After the coronavirus pandemic hit, legions of workers and managers started working at home, leaving familiar office environments behind.

Some employees may struggle with the isolation and distractions they discover while working from home. Managers can come to the rescue with a little empathy and also by helping work-at-home underperformers work through problem-solving themselves, a new Harvard Business Review article concludes.

“Resist telling them what to do or being overly proscriptive about how to do it. You don’t want to dilute their ownership and commitment,” the article asserts. “Remember that working in isolation can make people more anxious about their mistakes, and this is a person who is used to seeing success. Reassuring your employee that you are OK with missteps as long as they are corrected and learned from will help empower them to solve the problem on their own.”

The HBR piece encourages managers to still remain available for guidance as needed, and maybe even check in more to help struggling work-from-home employees better handle their drastically different work environment.

The full article – “How to Manage an Employee Who’s Struggling to Perform Remotely” – can be accessed at this link.