Virtual Office Resource

We may not all be digital nomads yet, able to work from anywhere and set our own hours. But we’re getting there.

Mobile technology combined with the cloud has made it easier than ever for work to be completed outside of the office, and most of us have long recognized that working from an office cubicle all day is neither stimulating nor productivity-enhancing. For all the fear of management that workers will perform poorly when left alone, the reality is that studies have shown workers actually get slightly more done when not in the office. And work more hours.

So more businesses are letting employees work from home all or some of the time—usually the latter, although the distributed workforce trend also is encouraging full-time work from home.

While this is a positive trend, businesses do need to pay attention to a few pitfalls that can make remote work a problem. Specifically, businesses need to ensure there is good communication, make sure there’s transparency, and set clear expectations when employees are not in a physical office.

Communications is a big one. While officemate distractions may reduce when employees are working by themselves outside of an office, collaboration can suffer if businesses are not particularly mindful to ensure that communication stays robust. This means having a collaboration platform in place, something like Slack or Basecamp, and also ensuring that office communications system follow employees no matter where they are located. Services such as Phone (News - Alert).com’s cloud-based business phone system solution can help.

Transparency also is important. Workers may work as hard or harder when telecommuting, but that doesn’t mean they are allocating their time appropriately. Employee management is harder when there are no visual cues showing what employees might be doing with their time. So it is important that businesses make sure there is an easy system in place for tracking employee progress and reveailing what employees are working on at any given moment.

Third, clear expectations are a must. We all understand the social contract in the office, from how long our lunch breaks should run to acceptable Facebook (News - Alert)-checking habits while on company time. But when we’re working remotely, it is far too easy to lose certainty about what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Is taking a nap okay if we make up the time later in the evening? Does pausing to take care of the baby mean an employee is derelict from his job? A lack of clear expectations raises employee anxiety, and it reduces the social contract with employees. Be clear about what is expected of employees when they are not working in the office.

If these keys are kept in mind, however, telecommuting policies should benefit both employee and employer alike.