Leading remotely and staying ahead: Global learnings

In these unprecedented times, we appreciate that hiring will not be your top priority. As a business, we have learned a great deal from our global colleagues that may prove helpful in the challenging weeks to come and thought it may be interesting to share this insight. 

Strong leadership

How are the best leaders and founders looking after their people but also preparing the business for the world of tomorrow? We think that this is a great article from Bain you might be interested in: Coronavirus: A CEO’s dress rehearsal for the New World 

Managing a remote team

As a global business, we employ over 7,500 people in 36 countries. Our business in China is two months ahead of the UK in terms of responding to the outbreak, which means our teams have been living and working with the impacts of Covid-19 for some time already. By keeping their focus on staying resilient and responsive, they are now getting back to normal, with parts of our Taiwan office achieving a record February. This is something that we are very proud of and will be benefiting from their learns across PageGroup in all of our regions. 

For some more insight on how our teams in China have managed to stay motivated, focused and successful, read this day in the life piece from our colleagues.    

We are all focused on our bottom lines, however, our greatest assets remain our people and continued success and growth is linked to their welfare. When you are no longer seeing colleagues face to face daily, the role as a leader becomes even more challenging. How do you ensure their spirits remain high? Below are a couple of light-hearted ideas to create a non-work dialogue and lift spirits:

• A daily team challenge or riddle to solve.
• “Through the Keyhole” style peek at people’s home offices.
• Virtual lunch – get your teams who normally sit together to take 45 minutes out at lunchtime and meet via Skype or Microsoft Teams to keep them connected.
• Virtual after-work drinks where you Skype in with a beer for an informal catch up.

Hiring decisions

We understand that hiring may not be at the top of your agenda, although, maintaining a strong pipeline of talent will be key looking forward to enable businesses to act quickly when the current situation changes. 

We will continue to work hard to build strong relationships with the best talent, so please do let us know if there are certain skills that you will want to prioritise and hire when the time is right. Equally, if you have the time now, use technology to have initial meetings and engage with the potential leaders you will want to attract. This will put you in a strong position when the market reacts and bounces back.

For more information about how to get the most out of video interviews, view our full article here. 

If you need anything over the coming weeks to support you, please let us know. We are happy to share information, advice, or even provide a (virtual) shoulder to lean on! 

Nicola Wensley
Partner, Page Executive