Making The Virtual Office Work; Learn Ways Companies Can Help Remote Workers Succeed

Making the virtual office work; Learn ways companies can help remote workers succeed
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | 9:50 am

In the last decade, virtual work has significantly increased. Professionals work remotely from home, from client locations or from the road. In fact, as much of 10% of today's work force telecommutes from home — more than triple the level of 2000.

Reducing the number of full-time employees lets corporations realize higher productivity and savings in real estate costs. International Business Machines Corp., for instance, saves $100 million a year by allowing 42% of its employees to work remotely. And employees like spending less time and money commuting; they enjoy the flexibility and autonomy of working from home.

But there are, of course, challenges. The first involves finding the right work-life balance. Many people who telecommute believe they'll achieve a better balance between work and home, but telecommuting can sometimes have the opposite effect: employees work longer hours and struggle to make time for their personal life. They work weekends, holidays, evenings and during the hours they would have been commuting, while their families expect that staying home means they'll also be managing the household. The result is remote employees who feel overworked and stressed.

Management could help by setting norms and discussing the best ways to establish work-life balance. Managers might advise team members not to work on holidays or weekends, to sign off at certain times and to leave BlackBerrys at home during family vacations. Managers also should prioritize tasks and provide frequent feedback so remote workers can better handle heavy workloads. Otherwise, remote employees can feel as if all assignments have the same sense of urgency.

The second challenge has to do with overcoming workplace isolation. Isolated employees don't know where or to whom to turn when questions arise, and they feel disconnected from their organizations. People sometimes want advice; they need peers to bounce ideas off of. And they can miss the social environment of a traditional workplace.

Managers can help by conducting one-on-one meetings, following up on action items and paying attention to remote employees' contributions. Moreover, they can check in informally, making sure they understand their employees' concerns and issues.

Managers also can promote social interaction among team members. A company that provides infrastructure software, for example, encourages its remote employees from different functional areas and locations to introduce themselves and to engage in games with prizes during teleconference meetings. Companies could celebrate virtual employees' birthdays, or make them part of the holiday gift exchange. Face-to-face forums, conferences and workshops are also good opportunities for telecommuting employees to interact professionally and socially with colleagues.

Another idea is to pair a remote employee with someone in the company, allowing for mentoring to occur. This works particularly well when a company office is nearby and remote employees can attend social events and have informal meetings with their traditional colleagues. Mentoring could also occur between remote workers, a new employee being paired with someone who has lots of experience working remotely.

A third challenge has to do with compensating for the lack of face-to-face communication. With remote work, people primarily communicate through e-mail, which it makes it more difficult for remote employees to develop personal relationships and trust among their colleagues. It also takes longer to communicate this way, requiring more explanation because contextual cues are missing. The volume of communication may be high, but the efficiency is poor.

Managers should arrange to meet face-to-face with their employees at least once a year. They also should aim to use technology informally. For example, rather than start weekly meetings with formal agenda items, managers can talk a little about family news. This helps with relationship building, which in turn can improve overall communication.

The final challenge concerns compensating for a lack of visibility. Remote employees can feel that they have to work harder than traditional employees to be recognized or promoted.

Again, managers can help by being supportive and thereby reducing "out of sight, out of mind" concerns. Managers could promote individual and team achievements, finding ways to share this information throughout the organization. A manager at a software company, for example, e-mails her boss each week to describe some of the key accomplishments of her remote employees.

Managers should signal their accessibility, communicating that they're open to both formal and informal conversations, providing information about when they're available and setting guidelines for when and how they'll respond to phone calls, e-mails and other communication.

Copyright Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This article is adapted from "Set Up Remote Workers to Thrive," by Jay Mulki, Fleura Bardhi, Felicia Lassk and Jayne Nanavaty-Dahl, which appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. The complete article is available here.