Managing Remote Staff

Capitalize on Work-from-Home Productivity

Lin Grensing-Pophal

• Publisher: Self-Counsel Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781770403314
• eBook ISBN: 9781770405141
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

The world as we know it has changed. Even businesses that long declared that working from home wasn't an option have found themselves adjusting and overhauling their business models, since the only other alternative is to close.Despite being thrust into this "new normal, " businesses and their displaced staff have risen to the challenges and acclimatized to ways of working remotely. Since then, the idea of managing remote workers has grown and become more widely accepted as a viable way to do business.If your business needs more employees but you don't have the office space to accommodate them; if someone on your staff wants to work from home; you want to promote a flexible work environment but fear losing profits; or you simply need to adapt due to a pandemic as so many have had to do, managing remote staff may be the answer.Managing Remote Staff: Capitalize on Work-from-Home Productivity explains how to: • Determine whether remote staffing is right for your company• Assess new and current candidates• Train managers and employees remotely• Help at-home or off-site staff to cope• Set up the home office• Measure the success of your program• Take care of the legal detailsThis book provides managers with the tools to set up and maintain a productive remote staffing program that benefits both employees and employers.

Chapter 1

A Brief History of Remote Work

Even before COVID-19, in the work environment of the twenty-first century, work is being defined differently than it has ever been defined in the past. The “typical” 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday-to-Friday work week is a thing of the past. Instead, as jobs have become less structured, work has become less structured in terms of how, when, and where it gets done.

In a global, 24/7 world, the notion that all employees of an organization can work the same rigid schedule is obviously far outdated. Punching a time clock is, in fact, an artifact of the industrial revolution and no longer pertinent for what has largely become a service economy. In addition, today’s workers value flexibility more than ever, requiring employers that wish to attract and retain the best and the brightest to come up with flexible solutions to meet their needs.

As long ago as the nineteenth century, people were telecommuting. While the term wasn’t coined until almost 100 years later, the first person on record who performed work that had previously been done at one business location at a remote location was a
Boston bank president who had a phone line strung from his office to his home in 1877!

1. From the Nineteenth Century to Today

Even as early as the 1950s, location was becoming less and less important to the concept of work. Telephone communications were widely established. And as the make-up of work changed to a more information-based economy following World War II, staff could work more independently, without need of constant supervision.

You’ve heard of the internet, haven’t you? Well, in 1963, a programmer working on the Arpanet Project (the forerunner to today’s internet) withdrew from the project to stay home with his wife, who was going through a difficult pregnancy. Another programmer suggested he install an additional phone line in his home so he could program from there. The practice of working from home still didn’t have a name, but people were starting to experiment with it.

In 1973, Jack Nilles, a scientist working on NASA satellite communications projects in Los Angeles, coined the term for telecommuting. Now, Nilles is internationally known as the father of telecommuting. He originally used the term to denote “a geographically dispersed office where workers can work at home on a computer and transmit data and documents to a central office via telephone lines.” In 1982, Nilles incorporated JALA International, Inc. (www.jala.com). An international group of management consultants, JALA’s mission is “to help organizations make effective use of information technology ‘telecommunications and computers’ and to better cope with the accelerating rate of change in the business environment.”

By the time Nilles had come up with a word for the concept of working from locations other than the traditional office, companies were already beginning to experiment with the practice.

In 1978, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of South Carolina had started a cottage-keyer project recognizing that employees could easily perform a number of keyboarding activities at home. In the first year of the project they demonstrated a 26% increase in productivity. In 1980, Mountain Bell started a telecommuting project for its managers. That same year, the US Army launched a telecommuting pilot.

By the mid-1980s, telecommuting was becoming an increasingly popular option. It seemed to address a number of issues, including gridlock, pollution, employee retention, savings on office space, and even increases in productivity.

In 1989, AT&T started a pilot telecommuting program in Los Angeles; the program was expanded to Phoenix in 1990. Employees tried working at home several days per month. AT&T’s move in this direction was a voluntary response to Title I of the 1990 Clean Air Act.

In 1992, AT&T introduced a formal telework policy and started its Virtual Workplace training programs. By 1999, more than half of AT&T’s managers teleworked at least one day a month; 25% of their managers teleworked one day or more per week and 10% teleworked 100% of the time.

Telecommuting was given a boost in 1990 when amendments to the Clean Air Act mandated employer trip-reduction programs. While telecommuting wasn’t a requirement under the Act, it was a recommended way to meet trip-reduction goals and a number of organizations began experimenting with this option. The bill was changed in 1995, and reductions in car-commuter trips are no longer mandatory. However, regional or state rules are still in effect, and telecommuting remains one good way to get cars off the road.

There have been some major changes in telecommuting since its early beginnings. These changes have been driven both by demand and by technology; the internet, email, and cell phones now make it easier than ever to work from virtually any place, at any time.

In the 1990s, there were an estimated 3.7 million workers telecommuting in the United States. In 2000, that number had increased to 6 million. It is also estimated that, by the end of 2009, 14 million people were telecommuting. The rise in these numbers has been driven both by individual and environmental needs.

The entry of Generation Y into the workforce, a demographic that desires flexibility and independence more than those before them, has helped many businesses consider flexible work arrangements as a solution to those desires. Growing concern for the environment has also spurned an increase in telecommuting as a solution for reducing carbon emissions. The increase in technology options that make it easy, if not seamless, for employees to stay connected regardless of physical location has also had a positive impact.

Technology has had a dramatic influence on the workplace and on the ways in which tasks are accomplished. Email, voice mail, and internet technology mean that employees can literally be in touch with their employers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The 24/7 culture is changing the way that employees and employers interact; it is changing the very nature of work. Under the old system, employees were tied to the workplace. Tools did not exist to allow contact from remote locations. Today, technology is providing both employers and employees with freedom and flexibility that they would never have imagined even ten short years ago.

Technology is allowing employees to question the status quo and challenge the old ways of doing business. “Why do I need to come to the office to work on a report when I can do it at home on my computer?” “Why can’t I access voice mail and email from home?” “Why do I have to be physically located in a phone center to answer customer calls? Why can’t I be set up from home to do this?”

And because employers are faced with a shrinking labor market and a growing gap between job seekers’ skills and employer needs, more and more are responding to these questions with, “Why not?”

According to Global Workplace Analytics, in 2018, 5 million employees (3.6% of the US workforce) were working at home at least half-time. Working at home has grown 173% since 2005. While the numbers, at least prior to COVID-19 were still relatively low, their research reveals that 56% of employees have jobs that could be done, at least to some degree, remotely.

What does all this mean? It means that businesses must become more flexible and creative in both the recruitment and retention of employees. It means that the traditional brick-and-mortar workplace will soon give way — in fact, has given way, in many places — to a virtual workplace. It means that neither employees nor employers will be hampered by geographic constraints: An employee can live in Florida and work for a company in Georgia, Wisconsin, California, Ontario, Milan, Hong Kong, or literally any of thousands of locations around the globe.

It means that whether they are telecommuting, or simply working in another location as part of a global organization, branch office or “virtual company,” the ability to effectively manage off-site staff is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity for companies that want to compete effectively in this new millennium.

Many already knew this long before 2020 sent shock waves around the globe as companies of all types and in all locations moved quickly to remain open and accessible during the COVID-19 pandemic. That pandemic will likely significantly increase the adoption and widespread acceptance of remote work in a variety of configurations.

Companies large and small, in rural and urban settings, are learning to manage off-site staff relationships effectively. For many, these relationships are simply part of “how we work.” For others, they are generated through individual requests. Regardless of the way the need arises, success depends on careful planning and well-established guidelines as well as appropriate selection of both the positions and the people who will work in off-site locations.

Decisions about these arrangements should be made for the right reasons. You should not institute a telecommuting program, for instance, simply because an employee has requested the option or because it seems to be a current trend. Like any other business decision you make, the decision to allow employees to work in nontraditional locations should be based on legitimate and demonstrable business benefits. We explore a number of these in Chapter 2.

2. The Coronavirus Impact on Remote Work

The coronavirus has had a dramatic, immediate, and in most cases unanticipated impact on the work-from-home experience. While the forced experiment has taught some companies and their staff members that remote work has more positive potential than they might have imagined, mandatory work-from-home situations may be negatively impacting productivity according to a study by Digital.com, an independent review website for small business online tools, products, and services, in partnership with YouGov, an authority on public opinion data. Its survey of 2,909 American employees working from home highlighted decreased productivity as a major challenge for employees during the coronavirus.

The key negative impacts identified were lack of prior work-from-home experience and anxiety about the disease. More than half — 54% — of employees said they were working remotely for the first time. Of the 1 in 3 employees who said they had difficulty maintaining efficiency, almost 30% indicated it was primarily due to COVID-19 concerns. Other distractions included having their children or spouse at home with them, and TV or media streaming.

Dealing with the sudden and unexpected need to work from home during a worldwide pandemic is not ideal and, not surprisingly, the experience has taken a toll.

According to research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) the psychological costs of COVID-19 may be high — 41% of the workers surveyed indicated that they feel burned out; another 23% report feeling depressed. The survey explored the impact of the lockdown on the mental health of US workers. The impacts — negative emotions, concentration issues, and lack of motivation were higher among women, younger workers, and those living with a vulnerable person.

Concerns about the potential impact of the pandemic on their jobs represented a key concern. More than 20% reported that COVID-19 had “threatened the tangible parts of their jobs to a great extent or to a very great extent, including personal opportunities, job security, safe working conditions, and benefits and pay.”

But despite the unique pressures felt by employees and their managers during COVID-19, many still feel positive about the long-term potential for working from home as a viable option.

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index poll of 5,447 LinkedIn members from April 27 to May 3, took a look at workers’ perspectives on remote work as millions suddenly found themselves displaced to home settings during COVID-19. They asked the question, “Can your industry WFH [work from home] effectively?” By and large respondents answered “yes.” This was particularly true in certain industries such as software and IT (82%), finance (82%), and media and communications (76%). Even those in industries that rely heavily on face-to-face contact acknowledged that remote work could have some applications, and we’ve seen plenty of examples during the coronavirus pandemic — entertainment (44%), recreation and travel (37%), retail (29%).

In June, data released based on a survey commissioned by PGi and conducted by The Harris Poll confirmed that working from home is likely to continue to be a common option in the future. Results indicate that a majority of employed Americans working from home are more productive and are hopeful they will be able to continue to work from home in the future. Video conferencing, respondents said, allows them to collaborate just as well as when participating in face-to-face meetings. Survey respondents included 61% of employed Americans working from home. Of these, 70% say they can get more work done now, primarily because they don’t have as many in-person meetings, 63% said they can accomplish more during a video conference meeting than in an in-person meeting; and 41% said working from home has had a very or somewhat positive impact on work/life balance (however, there are mixed results here: 34% said it’s had a very or somewhat negative impact). Also, 54% say they would not be comfortable attending large work-related conferences or events.

The coronavirus has provided a forced experiment into how well remote work can serve the needs of businesses of all kinds. For the most part, business owners, managers, and employees have come to believe that remote work can and should be a viable option, now and in the future.

Dawn Michell, VP of human resources at Appian, a low-code automation company based in northern Virginia says: “While I don’t want to undermine the stress many of us are under with such limited space between work and personal life, it has caused us to be creative about how we address work and, in some areas, improved it.” At Appian, she says, “we’ve learned how change can prompt creativity and improve areas of our work we didn’t expect it to. It’s easy for leaders to get stuck in a rut in terms of how they manage and same for employees in terms of how they work.”

There will be lessons for employers to learn from the sudden experiment in working from home that the coronavirus prompted.

As leaders, says Andrew Meadows, senior vice president at Ubiquity Retirement + Savings in San Francisco, “we must listen to our employees in terms of what situations provide us with getting the best work from our emplo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Brief History of Remote Work
• Chapter 2: Myths, Misconceptions, Pros, and Cons
• Chapter 3: Best Job Types for Remote Work
• Chapter 4: Policies and Procedures
• Chapter 5: Those You Know — Characteristics of Successful Remote Workers and Selection Criteria
• Chapter 6: Those You Don’t — Recruiting Employees for Telecommuting Positions
• Chapter 7: Onboarding
• Chapter 8: Training Off-site and Onsite Workers, Managers, and Supervisors
• Chapter 9: Managing Off-site Staff — Best Practices
• Chapter 10: Motivate Off-site Staff
• Chapter 11: Measuring Outcomes
• Download Kit
• About the Author
• Notice to Readers
• Self-Counsel Press thanks you for purchasing this ebook.