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Letting Employees Work from Home
Typically, my posts usually touch subjects such as content marketing, SEO and B2B social media, recently I’ve been doing a lot of reading on one other business subject that I’ve been compelled to sound off on.
It involves giving employees the privilege to work from home.
My colleague Devon McDonald has just lately touched on this topic in a post about the pros and cons of managing remote sales teams, and Fast Company posted a fun infographic just last week on how a number of employers agree to deciding on this option.
In this article, I want to focus on the sole issue of local staff, as these days a lot of companies already have remote employees who work from different states or even countries, and thus are almost never in the office. In the Internet/SaaS age of doing business, it just makes sense, and most people acknowledge this.
But it’s ironic, when it concerns the core team’s local employees, many managers have a hard time wrapping their heads around a working environment where people can come and go as they please. And I get the concerns. If you’re paying for an office, you want employees to actually report for work. Yes, if they aren’t physically in the building, it’s more difficult to keep a close watch on what they’re up to during the course of the day. And sure, it can be harder to develop a cohesive team when the members are scattered throughout different places.
I truly do understand these concerns. But these are the types of issues that need to be handled on a company-by-company basis. Having worked at places with stringent attendance policies and others that permit you report to work at your convenience, I can verify that the latter can be very effective when managed correctly.
And while there are pros and cons to both sides, here are a few points managers at young companies need to consider when it comes to making the decision to make the “work from home” option available to their employees.
First of all, it’s only an option. The fact you let employees to work from home doesn’t mean you’ll never set eyes on them again. It must be made clear that they should physically report for work on days when important meetings are scheduled or any other event that necessitates their presence.
A majority of people like coming to work. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true. In my experience, the idea “working alone from home every single day” thing gets tiring in the long run. The best workers prefer to be with their co-workers and involved at the office, and will likely come most of the time. But the added flexibility of being able to work from home on a slow day or if they aren’t feeling well can be a wonderful perk as well.
Just because you see someone everyday doesn’t mean they’re productive. One of the key issues on managing remote workers is that employers can’t be sure that they are actually … you know … working. Hell, maybe they’re just relaxing, watching Jersey Shore reruns and checking their email occasionally so no one catches on. And some might. However, if being in the office was the key to productivity, not a single employee would ever get fired for poor performance.
Good workers will do good work no matter where they are, and the workers who usually goof off can do so even right under your nose. It all comes down to trust. Be ready to enforce the fact that working from home is a privilege, not a right. If some people slack and take advantage of the situation, and you will definitely know it. However, don’t punish the others who work hard and responsibly, even if it’s from the comfort of their own couch.
Not every business/department is a fit for a work from home policy. While I don’t think managers should outright ignore the possibility of letting employees work from home, I understand it’s not always practical. For example, a software development team that practices Scrum will probably have daily team meetings to discuss impediments and productivity. In this case, I can see how team members being in and out of the office throughout the week is likely to disrupt things. Again, it’s up to the manager to decide what makes sense and what doesn’t.
Finally, I would just stress that the possibility for working from home isn’t about encouraging employees to work from home; it’s about giving them the peace of mind that they can. Once again, good workers will do quality work no matter where they are, but the flexibility of knowing they can stay home if they need to without having to worry about personal days or angry bosses can do wonders for a company’s culture. I’ve seen it myself.
As long as people are performing to expectations, that’s all the really matters. And isn’t that the one thing managers should care about implementing more than anything else?
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Related articles
- Why You Should Or Shouldn’t Allow Your Employees To Work From Home (dohertyassoc.com)
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