it.

Time management

Because managers are responsible for overseeing the members of their team and communicating with other department heads, they typically struggle with balancing their own tasks

• One way to prioritize your own work responsibilities is by scheduling time throughout the day to do specific work. Let your team know the times you'll be available to them and the times you plan to focus on your work. Regularly update your calendar, and share it with team members so they know when they can reach you.
• With Unszify notifications delivered via Slack every manager as well as team member could get the complete report of team's time breakdown and productivity metrics for previous and current day.

All above mentioned concerns were accelerated with Covid-19 which has thrust many leaders into remote management which requires a different skill set than face-to-face management. They have been forced to make this transition quickly, and for the most part, without training. While some jobs have proven adaptable, many sectors are not well-suited for the remote environment and many workers have home lives that present overwhelming challenges. As a result, some managers may be finding their roles more difficult than before - and making their subordinates’ lives more stressful as they struggle to adapt.

Based on Harvard Business Review survey about 40% of the 215 supervisors and managers in our study expressed low self-confidence in their ability to manage workers remotely. A similar proportion of managers had negative views about remote workers’ performance. Thirty-eight percent of managers agreed that remote workers usually perform worse than those who work in an office, with 22% being unsure.

Altogether, the picture is not a rosy one, suggesting a substantial number of managers have low confidence in their capability to lead remotely, have rather negative views about this work practice, and distrust their own workers.

With Unsizify developers can easily explain how is their work day spent, which makes life easier not only for them but also for their boss who will become more relaxed about teams performance and achieving projects goals.