Reward results over effort on remote teams

- The old way of measuring success by effort is over. With so many ways to measure performance these days, it's no longer going to be butts in seats equal productivity. Everyone should have a clear idea of what their metrics look like so they know how to hit them and they're all aligned with the goals of the company. But first, let's talk about what effort-based rewarding is because we may have all seen those people who are burning the midnight oil and spending a lot of time at work, but maybe they're not actually performing. And I think when we reward those types of workers we are creating work martyrs, which are people who essentially want to make sure that they're visibly seen working more in order to get promoted and that's not going to be a healthy team environment. Now the flip side is rewarding results. What that means is having a very clear picture into what success looks like in your role. And if you can do that, you've got a clear track of what you need to be successful. And that opens up all different types of things, like investing in different training opportunities, maybe there's hard skills that you need in order to hit those metrics, maybe there's soft skills that you need if you're working in a more of a cross-functional role, and those things can really align you with what you need to do to grow your career, and if everybody knows what those look like, people can start to support you. And this all comes down to defining success on your individual level and your team level and also as a company. And if you can do that and communicate that all the way throughout your journey with your check-ins with your boss on a regular basis, aligning with your teams, there's going to be no question about where you're going to go and where you need to do to get there and what timelines need to do to get there. And if you can do that, it means that you can invest in those soft skills that you might not have or maybe there's hard skills that you need in order to achieve those goals that are outlined for you. Imagine you're a sales person who needs to hit a certain quota, knowing that certainly would be helpful. If you're in customer service, understanding what your customer satisfaction scores look like, definitely going to need to know that. And there's all different types of metrics that you can assign to your role. And if you don't have them find them, do that exercise with your boss, because if you get into a certain situation where somebody is spending more time than they should on a certain project, that shouldn't be rewarded, that should be dissected, and we should look at those types of performers to find out what are they doing that's not efficient? Maybe we shouldn't be investing in training in that person or maybe they're bored and not engaged. How can we align that person to do a job that aligns with what they're good at and what they're going to succeed at? And on the flip side, if somebody is doing their work exceptionally well and does it efficiently, we should reward that extra free time they have to invest in themselves. And if we can do that, they have complete clarity and transparency into what our work entails and what it means to be successful, we can reward that behavior and make sure that other people are modeling at the same time. And if we're all aligned together, we can create a work culture where everybody knows what they need to be successful and we can all support each other as a team.