10 Tips for Telecommuting Success

Posted: 06/03/2014 8:26 am EDT Updated: 08/03/2014 5:59 am EDT

Appropriately enough, Sara Sutton Fell runs FlexJobs, a website that matches people with telecommuter-friendly jobs, from her home in Boulder, Colorado. In fact, all 43 employees of FlexJobs work from their homes in places like Mission Viejo, California, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. In the traditional brick-and-mortar sense, FlexJobs doesn't have a headquarters.

The virtual workforce at FlexJobs is part of a growing trend in the U.S. About 13.4 million Americans worked at least one day at home each week in 2010, a 35 percent increase in just one decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It turns out that Fell's hometown, Boulder, is home to the highest percentage (10.9 percent) of telecommuters in any U.S. city.

Whether you're in Boulder or Boston, technology is allowing more people to work from home, according to Fell.

"Access to high-speed Internet, the rise in 'knowledge workers' who do most of their work over computers and phones, and the ability for teams to stay constantly connected even when they work thousands of miles away from each other are just a few examples of how technology is enabling this trend," Fell said.

As appealing as telecommuting can be, it's not for everyone, however. But for those who are suited to telecommuting, experts offer these 10 tips for making it work.

1. Separate work life from home life.

"Believe it or not, a common mistake at-home workers make is working too much," Fell said. "Without that commute to and from work, it can be hard to break away from your home office and call it a day."

That's why it's critical to set boundaries, experts say. For instance, Fell said, you should arrange for childcare if you're kids aren't in school during the day. "Trying to pay attention to your kids and your job at the same time is never a good idea, and both will suffer as a result," she said.

Angelo Kinicki, a professor of management at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, said it's essential to impose rules for you and your family members if you're working from home.

"Establish 'do not disturb' guidelines, work hours, break times, and a policy on handling personal matters. For example, no doing dishes or laundry or taking out the trash during work hours," Kinicki said. "My best advice is to treat your home office as if it were a 'real' office located somewhere else."

2. Get "ready" for work.

Although it may be tempting to lounge around in your pajamas, experts highly recommend showering and getting dressed as if you were heading to a workplace. As far as attire goes, you probably can get away with shorts and a T-shirt in warmer weather or heavier clothes in colder weather.

Business-casual attire isn't for every telecommuter, though. Matthew Reischer, CEO of Legal Marketing Pages Corp., finds that wearing a dress shirt and tie enhances his performance when he's working from home. Reischer said his telework wardrobe sends a message during videoconferences with other remote workers that he's serious about getting down to business.

3. Establish "office" hours.

While telecommuting offers lots of flexibility, you've still got to stick to a schedule. Debby Carreau, founder and CEO of HR outsourcing firm Inspired HR, said that if you don't create a window of time for your job, you'll either work around the clock or put off your work.

4. Divide up your day.

Giancarolo Massaro, co-founder of contest software company ViralSweep, said he breaks up his workday into chunks. He'll wake up around 6:30 a.m., eat breakfast, and then work from 7:30-10:30 a.m. After that, he'll hit the gym, grab lunch and work from 1:30-6 p.m. He'll then eat dinner, take a shower and perhaps squeeze in an hour or two of work before heading to bed around 11 p.m. With this sort of schedule, Massaro said he's "not stuck behind the desk for long periods of time" at home.

5. Set up the proper environment.

Carve out a space in your home that's your dedicated workspace. Ideally, the space should have a door so that you can shut out noise or interruptions. Your workspace shouldn't be at your kitchen table or in your bedroom, experts say.

"If you work from a messy bedroom or a dirty kitchen, you'll get distracted," saidCathy Caldeira Atkins, who co-owns a PR and marketing agency in Boston but works from her home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

6. Keep the lines of communication open.

If you're an off-site worker, be sure to check in at least once a day by email, online chat, phone or videoconferencing with your on-site managers and coworkers, Fell said.

You also should set up regular face-to-face meetings with managers and coworkers who may or may not be telecommuting. "Like it or not, relationships develop more quickly in person, and remote workers can be forgotten or overlooked for promotions or career development if they are not top of mind," Carreau said.

7. Don't constantly monitor your cellphone.

Kyle Ayling, the work-at-home owner of apparel company Cloud 9 Griptape, recommends setting your phone to silent or turning it off altogether when work demands most or all of our attention. "Time can be wasted by frequently checking it for no apparent reason," he warned.

The same advice can apply to checking Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media networks throughout the day, unless that's a key part of your job.

8. Get out of the house.

Work remotely from Starbucks. Attend a networking luncheon. Go to a business happy hour. Whatever the activity, make sure you're around other people at least some of the time.

"We are social creatures meant to interact with one another," said Felena Hanson, founder of Hera Hub, a chain of coworking spaces for female entrepreneurs. "It's important to get plugged into an organization or network of like-minded individuals who can support you when needed."

9. Skip work when you're not productive.

Hanson said we've been led to believe that we must be productive during traditional business hours. We sometimes feel guilty when we aren't chained to our desks, she said.

"If you aren't focused and don't feel productive, don't force it. Take some time, go for a walk, get some space, and then go back to the drawing board. But don't force it -- your work will suffer from this," Hanson said.

10. Reward yourself.

Michael Bremmer, president and CEO of TelecomQuotes.com, recommends paying yourself the money that you'd normally budget for commuting expenses.

"Use it to pay off bills or, better yet, put it toward your house payment. This small amount will add up quickly over time," Bremmer said.

Photos via Thinkstock

John Egan is editor in chief at SpareFoot, an Austin, Texas-based startup that operates the country's largest online marketplace for self-storage units.

Follow John Egan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnJEgan

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-egan/10-tips-for-telecommuting_b_5433833.html?utm_content=buffera3131&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The 50 Most Surprising Work-From-Home Jobs Of 2014

FlexJobs, a resource for finding flexible, part-time and remote work, offers listings in 50 categories to members who pay a monthly fee.

Postings come from household-name companies such as Apple -0.09%,American Express +0.07% and Aetna +0.61%, government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, non-profits like the American Heart Association and Teach for America, as well as firms that might offer unusual perks, like the Chicago Cubs and New Holland Brewing.

The team there sifted through the openings it featured in 2014 to find the 50 most surprising work-from-home jobs posted this year. The jobs in the list are all real jobs that are currently or were previously posted in 2014 and that all offered a full or partial telecommuting component.

Some, like fish biologist, surprised the team because it didn’t seem obvious the job could be done from home, and others because they can be done from home and are also interesting in their own right.

“Many people underestimate the types of legitimate work-from-home jobs available in today’s employment market, but the variety of opportunities represented in this list reveals how rapidly telecommuting jobs are growing and diversifying,” said Sara Sutton Fell, founder and CEO. “Opportunities for interesting work-from-home jobs will continue to increase as more companies recognize and capitalize on the win-win benefits that telecommuting arrangements offer for both businesses and workers.”

Other than the obvious perks of working from home, studies show that the average telecommuter saves between $2,000 and $7,000 a year. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/12/30/the-50-most-surprising-work-from-home-jobs-of-2014/

MBAs Predict The Future

Alexandra Rees is one of the new management breed. She works in London for Quirk, a digital marketing firm where she advises clients including SABMiller – but much of that is done from a distance. Telecommuting has surged by nearly 80% since 2005, according to data compiled by the US Census Bureau.

Disruptive innovation is changing the way people communicate. Smartphones and the web have opened up new channels of communication. The globalized nature of business means managers are under increasing pressure to lead teams in multiple locations.

Remote working was once a distant dream but Alexandra illustrates the way businesses are adapting new technology to connect workforces. She says virtual team meetings are common but working remotely allows her to focus on client solutions.

When she graduates from business school in a few years’ time this will be a bigger focus on MBA curricula. Academics are increasingly interested in preparing the world’s future business leaders for a career in which technology will play a starring role.

Apple, Google and Facebook are already the rockstars of the business world but remote working is beaming its way into many more industries. Barclays, for instance, introduced high-definition video conferencing across the group that has saved approximately £50 million in travel costs this year.

Technology is seen by both workers and HR professionals as the biggest factor that will transform the workplace. A BusinessBecause survey of MBAs found that 73% of respondents believe the majority of the working week will be based remotely by 2050.

PwC forecasts that just 14% of the UK workforce wants to work in a traditional office environment.  A survey of 500 HR workers found 58% are already preparing for this shift.

“Technology will continue to transform how we will work over the next decade,” says Michael Rendell, global HR consulting leader at PwC. “Managers need to develop a clear culture where technology works for everyone,” he says.

Marc Wells, principal learning technologist at Imperial College Business School, says that remote working has a number of advantages: it increases productivity by allowing workers to more easily concentrate, for example.

“Many also find that it can help reduce stress,” he says, by cutting out the dreaded daily commute.

It can also open up more employment opportunities for graduates. Remote working provides businesses with a new way to capture talent, according to Dr Chris Dalton, personal development leader at Henley Business School. “Flexible working is here to stay in developed economies,” he says.

Virgin Media Business forecasts that 60% of office based employees will regularly work from home by 2022.

The explosion of online learning at business schools is the first step in preparing the world’s future managers to work remotely, according to Raffaello Balocco, director of the full-time MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano.

Tech is disrupting the business education market. Like many schools, MIP has opened up online and flexible learning courses that mirror what many students believe will be the office of the future.

“Learning from the comfort of the home has proved an attractive proposition,” says Raffaello. “In this way it is possible to ‘learn’ how to work remotely, exploiting all the features of a digital platform,” he says.

Business schools are also increasingly using technology to develop interviewing skills and for conducting employers’ interviews.

At Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, for instance, 27% of remote advising has been conducted through online and voice communications channels and 23% of employer interviews have taken place on webinars.

Yet many business schools say they cannot replicate work – or education – through an online platform. There are still many obstacles to this trend being more widely adopted – accreditation, value and the tech.

“The challenges of working remotely are of course significant and technology alone is not enough,” says Milton Sousa, director of MBA programs at Rotterdam School of Management.

These include limitations in developing relationships and non-verbal communication forms. “Business schools are rarely the source of novel organisational design, because theory often lags behind practice,” says Chris at Henley.

However, the benefits to organizations are clear. Michael O'Leary, professor of innovation at Georgetown, says flexible working allows firms to reduce their footprints in high priced real estate markets.

This flies against the current commercial property boom in many cities. According to data compiled by Deloitte, the amount of office space being constructed in London, for example, is at a 10-year high. “It [remote working] can cut down on commuting time and all sorts of costs associated with office life,” Chris says.

However, many companies are still reluctant to trust their employees to work from a distance. Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer last year infamously banned her employees from remote working, which was widely reported in the media.

Yet research by Stanford University found that remote workers are 13% more productive and take fewer sick days than commuters.

But some workers are weary of the android invasion. The BusinessBecause survey of MBA graduates found that roughly 40% of respondents believe that both accounting and financial trading will be carried out by machines by 2050.

“Virtual work will be far more effective when teams show greater levels of trust, openness and cohesiveness,” says Milton at Rotterdam.

If MBAs can predict the future, one in which blended forms of work see employees rotate from office and home looks increasingly likely.

For Alexandra, it makes sense to operate on a partly remote basis. She works with global brands including Unilever and Warner Brothers to develop their digital communications strategies. “But rewards are based on the success of my team and we connect daily – virtually or in person,” she says.

http://www.businessbecause.com/news/mbas-predict-the-future/2992/mbas-predict-the-future-disruptive-tech-opens-world-of-remote-working

Buffalo blizzard no problem for ‘telecommuter nation’

Online collaboration between Tel Aviv and western NY didn’t skip a beat despite gigantic piles of the white stuff

BY DAVID SHAMAH November 23, 2014, 5:30 pm

Israeli companies that have opened offices in western New York are used to inclement weather – but last week’s snow fest was more than they, or anyone else in the region, banked on for mid-November. Nevertheless, at least one Israeli firm with offices in hard-hit Buffalo soldiered on – thanks to the miracle of telecommuting.

According to Buffalo resident Alan D. Percy, senior director of marketing at AudioCodes, co-workers in Israel were very impressed with the huge amount of snow on the ground – as much as 7.5 feet (2.5 meters), cheering on their Buffalo colleagues while they continued to collaborate on projects.

For snow lovers, Buffalo, New York, on the shore of Lake Erie, is perfectly situated but for everyone else, the city’s location makes for much winter misery. Although far from the Arctic zone, Buffalo is very snow-prone, getting more of the white stuff than any other US city, except for Juneau, Alaska, and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It’s because of the “lake effect” – – where cold air moving rapidly into the region hits the warm air over the surface of the lake. The air rises, cools and condenses, forming clouds that precipitate snow.

The colder the air, the greater the lake effect. An arctic high weather system that swooped into town last week dumped two-thirds of the city’s annual average of 92 inches in four days, long before the official beginning of winter.

“For four days, most everyone sat tight, watched the snow pile up outside their windows, nervously watching the weather reports hoping for the lake-effect machine to move on and bless some other neighborhood with their fair-share of the white stuff,” wrote Percy in a blog post. “Business and commerce came to a complete stop for four days. That is unless you were a member of the growing full-time telecommuter nation,” as he and his wife, both employees of AudioCodes, are. The facility has a number of Israelis from the home office on staff as well.

Fortunately, he wrote, “unlike many other natural disasters, utilities are rarely affected by snow – electricity, water, heat and most importantly, Internet access continues uninterrupted while the snow piles up around.” Using the various unified communications systems that keeps the frigid Buffalo office in touch with the staff at AudioCodes headquarters in Tel Aviv — Internet, telephony and video connections, instant messaging, email, etc. — “normal business continued for us” from home.

There was just one hitch, Percy wrote. “By the third day, everyone had heard about Buffalo’s ongoing snowstorm and wanted to ‘see what it was like.’” Pointing a video camera out the window, Percy showed off his town’s lake effect bounty, and “Co-workers in Israel gave the best reactions with a resounding “WOW.’” Friends and partners in Texas, meanwhile, “gave the second most popular exclamation ‘why do you live there?!?!’”

With the weather set to turn warmer in Buffalo this week, concerns have moved on from being snowed in to being flooded, as the huge piles of snow begin to melt. However, according to the forecasts, the warm weather will last just a couple of days and won’t be warm enough to melt the bulk of the nearly 80 inches some neighborhoods got.

Telecommuting is great, wrote Percy “but now that the week is over and life is beginning to return to normal, I did realize that telecommuting has taken something from us though…the much cherished ‘snow day.’” Not to worry, though – with winter still on the way, Percy and his fellow Buffalonians can expect much more snow – and he plans on keeping his snow shovel handy.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/buffalo-blizzard-no-problem-for-telecommuter-nation/

4 Tips to Make Sure Team Members Working From Home Aren't Overlooked

Contributor

Vice president of Marketing and Communications at Michael C. Fina

December 17, 2014

You might have an open door policy at work, but what does that mean for employees who never set foot in the office? Over the last decade, telecommuting has grown from a fringe benefit to an essential business tool. In fact, data from GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com shows a near 80 percent increase in remote working between 2005-2012. In the U.S. alone, there are around 3.3 million employees who work multiple days per week away from the office.

As working remotely gains popularity, managers are pressed to find more ways of involving “virtual” employees in the company culture. Formal recognition and continual feedback via phone and email are key elements, but managers are rarely trained on how to properly work with remote employees, making it a struggle for some organizations. It’s easy to lose the human touch when communicating across long distances, but here are some simple steps to keep relationships alive with a remote workforce:

1. Make face time.

 A recent study from Blue Jeans Network reported that while 91 percent of respondents do not see the people they work with on a regular basis, workers overwhelmingly prefer face-to-face interactions with their managers and during meetings, even if that interaction is carried out remotely. Make some face time for your remote workers through the magic of videoconferencing tools like Skype or Hangouts. Schedule one-on-one time that they know is just for them where you can check-in and call out their accomplishments face-to-face.

Related: 3 Web Tools for Managing Employees Who Work From Home

2. Send an e-card.

It might seem old-fashioned, but people still like getting cards in the mail, and the right ecard can be a nice surprise in a remote worker’s inbox. You don’t have to send them a strictly corporate message – ecard technology is far advanced these days, with sites like jibjab.com allowing you to send media-rich cards with personalization elements.

3. Nominate remote workers for awards.

Nominating colleagues for awards who work remotely builds their confidence and ensures them that they are crucial and a valued part of the team. Be sure you are nominating them as regularly as co-located employees, or even create a special award initiative for remote workers.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240962

Should You Hire Remote Workers?

Once upon a time, a very influential person wrote a memo to everyone in her very large company:  No more working from home. Get in the office.

It wasn’t that rude, or that short, but it was that clear:  No remote workers.

Today, however, remote workers are an undeniable reality of the modern knowledge workforce. Also known by the anachronistic term “telecommuting,” more and more workers are doing it. The remote work sector has grown by 79%over the past ten years, and it’s still on the rise. Millions of workers are now 100% remote, completely sidestepping the traditional commute, the claustrophobic cubicle, and the “cake in the breakroom” phenomenon.

Some companies refuse to allow remote working. While, on the other end of the spectrum, some companies live by it.

At some point, you’re going to have to decide for yourself. Are you willing to hire remote workers or not?

It’s important to look at the data that already exists on remote work. In a study reported in Harvard Business Review, researchers made a compelling case for remote workers.

The study was performed at a call center, and lasted nine months. Originally, the employers were eager to try it out, thinking that they might save a few bucks on furniture.

As it turned out, the results were a whole lot more rewarding than saving money on office chairs. First, remote workers were more productive, gaining the equivalent of an additional day of work per week over office workers.

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5 Top Secrets to Finding a Professional Work-From-Home Job

Despite the plethora of work-from-home job scams, and the negative historical stigmas associated with working from home not being a “real job”, the truth is that there are a growing number of highly professional work-from-home jobs with fantastic companies.

In fact, for 50 percent of you, your job is already compatible with at-home work. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. With all of the workforce and mobile technology available nowadays, telecommuting has been growing fast because working remotely is a natural evolution of the modern workplace.

Having said that, there are some tricks and secrets to knowing how to actually find the good, professional work-from-home jobs amid the sea of scams and “too good to be true” offers. My company, FlexJobs, has helped almost 1 million job seekers in their search for legitimate, professional-level flexible positions, including work-from-home jobs. We have a team of job researchers who scour the internet for legitimate flexible jobs, and they estimate that for every one real work-from-home job they find, there are 60-70 scam jobs to sift through.

Based on our team’s experience, here are the top secrets to finding a professional work-from-home job without losing your hope (or your sanity!):

1. Use the right keywords in your search. Everyone recognizes what a “work-from-home job” is--it’s a job you can do from home! Unfortunately, it’s also the most common keyphrase used by scammers. In fact, it’s such a problem, the FBI designated it as a top scam phrase back in 2011. Avoid the phrases “work-from-home” and “work-at-home” when searching for this kind of position. Instead, use phrases like “remote job,” “telecommuting job,” and “telecommute job” to find more legitimate listings.

2. Know how recruiters refer to their virtual teams. Companies with robust telecommuting or remote work programs use different kinds of language to describe their teams and their open jobs.

• “Distributed teams” or “distributed workforces” are often talked about as those whose employees work from home in a variety of locations.
• Jobs that are “geographically neutral,” “open nationwide,” “at-home” or “location agnostic” also have no particular location requirement and will allow you to work from home.
• “ROWE” is a results-only work environment, where location and hours take a backseat to productivity and results.

3. Search for companies, as well as jobs. More employers are openly stating that they support working from home on their websites, so be sure to do company research. Early in 2014, we released a list of the Top 100 Companies for Remote Jobs, and we also created a list of 26 completely virtual companies that operate mostly or entirely from home-based offices.

In addition to those, research companies that hire for telecommuting and other flexible jobs in your area or industry to check out what their flexible work policies are. Companies often have information about their flexible work options on their websites, even if they don’t mention them in their job postings.

4. Steer clear of job scams. As job seekers get more savvy about job scams, thescammers get more sophisticated. Over the last couple years, we’ve seen scams where fake URLs and websites are copied directly from legitimate company websites to fool job seekers into thinking they’re looking at a legitimate at-home job.

Other red flags of job scams include job postings with limited details about the company or job; generic contact info (a gmail email address instead of a company email); requiring an investment or payment in order to get the job; being asked to transfer money through Western Union or move money from one bank account to another; and any job listing that focuses only on how much money you’ll make working from home, but says very little about the actual job you’d be doing.

5. Know the most common work-from-home jobs. While there is opportunity for remote work in almost every career you can think of (we’ve seen listings for remote neurosurgeons and golf instructors!) and many great high-paying work-from-home jobs, there is an abundance of opportunities in the following career categories: medical, customer service, administrative, sales, marketing, web development, education, accounting, and data entry.

Some of the common work-from-home job titles arewriter, consultant, customer service representative, software/web developer, sales representative, account manager, case manager, adjunct faculty, travel counselor, graphic designer, bilingual interpreter, marketing manager, medical coder, and project manager.

Bottom line: professional work-from-home jobs exist if you know how, and where, to look.

There are great telecommuting jobs available at all career levels, entry-level to executive, in all career categories, ranging from part-time to full-time. So if you want to work from home, keep hope -- remote jobs are out there, and more are becoming available every day.

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Sara Sutton Fell is the CEO and Founder of FlexJobs, an award-winning, innovative career website for telecommuting, flexible, freelance, and part-time jobs, and Founder of the 1 Million for Work Flexibility initiative. She was named as a Young Global Leader (class of 2014) by the World Economic Forum for her work in technology and the employment fields.

HOW TO SCORE A PROMOTION EVEN WHEN YOU WORK FROM HOME

ARE YOU LOOKING TO MOVE UP, BUT YOU'RE OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND? IF YOU'RE WORKING REMOTELY, THEN USE THESE TIPS TO STAY IN THE RUNNING.

BY LAURA VANDERKAM

Telecommuting is increasingly popular, but it has a downside. One November 2014 study of travel agency employees who worked from home, found they were less likely to be promoted. Visibility matters.

A study from a few years ago found managers are more likely to use words such as "dependable" and "responsible" to describe employees who put in the expected face time. Those who come in early or stay late are described as "committed" and "dedicated."

If you’re aiming for a promotion, then those are words you want on your annual reviews. If you do work from home, how can you get your boss to think them? Here’s some advice from people who weren’t out of sight and out of mind.

KEEP IT SERIOUS

It goes without saying that if you want to advance, you then need to deliver an over-the-top performance. "You really have to make yourself valuable to the company," says Vickie Bertini, who works remotely as a web developer for Roosevelt University. "I have to prove my worthiness not only by my response time—like how long it takes to finish a project, or respond to an email inquiry, or be available when the phone rings—but also by the quality of work produced."

That involves every bit as much discipline as it would at the office, she explains. "I don't work in my pajamas or all of the other clichés," Bertini says. "Although I may run a load of laundry on my lunch hour, I don't generally do home-related things during work hours. My office is my dedicated office where the kids are not allowed." This is the case even when she’s not working, she adds.

MASTER COMMUNICATION TOOLS—AND HOW THEY CAN GO WRONG

Christina Turner works in software and technology, and has been promoted several times while working from home. She relies heavily on all the usual communications tools, such as Google Hangouts. But if you’re relying on these tools, you also need a plan for when they’re not functional.

MY OFFICE IS MY DEDICATED OFFICE WHERE THE KIDS ARE NOT ALLOWED.

"It’s my equivalent of an office worker making sure their car is reliable enough to get them to the office on time," she says. "I go to my friend’s house nearby if my Internet goes out, and I have a backup PC that I go to if my everyday laptop has issues."

She says she’s also careful to stay away from her cell phone as the main tool for phone calls. "It can sound like you’re on a cell, which doesn’t sound great on a conference call. I want it to be as easy for someone to communicate with me as if I were standing next to them."

REDISCOVER THE PHONE

Speaking of the phone—do you use it? Email is nice, but sometimes when colleagues can hear your voice, they think of you as present. Bertini says she stays visible "by responding to emails with a phone call," which she describes as "a lost art."

The upside, she adds: "I can have that human interaction, and not become one of the forgotten."

TAKE ON STRETCH ASSIGNMENTS

"I've found it extremely beneficial to keep an open mind when opportunities come up," says Turner. For example, when her company's sales department started to slip a bit with loss of employees and lack of direction, she offered to help with the sales aspect of the business, even though she admitted sales was not her thing.

Her company took her up on the offer. "I think this kept me on my bosses’ radar for other opportunities," she adds. "That led them to bring more opportunities to me, even when I wasn't right there in front of them every day."

SHOW UP . . . SOMETIMES

Remote work doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Given how humans react to seeing someone in person, it probably shouldn’t be. If you live less than 90 minutes away, you could come into the office once a week. If you live farther away, then consider coming in for a few days once a month. Aim for crunch time so you come across as helpful.

RESPONDING TO EMAILS WITH A PHONE CALL IS A LOST ART.

As a bonus, if you’re traveling and away from your family, you’ll be free to come in early, stay late, and go out to dinner with colleagues. Since these are activities that inspire the "committed" and "dedicated" words on reviews, that’s a big win.

WORK FOR THE RIGHT COMPANY—OR MANAGER

Not everyone is obsessed with face time. Blaine Kideckel is a manager at a large telecom, and has promoted many work-from-home-types. He notes the big upsides to this arrangement. These team members "end up working longer hours since they have no commute time, and provide more flexibility to the business," says Kideckel.

If you’d like to get promoted while telecommuting, then you’re best off working for a manager with that view.

PLAY HARDBALL

Here’s something that can help a manager get over the visibility issue: the prospect of having to replace you. Joshua Wold is a web designer who works from home two days a week, and three days at the office. A month ago, he got an offer from another company.

"I told my boss about it, and got an 18% raise," he says. Especially if a competitor is offering you a better job title, you can use such an offer to negotiate a promotion at your own company—whether you work at headquarters or not.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3039908/how-to-score-a-promotion-even-when-you-work-from-home