Way back in the 1990's when the Internet came out, the concept of Telecommuting became a discussion item. Now, understand, working from home is not something new. When I worked at Texaco, our marketing reps all worked from their homes. They only came into the office once a week or so to get mail or meet with their supervisors. We also had people in remote areas that did various jobs and had no offices at all. It actually worked pretty well.
However, before the Internet, the amount of jobs that could be done remotely was limited. With the Internet, things changed rapidly. I started working for The Motley Fool in 1995, and I only went to their main office in Alexandria, VA about once a year. Even though, I didn't think the concept would catch on, we were a "dot-com", which made us different.
I was wrong.
Today 20 - 25% of the workforce teleworks "at some frequency". I've worked at two places where closing time was a standoff, where no one wanted to be the first one out the door. Everyone would pretend to work until ever later hours to show their loyalty to the boss, who seemed to never ever go home. With that type of management, I figured teleworking just wouldn't cut it. How could you see if employees were "loyal" if they are at home?
It probably is true that teleworking is frowned on by some companies like the two I worked at, since in many locations perceived control of the employees is more important than productivity. However, there are so many upsides to telecommuting that it had to catch on.
First, let's start with the negatives:
1. Some people can't work from home: A lot of people are convinced they "can't" work from home, but most of us find the adjustment fairly easy. The amount that can't are the type of people that are in my experience people that can't focus, or that somehow think if you aren't watching them you won't know they aren't working. Generally both of those type of people can't work in a modern office either, unless it is some task that they are closely supervised.
2. Working from home is lonely: It really is. It got to me during the Recession when I worked by myself in the house every day and had no one to talk to but the dog and the parrot. While commuting is a drag, and so are office politics, you really get to miss co-workers.
3. It's hard to supervise and train new employees when they are remote: It just is. You really need to be physically present to really train people to work a job.
4. Collaboration is difficult: Teleconferencing helps, but it's not the same as being there.
5. As a supervisor you may have no idea what your people are doing: This can really get out of hand, with whole legions of people working from home and getting a paycheck for who knows what.
The positives are overwhelming though. Here's a few:
1. You can have people work for you that are much farther away: It's my experience that the longest reasonable commute is 45 minutes. Anything longer than that you have problems. I've worked with people that had 2 hour and longer commutes, and they all were difficult people. They tended to be short tempered, and very negative about everything. If you have an employee that telecommutes, their distance away is not so important because they don't have to leave home. Times they need to be in the office for meetings and such can be scheduled so they miss rush hour traffic.
2. People work harder from home: Here's a link to an article in
Harvard Business Review. It makes sense when you think about it. There are fewer interruptions. The person can control his or her environment better. You don't lose that last hour of the day as the person is staring at the clock getting ready to leave. Also, I believe people are better rested and more comfortable, which leads to higher productivity.
3. You save a lot of money: Office space is expensive and not an expense that generates money. An office costs for rent, insurance, furniture, utilities, insurance... This gets much lower if your employees work from home.
4. Setting up remote offices is easier. I could set up an office in Canada by hiring an employee there. There are other issues like getting a business license and so on, but renting an office in a remote city isn't necessary.
To work from home, we've at Runkle Consulting have had to do a bit of trial and error to see what works. First, we found we couldn't really telecommute every day. Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are "office" days. On those days were are here. Generally Friday is a half office day because of traffic. So we telecommute 2 1/2 days a week.
Every day when we work at home we do a short teleconference on Skype Business to go over what we are all working on. Often we may need to meet at the office for short periods of time on those days to coordinate issues. It's important to do the conference call in the morning to make sure everyone is set up for the day.
Sharing computer files is important. Really, company computer files should NEVER be kept on a local PC except as a copy, they always should be on a network on in the Cloud. You don't want to lose critical information by a hard disk crash.
Google allows you to have a virtual drive that is backed up to the Cloud, and can be shared across numerous PC's. It syncs the files to the local PC, so you can work with the information wherever you are at.
However, we found that Google Drive doesn't have the best software, so we use
SugarSync, which is much more expensive, but it works. Since we got into using it, I had a hard drive failure, and it was not a catastrophe, it was an annoyance. That's a big difference. I had to buy a new hard drive and install all my software again. All the work files were saved in the Cloud and it was no problem.
The final issue is effective supervision. I had a very bad experience with an employee years ago. The employee basically had a 10 week vacation at my expense. The employee was assigned to work with another engineer that worked for a colleague of mine on a project we were doing together. I found out the employee was taking two days a week off without my knowledge, and even on workdays the employee was doing nothing. No one was checking to see if this pair was getting anything done (they weren't).
Make sure you check that work is actually being done by your telecommuting employees. Don't assume that stuff is being done. If you work in an office, you expect your employees to get projects done, the same occurs for telecommuting employees. That 10 weeks cost me a lot of money.
If employees are telecommuting, how much equipment should you provide them? I suggest minimal at first, make sure they actually do work, and then you can start purchasing equipment they need. Going back to the employee above, I purchased that employee a computer. When I terminated the employee, I had to worry about getting back a 10 week old PC. I traded the employee's final check for it.
However, in the meanwhile the employee lost a couple of hundred dollars of building code books. Also, the computer when I got it back was full of all sorts of adware, viruses, and spyware. The employee never installed the anti-virus programs that I purchased to go with the computer. So many bad things happened on that one, don't let it happen to you.
Right now my employees have Microsoft Surface Pros. We have also Microsoft Office 365 for business, which allows us to collaborate with Skype for Business. I pay for that also, plus the other software on the computers (AutoCAD, MathCAD, RAM Elements). Codes and Standards are on a directory in the Cloud, and at the office.
As far as hours, you really won't have a clue what hours your employees are working. They are likely napping after lunch, and showering at 10 AM. Generally, it's a good idea to require them to be available on the phone in set hours, like between 8 and 5. Personally, I don't like calling people after or before those hours unless it is an extreme circumstance, or we have a call to another time zone.
Finally, it's a good idea to have written policies on telecommuting. Make sure you have rules about what company computers can be used for. I would not want to be sued for an employee illegally downloading copyrighted material. You wouldn't want to get a computer back from an employee, issue it to another employee and find out it is full of pornography. The hours of availability is important, and any other standards that apply to your business.
My experience with telecommuting employees has been good now that we've worked out the kinks of what is going on. I hope it goes well for you too.
