Working From Home - An Excuse To Manage

Recently a lot of attention has been seen in the media about home workers, and companies making the decision to allow workers to work at home or virtual field offices because of high gas prices. Gas prices will rise and fall, and before too long cars may be running on an efficient and cheap renewable energy source making long commutes to and from work a non-issue. But something is definitely changing and once it starts, there is no going back. That change is the work from home revolution.

Technology has made working from home not only a possibility but an efficient means giving companies a competitive advantage over their rivals that refuse to accept the perceived idea of loosing control. If eliminating the need for large buildings, parking space, increased insurance premiums, day care, etc. . . Is not enough for a company to consider allowing workers to work from home , consider the fact that wages and salaries will most likely have to exceed those offered by companies that allow employees to work from home.

Many large companies are already reaping the savings benefits of having their employees work from home offices at least part of the time. But can it really help, small to mid-sized companies with say 4 -200 employees at a given location? I say that not only will it benefit small - mid sized companies, if implemented correctly, will revolutionize their business and the way they manage it.

Business owners and managers often shudder to think of employees working from "virtual offices". The concern often is whether their employees will actually work while on the clock. Another big concern is whether the employees will be available when needed. Hiding behind these concerns are larger issues (there almost always are). Before you can effectively manage (the keyword is effectively) there are few prerequisites with almost any business. The first of these prerequisites is knowing what is expected of employees, what output does your business seek to gain by hiring these employees. The second prerequisite is how to effectively measure these outputs. The third is how to use these measurements to facilitate good business decisions. These concepts are not by any means speculation, or new, inversely these concepts are underlying patterns visible in virtually every management theory be it Six-Sigma, lean manufacturing, agile, management by objectives, and many more.

This background leads me to the point of this article, which is allowing employees to work from virtual offices should be approached from a much broader angle. The vision should be, making the business and its processes efficient enough that it allows for employees to work from virtual offices. Put away the concerns for a minute and consider the benefits, which include tremendous cost savings, increased incentive to employees that wish to work from home, filtering out employees that are slackers (firing the ones who don’t work and building a team that does), often reductions in insurance premiums, office infrastructure, etc . . . Based on those factors the decision is simple, now when we consider the down sides, the decision becomes more complex. This is where the focus should begin, and these issues should be addressed as efficiency barriers that must be overcome.

Unfortunately there is no easy button when it comes to reaping rewards from a home worker policy. Making the business efficient enough where employees can be measured by the merit of their work instead of the amount of time per day they can sit in a chair, is no easy feat. It is never as easy as a training class, or purchasing some shrink wrapped workflow or CRM (customer relationship management) software, no project manager with an impressive resume is going to come in and work magic overnight. Your business had to evolve (and hopefully continues to do so), and so shall your processes leading it to a place where there are good data, good decisions, good employees, and ultimately good profits.

Efficiency is built from trial and error, the ability to change, recognizing when to "cut and run". You are not managing employees, you are managing the processes and resources used by the business to generate profits. If you do not know how to measure your performance, you may be deferring failure. This seems like simple advice but over and over again I see companies that are sitting on a tremendous reduction in operating costs they refuse to pull out from where the sun doesn’t shine, in order to hold on to archaic ideas. They measure performance by flawed indicators like timesheets, promote the wrong people for the wrong reason, bring down morale by implementing rules sought to control only their worst employees, over hiring, under hiring, hiring the wrong people and putting them in the wrong place. When you get to the point where you can effectively and accurately use your data to make strategic decisions, and analyze your strengths and weaknesses, you have come to a point where the 20,000 SQFT office stacked with copy machines, cubicles, break rooms, etc . . becomes nothing more than fat that needs to be trimmed.

Designing a business that dominates competition is going to take much more than the traditional means many are used to. We are now in warp speed when it comes to change, local competitors, global competitors, competitors online, are all positioning themselves to take profits from you. Getting over the urge to "control" can be difficult. Hopefully you will realize this before your competition does, and offers their service at a cost 80 percent below yours because they don’t outlay 40K a month in some people warehouse located in an office park, guzzling electricity at an ever increasing cost keeping 20,000 SQFT a constant 72 degrees (you get the point) . Oh and I almost forgot to mention, hiring your best employees because they let them work from home.