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December 10, 2004
Managing Remote Workers
Posted by Carole Matthews at 12:00 PM
I recently spent the day in our NY offices. Generally, I work full-time from my home office north of Boston, but this past Wednesday, I flew in in the morning and headed back to Boston in the evening. I generally do this every two or three months to touch base with the people I work with. I find it's good to have a bit of face time. Besides, it provides me with some renewed energy for my work. I suspect it also mixes it up for my co-workers a bit, whether that's good or bad.
The trip actually got me thinking about the whole telecommuting arrangement and wondering how Inc.com business owners manage remote workers. The technology is there to support the regular flow of communication, but how is your "quality" of communication with your remote employees? I'm lucky to have a manager and co-workers who regularly keep me in touch with the work "culture," so I'm not so a much fish out of water when I do make my office visits, and I entirely feel like a member of team despite my remote location.
Are you just checking in to see that projects are done, or are you engaging your remote employees in conversations that help you get to know them better, as you might with internal employees? And how often do you require them to visit your office?
If managing remote workers is a challenge, or if you're considering offering telecommuting as an option, here are a few good articles on the topic:
Guide to Selecting the Best Virtual Workers
4 Keys to Effectively Manage Remote and Mobile Workers
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Telecommuting-have a numder of examples of how Videoconferencing can "keep you in the loop"
let me know in interested
greg macarthur
viewpoint2000
Send me your email address and i will send my bio and an article i did in Sept for Business Communications Review
The topic, however, is critical and needs to be researched. As a starting point, one can look at telecommuting, which has been extensively studied starting in the late 1970s. This research has found that management issues are a significant factor preventing widespread adoption of telecommuting (DeSanctis, 1984; Duxbury & Haines, 1991; Duxbury, Higgins & Irving, 1987; Huws, 1990; Phelps, 1985; Risman & Tomaskovic-Devey, 1989; Roderick & Jelley, 1991). This implies that the issue of managing remote workers in virtual organizations is critical and needs to be better understood. As Lucas (1996) notes, with the rapid growth in virtual organizations, research is clearly needed on what organizations and managers can do to make their remote employees more effective.
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