Convincing Your Manager to Continue Working from Home
The chatter among my friends and colleagues is when—and if—their offices are opening up again and how many days they're going to be required to go in. I also know many who have already begun commuting again, and others who never stopped. One thing everyone shares is a new perspective on how they best work. Is it in an office? At home? A hybrid of the two?
The beauty of the uncertainty of the moment is that you are in the driver's seat. Take advantage of this time as companies create policies to ask for what you need. And, if you've determined that working from home permanently is best, I believe the most effective negotiation strategy is to predict your manager's concerns, create a plan to alleviate them, and emphasize the positive effect on your productivity and output. If you're serious about asking to work from home, check out my advice here. It works for almost any situation!
First, anticipate what your manager’s concerns will be. They’re often worried about three things: The effect on the team, that you’re “actually” working, and your ability to manage incongruous schedules. For example:
Will it be more difficult for you to collaborate, or to have those spontaneous conversations from which amazing ideas can emerge?
Will it be too hard to build a culture when people aren’t face to face?
How will they monitor what you’re working on and ensure you’re being productive?
How will they access you readily, especially for last-minute meetings?
Will you burn out more quickly if your office (i.e. their laptop) is too accessible?
What managers really want to hear is that working from home won’t make their lives more difficult. How is this a win for them, too? Get ahead of it and be prepared with answers to how you can alleviate common concerns:
Do you suggest coming in once a week for team meetings?
How will you set boundaries?
Can you offer to do one-on-one phone checkins/ coffee dates with people on the team to build deeper connections and establish trust?
There may be other concerns, too. During the conversation, acknowledge that you understand where they are coming from and that this may open up requests from other employees. It’s also okay to not have all the answers on the spot. Let them know that you want to make this work for everyone and would like to come back to them with thoughts.
Then, to further make your case, talk about the benefits you have seen from working from home that directly relate to your job. Share your tracked productivity, idea generation, cost reduction, or some other specific result from the past year. Quantify it—data talks. Focus on tangible outcomes of why working from home will work for the company.
Bottom line: Convince your manager that you can be just as productive (if not more), be collaborative and creative, have fences in place so that you don’t burn out, and flexible that you can come in every once in a while as necessary. Working from home has lost some of the taboo it once had, and reminding your manager of the benefits will put you in a stronger place to get to yes.
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