Technological advancements have paved the way for workforces to become less centralised and many businesses now offer employees the ability to work from home, either full time, on occasion, or as the needs arise.
Flexible working has many advantages for a business including:
- Talent acquisition
- Increased employee morale & engagement
- Reduced absenteeism
- Reduced turnover of valued staff
As a result of the benefits to business, organizations of all sizes are embracing flexible working and are allowing more and more employees to work from home. Some organizations are even ditching office HQ’s (and expensive leases) altogether and are developing an online ecosystem of employees all working from their own geographically spread homes.
Home workers lack regular face-to-face interaction with colleagues and clients. As a result, their dependence on technology to keep the channels of communication clear is at an all-time high. This dependence carries certain risks, conversations and information is shared over broadband lines instead of meeting tables. In this article we’ll touch upon three potential risks employees should address and introduce steps in mitigating them.
A dedicated line:
Employees that work from home need to be readily reachable by email, phone and other platforms. To ensure that work and life communications don’t overlap and potentially disrupt one another, remote workers should either have a dedicated work phone installed at their home, or have a company mobile phone.
Not only does this make billing and expense reimbursement more transparent, but it means that there is a continuity plan in place should one line or number ever be out of service.
Security concerns:
There are important security issues to consider when managing employees who are working from home. For example, data security could be compromised if employees working from home use their work computer for personal use.
Businesses with employees working from home should provide staff with a computer, preferably a laptop, to allow for continuity of work if the need arises for the employee to ever work away from their home.
It is important to set an expectation from the start that this device is for business use only and anti-virus and firewall software should be installed (and passwords used) to control entry to company networks. Employers should also ensure that home workers have read and understood IT policies and know their information security obligations.
Technology & Trust:
With some or all team members working from home, project management and progress need to be managed carefully.
Working in a decentralized way means that employees need to keep even closer tabs on the development of projects because they’ve lost the ability to simply look over their shoulder and ask their team mate.
Trust is a critical component when allowing employees to work from home. Team members should set up regular and mutually suitable times for reviews and client discussions.
Luckily, the tools to track time and progress are plentiful. Applications and software solutions like Trello, Slack and Basecamp allow for visibility on projects across locations. Which one a business chooses to adopt will depend on project specifications, current working practices and how they might integrate into an online project management domain.
Working from home or elsewhere remotely seems to be the wave of the future, so now is the time to get prepared if you’re not already. A recent survey at the Global Leadership Summit in London found that 34% of decision makers said more than half their company’s full-time workforce would be working remotely by 2020.
Dell
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Tags: Business, Workforce Transformation