Thursday, May 8, 2014

How to Best Manage Telecommuters


Allowing employees to work from home or other remote locations is often touted as a way to keep workers more engaged and retain key employees. With more than 3.3 million working remotely, or about 2.6% of the U.S. employee workforce, it’s clear that the definition of the American workplace is changing.
But that doesn’t mean working remotely is without its problems. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer put the kabosh on work-from-home deals and ordered everyone to return to the office so they could be more collaborative and innovative. Soon after, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman issued a memo urging the employees to work more in the office because “HP needs all hands on deck.”
Dan Ingram, vice president of marketing at Enkata, writes in Wired.com that his company found that those who work in an office do get more done, but telecommuting isn’t going to go away because it does offer many advantages such as savings on office space and a broader candidate pool.
“The problem is that many companies, Yahoo included, manage telecommuters exactly the same as they would manage people in the office. This doesn’t work,” he writes.
So let’s look at the biggest mistakes you make as a manager when it comes to remote workers: (see rest of post here)

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