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How to Manage Junior Employees in a Hybrid Work Environment

Junior employees with a low TRM will need lots of processes, documentation, communication, and training to be able to thrive in a hybrid work environment.

.. 3 years ago 129  

The loss of office osmosis

The challenges with managing junior employees who work in a hybrid environment start as soon as you hire them. One of the reasons for this is a loss of office osmosis in a hybrid work environment. Office osmosis happens as a result of the gradual or unconscious integration of ideas and knowledge from our work environment. It happens slowly and naturally as a result of being in close proximity to other people, who we listen to and observe. We probably aren’t aware of how much we rely on it, but office osmosis is responsible for a lot of the learning that happens in the office - especially when it comes to junior employees. They learn through osmosis about the informal and less obvious things regarding how the team and broader organization operate and solve problems. They learn about what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior. They also get a sense of the underlying culture currents that exist in the organization.

Depending on which research you look at, around 20% or more of our learning about a job comes from observing others. Less time in the office means less osmosis and less time to learn from others.

Junior employee challenges

Junior hires lack the necessary knowledge and skills. They have a lot of questions. They don’t know how to do the work. They are often reluctant to interrupt and don’t want to be seen as an annoyance or a burden. When they are in the office junior employees can see what their teammates are doing and ask questions of their managers at convenient times, when they know they aren’t interrupting. When they are working remotely junior employees can’t see what other teammates are doing. If they get stuck on a problem they are afraid to schedule meetings for what might be seen to be a trivial or even stupid question. They are afraid to interrupt senior colleagues and often don’t know who else to talk to and what to do next. They risk being unable to complete the task and to move the project forward, Negatively impacting everyone else working on the project. This scenario will happen repeatedly unless the manager has developed the necessary processes and structures to deal with the needs of junior employees.

Many hybrid managers insist that their new junior employees go through a rigorous onboarding process, which is hugely important to get them on the first rung of the ladder. A rigorous onboarding process isn’t enough though. To help junior employees work effectively while they are away from the office and to keep them moving up the ladder, we need to apply the Task Relevant Maturity management framework to the situation.

Task Relevant Maturity Management Framework

Andy Grove, the ex-CEO of Intel popularized the term Task Relevant Maturity (TRM) in his book High Output Management. The TRM framework helps to determine how to delegate, monitor, and manage performance with junior or inexperienced employees who have what he termed low TRM.

TRM is defined as an employee’s experience level for a given task, reflecting a combination of

  • How achievement-oriented they are

  • Their readiness is to take responsibility, along with their

  • The experience they have had delivering the task previously

  • And their Education and training

A junior employee’s ability to become a productive member of the team depends on a combination of how quickly they can self-learn and how quickly their manager can train them. Apart from developing an effective training program for junior employees, managers also need to consider how much monitoring they will need and who will do that monitoring.

Low TRM

With low TRM employees, the most effective approach is one that offers very precise and detailed instructions. The manager needs to be more hands-on and almost prescriptive. Modern management theory tells us that being a hands-on, prescriptive manager at all times is not a good thing. But in reality, there are situations where it is helpful and necessary and this is one of them. I am not talking about micromanagement here because your leadership style should adapt as the junior employees gain experience and their TRM increases. Junior employees require less prescriptive communication and monitoring when their TRM increases. But, when you have someone who is very new to an urgent or critical task, then providing a highly structured management approach with precise and detailed instructions is necessary.

Understanding a junior employee’s TRM

The smart thing to do, before the start of any project, is to invest the time to work with the employee to evaluate their TRM.

Ask these three questions before the project starts:

  1. What specific tasks will they need to do to complete the project?

  2. What is their experience with each of these specific tasks?

  3. If they have experience with these specific tasks, what was their level of performance in dealing with those tasks?

The answer to these three questions will give you an understanding of

  1. Which tasks, and what elements of each task can they learn by themselves

  2. Which tasks you will need to train the new employee on and

  3. How much will they need to be monitored during the project?

Low TRM employees and hybrid working

So the question for most teams is not about whether a junior person can work effectively in a flexible hybrid setting. The better question is actually about how equipped you or your team are, to provide the right amount of time monitoring and training before and during their work tasks.

Junior employees with a low TRM will need lots of structure, (processes, documentation, and communication) and support (training and monitoring) to be able to thrive in a hybrid work environment. In an ideal world, the structure and support will be combined with an experienced Onboarding Buddy who can help them learn about the culture of the company and the job they need to do. Junior employees with low TRM will not thrive in an environment without this structure and support.

The challenge with a hybrid work environment is that managers will assume that they can do the training in the office. The problem with this is that junior employees need consistent training and monitoring programmers for when they are not in the office and can’t take advantage of in-person learning, or osmosis.

Management considerations for low TRM employees

Managing junior employees requires more planning in a hybrid work environment. Successful training for low TRM junior employees involves consistent two-way communication, which is more challenging when the person is remote and needs to use tools like Slack or Loom.

When managing low TRM employees ask yourself the following questions

  1. Does your recruitment process help you hire junior employees with potential, who are self-learners and coachable?

  2. What can you do to provide the coaching, training, and monitoring to help the employee progress - both while they are in the office and while they are working remotely?

  3. What structures, processes, meetings, and reviews can you put in place to get a meaningful sense of their work output?

  4. Is your team's operating model optimized for hybrid work?

Set the junior employee up for success by encouraging them to ask as many questions as they need to. To manage this effectively and ensure that the employee isn’t blocked by slow responses to their questions:

To manage this effectively

  • Agree on how to prioritize the questions.

  • Agree on which types of questions should be directed to you, which type should go to the onboarding buddy, and which type should go to the broader team.

  • Agree on which tools to use for what type of questions

  • Set up a suitable one-to-one meeting cadence.

Use your one-to-one meetings wisely

One-to-ones with your team members are the perfect time to discuss their TRM, both in relation to completed and upcoming work. First, you should adjust the frequency of your one on ones based on their current responsibilities. The lower their TRM the more often you'll need to check-in. The other key element is to adjust what you talk about in your one on ones. As they develop more experience in their roles and responsibilities, the kinds of questions you'll ask and what you'll discuss will shift. Here’s a chart from Grove's High Output Management to highlight how that may go:

  • Low TRM requires the manager to be task-oriented by instructing with details about what/when/how/why.

  • Medium TRM requires the manager to be objectives-oriented by monitoring, supporting, and coaching.

  • High TRM requires the manager to be results-oriented by monitoring results.

[In summary]

If your hybrid environment requires you to recruit junior employees, you will need to develop the necessary structures and support in order for them to do well. If your business lacks the structure your low-TRM employees need, you greatly increase the chances that they will fail.

Low TRM employees will be able to thrive:

  1. If you are willing to build the processes, documentation, communication, and support structures

  2. Supply a strong onboarding buddy

  3. If you develop an optimized hybrid work environment.

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