How to Create an Effective Telecommuting Program

Call center employees were randomly assigned to work from home or in the office for nine months. Working from home led to a 13 percent performance increase, 9 percent of which was attributed to working more minutes per shift, thanks to fewer breaks and sick days, and 4 percent to making more calls per 

minute, thanks to a quieter environment in which things like getting lunch or using the bathroom were more convenient than at the workplace. Attrition also fell sharply among the home-based workers, dropping by 50 percent compared with the control group. 

“The overall impact of working from home was striking,” the researchers wrote. “The firm improved total factor productivity by 20 percent to 30 percent and saved about $2,000 per year per employee working at home. About two-thirds of this … came from the reduction in office space and the rest from improved employee performance and reduced turnover.” 

Creating a Program that Works

One key to successful telecommuting arrangements is providing proper training and tools. “There are particular things [remote workers] have to get used to doing—how they access the computer network, what systems will be open for them, what security standards are in place to gain that access,” says Matt Brosseau, chief technology officer and head recruiter at Instant Alliance, a Chicago-based HR staffing and consulting firm. 

“If you send a bunch of employees out into the wild blue yonder without training, you run the risk of having a lot of tech issues crop up," Brousseau says. "But if you do that upfront training, you’ll find the [problems] are relatively minimal.”

Results from the January 2014 National Workplace Flexibility Study show that 98 percent of managers who received this type of training concluded that telecommuting did not have a negative impact on business. 

“The biggest asset to telecommuting success is giving people access to information,” says Eisenhauer of Axero Solutions, whose 24 employees reside in various states and all work remotely. “You need collaboration software, ways for people to communicate outside of e-mail, ways to give workers access to people in the company who have the information that can help them do their jobs.” Key to Axero’s success is the company’s intranet, which connects colleagues in real time so that everyone can see and discuss how projects are coming along. 

It takes effort on a manager’s part to create reliable metrics to measure the performance of employees working from home and to keep teleworkers connected to the organization and their colleagues.

“You have to have regular times for discussion and brainstorming, and you have to make sure people are in the loop,” Galinsky says, adding that FWI gives teleworkers an allowance so they can travel to headquarters as needed. “You have to arrange time for being together, because sometimes there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction.”

It can be particularly difficult to set metrics for jobs that require abstract thinking or creativity. “You don’t come up with a drug to cure cancer right away, so, with jobs like that, you have to expect a certain amount of failure,” Galinsky says. “There are other ways to quantify that kind of work. Is the person producing peer-reviewed articles? What are colleagues saying about them? Are they seen as a team player? Are their ideas worth testing?” 

After iHire LLC, a Frederick, Md.-based company that matches employers with workers, gave its employees the technology needed to work from home along with unlimited paid time off (PTO), sales dropped. Lisa Shuster, who was hired to build the company’s telecommuting program, discovered that several workers were taking far more PTO than expected and that managers hadn’t put solid sales quotas in place. Once quotas were created, PTO requests dropped and sales increased dramatically. 

“This year, we had our highest increase in sales revenues in the history of our organization,” she says. “The lesson was that there need to be strong managers in place. Taking unlimited PTO does not supersede an employee meeting their objectives.”

Managers also need to think through when they expect telecommuters to be available and how they will cultivate relationships with remote workers. 

“If you’re used to managing people in an office and then introduce telecommuting but have never managed telecommuters before, there’s a learning curve,” Himelstein says. “Are you expecting them to be available from 9 to 5, or do you expect to give them tasks and they take care of it whenever they want?”

Max Yoder, CEO and founder of Lesson.ly, which helps companies maintain records of employee training and education, says it helps to “try to mimic human personal interactions with your remote workers to the extent possible.

“This may mean sending a simple e-mail to an employee asking how his family is doing or remembering to send a card on a remote worker’s birthday,” he explains. “These little gestures make a big difference when it comes to a remote employee’s perceived relationship with a company.” 

Even with the best program in place, telecommuting is not for everyone. “We’ve all had an employee we had to watch, to make sure they’re on task,” Brosseau says. “That type of person is probably not the best for a work-from-home policy. But it works for someone who you never have to check on, someone you can give a task … and before the day is over, it’s done.” 

After iHire rolled out its telecommuting program, seven workers were fired because they couldn’t keep flexible hours and also meet expectations, Shuster says.

“Some employees couldn’t hack it in terms of being measured by results,” she says. “We took that as an opportunity to say, ‘We’re increasing our expectations here; we need to make sure we’re all working at a high level.’ We put stretch goals in place for people.” 

At FWI, Ramsey’s workday includes creating a checklist for every task and every goal, so she can keep track of her production levels and her accomplishments, hour by hour, day by day. 

“If someone were to say to me, ‘This [telecommuting arrangement] isn’t working, and we’re not getting enough done,’ it would be very easy for me to argue otherwise,” she says. “Everything is documented, and there’s just no doubt that my production is super-high, and possibly higher” than if she worked in the office. 

Attracting Talent

Telecommuting can be the carrot a company needs to land the best candidate. Often, it can make up for what a company can’t pay in salary. 

“What we get is the best employees we could possibly have,” Galinsky says. “I wouldn’t have lost them for anything in the world.” 

Brosseau works with a colleague in Guatemala to make clients’ websites more user-friendly. “All our interactions are remote,” Brosseau says. “He has a rare skill set, and I had to find someone good. Let’s say you’re looking for a ‘big data’ professional—someone who’s been doing this since the onset of big data. You’re talking about an incredibly small group of professionals. If your company is in Hudson, Ohio, one of them probably doesn’t live near you.”  

Dana Wilkie, an online editor/manager for Alexandria, Va.-based SHRM, telecommutes from Pennsylvania.

Sidebar: Working It Out

• Ensuring that working from home is successful for both an employer and its employees takes planning and constant attention. Tips from experts include the following:
  
• Provide suitable training and technology, including collaboration methods.
  
• Create appropriate performance metrics.
  
• Establish regular times for discussion and brainstorming.
  
• Communicate regularly; keep telecommuters in the loop.
  
• Schedule regular visits to the worksite.
  
• Simulate informal, face-to-face interactions, such as wishing someone happy birthday.
  
• Set expectations on workers’ schedules and availability.
  
• Select for telecommuting arrangements workers who are disciplined self-starters.