My Team Wants To Work From Home — But Some Of Them Are Terrible At It

… and two other tricky workplace dilemmas.

EXPERT OPINION BY ALISON GREEN, INC.COM COLUMNIST @ASKAMANAGER

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.

Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers.

1. How can I be fair about remote work when some of my staff do horribly with it?

I oversee a medium-sized department who are all required to be on-site, although we were remote for quite a while following the pandemic. My staff is pushing very hard for hybrid working, and while I am open to it, I have concerns.

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In the past, when that the majority of our team worked from home, some of the staff really excelled at it, while others were frankly awful. Literally, the staff who were excellent outperformed the worst by a factor of ten to one. Unfortunately, the lower performers didn’t always recognize that they were not being productive.

The culture in my organization is very much one of equity, and I am trying to balance that with the knowledge that some staff just did not excel at working from home. If Andrew and Beth worked effectively from home, but Charles and Deanna did not, how can I be fair?

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