Telecommuting - The Management of Telework

The Management of Telework

Beyond supporting the required incremental technologies, a well-functioning telework organization needs a management system at least as effective as in traditional organizations. The management team faces additional issues such as how to continue to supervise employees who are often or usually out of the office, how to monitor their productivity with less personal interaction, how to build a strong virtual team, how to maintain relationships between remote employees, etc. Here are some suggested practices:

• Develop a daily schedule. Setting a standardized schedule of the times of the day when work is done can help remote teleworkers feel that they are really at work, which can make it easier for supervisors to monitor their activities and lead to increased productivity.

• Establish milestone dates. This will help keep projects on track and make it easier to spot problems while there is still time to effectively deal with them.

• Encourage social networking. Employee surveys show that being able to work far from colleagues without losing touch boosts employee satisfaction and makes top talent more inclined to stick around.

• Address problems right away. Respond to problems immediately even if they are reported by email or text messaging. This will prevent teleworkers from feeling they are isolated.

• Design key performance indicators (KPIs) for your remote workers. Also use these KPIs to measure the effectiveness of your in-office staff to maintain an equivalence among the distinct employee categories.

• Start workdays by holding a five-minute team video-conference so supervisors can maintain a regular check-in routine and enable employees to catch up on team work progress and feel connected to the whole organization.

A successful telework or telecommuting program requires a management style that is results-oriented as opposed to task oriented. This is referred to as management by objectives as opposed to management by observation.