If you have a workplace where people work in different locations, the following tips can help you manage your staff system well.
While this may seem like a push of a button at first, managing remote employees takes time, communication, and trust. That’s what businesses need to learn.
Today, thanks to increasingly modern, faster, cheaper and more flexible IT technology, employers and business owners can operate their work from home, from the road or from anywhere in the world. This way of working is called telework.
Telework, once a theoretical concept, is now a reality and is becoming increasingly common. By 2003, about 541 TP3T companies worldwide had these systems, and the number is expected to reach 801 TP3T by 2005, according to an AT&T survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a division of the Economist magazine. In the United States, 44 million employees work part-time from home—and that number is expected to rise to 51 million by 2008, according to a 2004 survey by Scottsdale, Arizona, market research firm In-Stat/MDR.
So what’s driving this boom? Studies have found a lot of benefits for businesses and employees. Employees feel more fulfilled because they’re closer to home and family, productivity increases because of the extra hours they work, and costs are reduced because of savings on transportation and office space.
However, not all companies will and should adopt telework in their work, and not all companies are facing the same challenges. To help you get a more complete picture of this topic, Entrepreneur magazine will introduce three companies that use remote workers. One company has a president and founder who works from home and on the road, another company has a chairman who lives in a different city than the main headquarters and hires home-based employees and remote contractors in India, and finally a company that uses a workforce defined by a mobile, home-based CEO who has a satellite office and also hires other team members.
Each company faces different challenges and has different solutions. But one thing they have in common is that they all acknowledge that the path they have chosen is the right one.
Manage your business from home
Every weekday morning, and especially every Monday and Friday morning, Paul Purdue works in the same room on the farm that started iFulfill.com, a fulfillment company that began serving customers online in 1998. The arrangement allows Purdue to spend more time with his family. With VPNs, IM, and an Internet system that allows him to run his business from home, he manages 31 employees who ship thousands of packages daily from a warehouse in Maumee, Ohio.
If an employee wanted to see him, they would dial an extension, and they would see him as if he and his employee were talking directly to each other. Usually, people would contact him, communicate with him, and then go to his office, and they were surprised by his absence. However, he did not leave or disappear from the company as people thought. Controlling the company remotely by accessing the company's internal computer through the network allowed him to talk when people came to work, he also knew how many packages needed to be returned, and even who delivered the wrong package.
By managing employees with modern technology, having a strict and regular schedule of checking employees' working hours with his assistants and more importantly, the working style that Purdue has brought the company to its current size, with expected sales of 7.2 million dollars this year.
Running a company from two cities
In January 2004, Jennifer Fallon, 34, started My Wedding Favors, an online wedding and catering company, as a side business. She ran the business from her home in Atlanta with the help of her father. When her parents moved to Birmingham, Alabama, My Wedding Favors continued to grow rapidly in a short period of time. In 2004, the company grew to $1.44 million in sales and projected sales of $2.1 million in 2005.
The company grew from six people in its Birmingham warehouse, a call center representative working from home in Birmingham, a web designer in Atlanta, an assistant working from Fallon’s home, and a few part-time contractors in Atlanta and India. Fallon says managing the business from home in Atlanta has been the biggest challenge.
Like Purdue, Fallon is able to manage sales and door-to-door deliveries using a software system and an Internet connection that allows her to access the company's network computers from home. E-mail is one of her primary communication tools, and meetings are held between her, her delivery manager, the Birmingham office manager, and two customer service representatives to address any issues that arise.
She still travels to Birmingham every two weeks. One issue she sees is finding someone who is trustworthy to oversee and manage the main office remotely. It is important to assess whether those employees are continuing to develop the skills they need. She has to rely on her office manager and meet with them more often. “We have to manage the activities and if we can’t see the activities, we don’t know what they are doing,” she adds. “When you are managing and running the work remotely, you need to manage the results.”
Manage employees on the road
Marty Kotis, 36, runs a commercial real estate development company called Kotis Properties, which is split between the company’s main office in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a branch in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. His company employs 23 people. His employees travel frequently, and even Kotis and his marketing manager often communicate from home. So Kotis needs tools to keep in touch with his employees even when they are in different locations.
One impressive piece of technology is wireless PDAs and video conferencing, which allow colleagues to stay in touch. “I can work from anywhere, and with this technology, I can manage my employees,” Kotis says. And with this technology, Kotis’s employees can schedule meetings they want him to attend, and it also lets him know who is meeting and where.
While managing remote employees can be a bit challenging, Kotis believes that trust is key. He has to believe in his employees, and that’s where he focuses a lot of his hiring process. He pays particular attention to an employee’s ability to work with technology and their personal organizational skills. “I’ve found that the more tech-savvy and personally organized someone is, the better and faster they are at solving problems,” he says.
In general, the way of communication is not the most important. What is important is that communication occurs regularly and in a positive way, especially between leaders and employees, and this will solve the big problems.
Today, the trend of telework management is on the rise, and this is one of the signs that we are entering a new decade of management. Companies will become more human-centric, relying on technology to manage the results and performance of their employees. So what is the ideal result for businesses? Satisfied employees, long-term bonds, increased productivity, and a brighter business situation.
