The Ultimate Guide To Setting-Up A Remote Workforce

The pros and cons of the growing 'remote' workers trend.

What are the main motivators for businesses considering a remote workforce?

• Attracting workers in a tight labour market and expanding the recruitment pool to incorporate highly qualified workers, who are disabled or physically challenged and unable to commute daily into the business site, including homebound caregivers and people who live in remote areas.
  
  
• Reducing real estate costs, as there are no overheads in floor space, and there are savings in maintaining workstations, furniture, lunchrooms, conference spaces, and other amenities.
  
  
• Improving people performance and increasing staff satisfaction, as remote workers encounter fewer interruptions, save on transport costs and time (which brings environmental benefits by lowering emissions), and work in a more comfortable environment.
  
  This in turn can help lower attrition rates, particularly due to the fact that trained employees can be retained even if they move to another city or area of the country, avoiding recruiting, hiring and training costs for new staff, and retaining valuable skills and knowledge.
  
  
• Greater flexibility in staff scheduling. For businesses with extended working hours, remote workers can cover split shifts, night and weekend hours, while allowing the peaks and valleys of business throughout the day to be managed by traditional staff. It also equips businesses with a pool of remote workers who can assist during a possible emergency which has temporarily disabled the business.
  
  

What are the disadvantages?

• Ensuring the right technology is available and reliable. Equipping staff to work at home requires broadband connection to enable the delivery of information, as well as a PC and/or laptop.
  
  
• Privacy and security concerns relate to delivering private or confidential information to an employee's home where friends and family members may have access to it. This is a stumbling block for industries such as banking, finance and superannuation which are heavily regulated in relation to customer information captured. Companies can't control who's looking at the screen and what happens to the data (i.e. details being written down).
  
  That's why remote work is generally more suited to businesses which don't rely on capturing or displaying customer-sensitive information.
  
  
• Isolation from team members, with remote staff not kept "in the loop" of office communications and new procedures. Many companies address this gap by having the employee come into the office at least one day a week to work.
  
  
• Not suitable to everyone, as home-based work requires the staff member to be self-disciplined and self-motivated to work without supervision. Although the current technology allows productivity levels to be monitored, companies need to rely on an employee's own work ethic. 
  
  Remote work particularly suits an out-bound commission-based sales role rather than in-bound, because this is a self-motivating role, irrespective of where the person is working.
  
  Regardless of the role, it's important to define the selection criteria when recruiting remote staff, to devise a process which monitors and coaches these staff members, and ensures they are aware of and contribute to the businesses' objectives.
  
  
• No traditional working day. People working remotely tend to have other responsibilities, not just company responsibilities, so working hours are generally more flexible. The working day may not be the standard 9-5 office day which, from a company perspective, can be a negative as working hours are broken up.
  
  
• Challenges in maintaining a company's culture. This is dependent on the profile of the company brand (both the consumer and the employer brand). In other words, is the brand big enough to sustain the company's culture in, or out, of the traditional work environment? It becomes a management issue to ensure the culture and brand are maintained for people working remotely by including them in team communication.
  
  

What is the starting point for businesses considering this option and wanting to prepare a business plan?

• Evaluate your current situation and consider what problems or issues might be addressed by a remote workforce, i.e. scheduling inflexibility, rising real estate costs, and falling job satisfaction or low retention rates.
  
  
• Assess all the different ways to set up remote agents. Your business case should also include independent contractors, staff from outsourcing companies, or sending your own employees home to work.
  
  
• Establish performance metrics. Establishing performance metrics up-front will serve as proof of the success of a solution. Sample metrics will likely include measures of customer satisfaction, quality scores, productivity scores, and employee satisfaction and retention.  A financial analysis is also an essential part of the business case evaluation, to quantify the cost of setting-up the solution, compared to the potential savings or other benefits anticipated as you calculate a potential return on investment.
  
  
• Devise an implementation plan. This plan should identify the key people to be involved, including potential remote workers, others in the business who will be impacted by the solution, and support you'll need from other departments. Think through the entire process and it will serve you well if or when you proceed.
  
  

What are the main steps towards implementing remote work?

• Select the right candidates through an advanced screening process. One of the most important decisions you will make is the choice of the staff that will work from home. People that work well on their own have three important characteristics:
  
  
  1. First, they should actually be introverted and not need much social interaction.
     
     
  2. Second, they should be conscientious, self-disciplined, self-starting and self-managing.
     
     
  3. They should be ethical and treat company information as they would their own.
     
     

  And although it may sound contradictory to the established business model, the best candidates should have lower aspirations about rising in the organisation, because working alone may actually remove them from some opportunities and interactions necessary to advance their careers in the short-term.
  
  Once hired, the staff member needs to be included in incentive and recognition programs, as well as regular team meetings, to overcome any isolation issues and maximise the performance of remote staff.
  
  

• Follow occupational health and safety (OH&S) requirements in the home-based environment.  Most companies that use remote staff have an OH&S representative visit the proposed environment and make recommendations on how to improve work health and safety in the home. This is usually followed up in four-week' time to ensure the environment complies with OH&S standards.
  
  
• Establish a home inventory list which, as well as a computer and phone line, may also include power surge protectors and smoke alarms as well as general office supplies and reference materials.
  
  
• Establish the right connection. It is important that the home-based staff member has secure broadband connection and a separate phone line. Typically both are paid for by the company.
  
  
• Decide on the available remote desktop options. There are a many remote desktop solutions for remote agents. Two options include:
  
  
  1. Logging-on through a remote desktop.
     
     
  2. Connecting via Remote Access Services (RAS) to the network, to access the host system or database systems.
     
     
• Establish the technology. In regards to telephony, ensure your telephone is unified and that data platforms enable the connection to remote agents.
  
  
• Management duties. Managers need to conduct a work-flow audit to ensure there are enough staff working at the right time. A greater focus on workforce planning is needed in this area. Managers also need to put in place a process for regular team meetings, effective communications, and performance goals/reviews. Finally, talk to others who have embarked on remote agents and learn from their experience.

Brad Starr, General Manager of management consultancy Vivaz. Vivaz is a leading independent management consultancy specialising in the call and contact centre industry. Our areas of expertise lie in research (knowing the industry), training (sharing the knowledge) and consulting (applying the knowledge). Through our strategic and operational review of contact centres, Vivaz helps centres achieve optimum efficiencies. We have initiated cultural change, re-engineered internal processes, as well as improved quality, productivity, recruitment, performance, staff morale and management reporting. For further information, visit the web site: www.vivaz.com.au
First published: 29 February 2008.
Last updated: 29 February 2008.