After holding the survey open a bit longer than planned plus a few delays in data collection, I’m excited to share the results of the State of Work Survey for June 2020.

To everyone who provided input, thank you.

I’m not going to restate the entire report here. I’ll give a few topline findings. For everything else, I’ll point you to the PDF of the report.

• Most (75%) of the respondents are currently working remotely. Only 25% were prior to the pandemic.
• Half of respondents reported that they both work remotely and are in an environment that includes children.
• Respondents generally rated their managers positively (mode of 7 and mean of 7.8 on a 10-point scale).
• Managers report remote-management challenges that fall into three categories:
  • Connection to their team: relationships, engagement, organic interactions
  • Oversight and basic management work: driving results, ensuring employees are doing what needs to be done, accountability, ability to check on work or observe employees at work
  • Coaching and mentoring: determining coaching topics, continual observations allowing course-corrections and broader discussions
• Remote workers identify communication with their manager as the most common new challenge to overcome.
• For employees that are new to remove work, motivation and focus are a major challenge.

My recommendations based on the survey data are:

• Deliberately invest in manager and employee communication.
• Managers should help remote employees set boundaries.
• Operationalize remote behaviors to remove tactical problems.
• Be patient, control what you can, and let the rest go.

Those recommendations are, of course, more fleshed out in the report.

Conducting the survey and analyzing the results was enjoyable and informative for me. I hope there is value in the results to you!