Establishing Clear Expectations in the Remote Work Environment

By: Bill Dolan, CMB

Establish Clear Expectations

Balancing the transition of your employees to remote work status with a large pipeline of loans that you are all currently experiencing will be a challenge, and setting clear expectations will be key to successfully managing your mortgage manufacturing plant through this change.

Ms. Julie Wilson, founder of the Institute of Future Learning and instructor at Harvard University states: “Managing a virtual team requires managers to double down on the fundamentals of good management, including establishing clear goals, running great meetings, communicating clearly and leveraging team members’ individual and collective strengths.”

Communicating clear expectations will keep your team on-task without any need to micromanage them.

Be results-oriented, rather than focusing on time spent working. It’s about meeting your goals, not micromanaging your team’s time. Set clear expectations and check in on your team’s progress regularly. As long as those expectations are being met, don’t worry if an employee pops off-line at a random time to walk their dog.

Happy employees that feel appreciated will ultimately be far more productive than employees who feel they are being micromanaged at each step of the way because their manager doesn’t trust them which brings us to:

Next week’s topic: Trust Your Team

With everything coming at you all at once, many of you out there tell me that you are now heading into budget season for 2021.

2020 upended all of us as to how we parent, work, shop and communicate. And through all of this incredible disruption, you as a lender must prepare yourself for how you will do business in 2021 to meet the demand.

The ever-changing digitization of the mortgage banking industry has made it so much easier for borrowers to be on top of their game and act quickly. It is imperative that you rely on real-time market and competitive data to price intentionally while arming your front-line with the tools and knowledge to win and retain customers.

If you are not kicking the tires to see just what technology has to offer in the areas of POS, LOS or PPE systems, let SCA partner with you to help, implement and support your customer base.

70% of borrowers recently surveyed stated that they would leave their current bank or credit union in a minute for a better interest rate. Two-thirds of financial institutions surveyed stated that pricing was the key to success.

The question you must ask yourself is “Just how quickly are you changing both internally and externally to meet these demands?  Remember, “if you’re not, your competition IS.”

Contact Bill Dolan at (617) 694-2617 to discuss just how SCA can help you change and keep pace in 2021 and beyond.