Telecommuting

If you were to find a way to retain premier talent, reduce overhead expenses, and punch up sales productivity, you’d likely do somersaults of glee, yes? One way to potentially achieve all three is to allow some of your employees to work from home. Could you review the following considerations to determine if telecommuting workers are a good fit for your enterprise?

Here are the advantages:

• Help you retain talent. For many employees, eliminating the daily commute and reducing the time spent in a cubicle can keep them happy enough to stay with your company in the long term. The flexibility of working remotely can be the difference between keeping and losing your best employees.”
• Boost productivity. By letting your employees work from home, you’re helping them avoid a hectic — and often distracting — work environment.
• Gives you access to a larger pool of talent. Setting up an infrastructure to support telecommuting employees allows managers to hire the best person for the job, regardless of location. Telecommuting options can also help you retain top talent if an employee needs to relocate.
• Results in overhead savings. Since your employees should spend very little time stationed at the office, you can pocket substantial overhead savings from letting employees work from home.

Here are the disadvantages:

• Isolation. Managers must understand each employee’s personality and determine the optimal frequency of contact with that person. You can utilize webinars and teleconferences to offer opportunities for team interaction. And have them come in to the office occasionally for everything from training to holiday parties
• Micromanagement. Telecommuting can fail if employees require constant supervision, which is much more difficult, if not impossible, with remote employees. To avoid being overwhelmed with additional work from telecommuting employees, please exercise caution when hiring individuals who have a history of requiring frequent interaction with a manager to complete tasks.
• Accountability. The biggest impediment to managing a remote workforce is accountability. It can be challenging to determine if workers are actually working or simply sitting at home watching TV in their pajamas. It’s imperative to ensure accountability by setting up processes to monitor performance, including daily contact and activity reports.