Is Your Company Prepared To Offer Remote Working?

Remote working isn’t a new concept. Companies have been doing it for years. We used to call it telecommuting. Mostly because that’s all you could do, call in or speak on the phone. Times have changed and companies have changed. The pioneer giant that was IBM has already ended it before most companies are ready to jump on board. However, before you begin to offer remote working to your employees (because everyone else is) you need to determine if your company is prepared.

One of the terms which kept coming up in this article in Bloomberg, The Rise and Fall of Working From Home, was “perk”. Turns out employees took advantage of the company perk. If you’re working with adults you might be tempted to make assumptions as well. While the old saying might be true, making an ass out of your employer might be the least of your worries. In this day in age, no one should be making assumptions. There doesn’t need to be a fall when it comes to offering employees the option of working from home if you do it right from the start.

Here are five things your company needs to consider first:

• Does your company consider remote working a perk? If so, this is the wrong mindset to have and due diligence will never be done. Remote working is not and should never be used as a perk. In the era of free lunches, ping pong tables, weekly happy hours, and transportation compensation remote working somehow became lumped into the mix. Have you ever trimmed down how many times a week you provide lunch? Have you taken away gym discounts because no one was using them? If so, ask your human resources department how it went. Ask your management team about morale. Few employees see remote working as a perk. Rather it is viewed as a right and a lifestyle. Make sure you and the employee are of the same mindset.
• Are you prepared to open up a new office location? Having a remote worker is the equivalent of opening up another office. Think about how much time, research, study, and analysis goes into opening up a new office location. This is exactly what you’re doing when you allow an employee to work from home. Yet, little or no thought is put into how the employee will be set up for success. If you don’t set your employee up for success their failure is also yours to bear.
• Do you have more than a policy and procedure manual ready? Setting expectations are crucial. What are the company’s expectations versus the employee’s perception? If you opened up a new location you would no doubt have answered the question of why it’s justified. You would also answer the questions of how much business you plan to conduct from the office. Sales goals, product goals, customer satisfaction goals would all be set. Letting an employee remote work without setting expectations other than the work will be done remotely will only end in goals not being met. And that is the best case scenario.
• Are you ready to create a wellness plan? Wellness comes in all different forms, shapes, and sizes. Don’t guess you know what your employees need. Both parties must be willing to have an open conversation. Are they worried about isolation or not being able to form relationships in the office? Determine how often they will join the team in person and discuss options of a company paid coworking space. Get creative and determine if a desk at a partner company or supplier would be a good fit. Do they tend to overwork or extend themselves? Create a plan to ensure they are not on a path to burnout. Remote working is preferred for a variety of reasons. Caring for a remote employee the same way you do for in-person employees is crucial.
• Do you know what you are creating in a policy and procedure manual? This is not as simple as going through what you have now and changing a few words here and there. Is the employee in another state? You’ll need to take into consideration whose state laws have precedence, how reporting will be done, time zones to work through, and what can be mandatory. Allowing an employee to work remotely should not be done on a handshake. Don’t work out the details as you go along. Assuming will eventually bring out the worst of both parties and when emotions run high it’s not the opportune time to determine who is right and who is wrong.

Jumping on or off the remote working bandwagon is never a good idea. Nor will it ever place you as the leader in your field. There is no one right way or wrong way to run your company. There are plenty of ways to do it right and certainly a thousand ways you can run a company into the ground. It all begins with asking the right questions and carefully considering what those questions are.