Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The ROI of an Off-Site Employee Structure - Arguments for the Change

When considering a change to an off-site vs. on site employee structure, how do you know if it is right for the company? Or how to you make the argument to executive management that it will be. Some of the argument involves a shift in how we define work. Also to consider, is how it can benefit the overall quality of service and costs to the organization. Following are some new ways to define “work” as well as arguments for the change.

First, companies that are not used to an off-site or virtual employee structure, may need to consider a through process change, in how they view and define work. In the book “Managing the Mobile Workforce”, by David Clemons and Michale Kroth, they discuss some of the old assumptions and new ways to look at how we define work. Some of those old assumptions are included on the left in the below diagram, with a new perspective on the right:


If you challenge these old assumptions, and are able to view them differently, you will find that many work roles could be moved to an off-site/teleworker structure.
We also should consider the benefits of going to a remote worker format when deciding if it is right for the company. Companies with a virtual (off-site) workforce realize a decrease in many costs such as office space, healthcare, travel, and employee retention. Also, employees are happier with an improved work life balance, and are more motivated and productive. It can also improve customer relationships by allowing employees to be closer to client locations, and can help with internal change management such as a change in company office location or work environment, since it will not impact remote employees as much.
 

The federal government has implemented an aggressive Teleworker plan over the past few years. They submit an annual report that you can find on telework.gov, which includes measured results. Some of the benefits they highlighted in their 2012 report include:

• 70% of managers and 80% of employees found that their productivity increased

• They saved over 2 million dollars in electricity costs

• They decreased their resignation rate by over 6%

Unless an employee has a position that requires physical location work, such as construction, or hospital patient care, etc., it is hard to not make the argument for a remote workforce structure. It allows companies to stay competitive, reduce costs, and hire and retain top talent.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Managing Performance - Keeping a Remote Team on the Right Track

How do you keep a remote team on the right track and in-line with the company and team needs? How do you ensure they understand how to perform and know how they are performing?


You can keep your team focused toward reaching the same goals and achieving them, by following a 5 tiered hierarchal structure that moves from vision setting to performance ranking.

1. Vision – Would you rather be inspired to reach toward a clear purpose, or would you rather have someone pushing you from behind telling you to move faster and work harder? Your vision is that bright purpose that you want to be the inspiration for your employees to strive toward. You might use your company vision as a catalyst for your own team, but rather than trying to make it a fancy marketing type statement, just make it a sentence or two on what you are really trying to accomplish as a team.

When asked, most employees could not recite their company’s vision or mission statement. Most companies spend countless dollars and hours coming up with a company vision or mission statement, but do a poor job ensuring that it is a driving force in the company or that the employees even know it. Once you create your team vision it needs to be reinforced whenever possible. Emphasize it in conversations and meetings with employees, to ensure they know the team’s purpose and the meaning is not lost.

2. Expectations – The second step is to let your employees know how they can help reach that vision. A vision can be esoteric and it is easy for employees to self-interpret how to reach it. If you tell your team to “think strategically,” that can mean very different things to different people. Expectations are the ways your team can reach that vision such as: “identify company competitive advantages and create plans to market them.” Make sure you clearly define what the team is expected to do to reach that vision.

3. Goal Setting – Once expectations are set, create specific goals for each employee that can be tracked on a weekly basis, that helps reach these expectations. If the expectation is to “increase company sales,” how does that breakdown for the employee? Do they need to make X number of sales calls a week? Do they need to find a new way to position a product each week? These goals should be SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, timeframe) that they report their progress toward, each week to you. Numeric goals such as sales KPIs are always easy to set, but setting goals for more intangibles such as “strategic thinking” or “team player,” can be tougher. To do this, think about what the behavior of a strategic thinker or team player would look like, and find a way to set goals around this. If a team player is someone who helps others on the team, then set a goal for you employee to list 2 things each week that they helped teammates on. This will get them in the pattern of this behavior.

4. Performance Reviews – almost all managers dread performance reviews. That’s because they are done incorrectly. The best performance reviews are: 1) done quarterly, 2) initiated by the employee, 3) don’t include numeric rating systems, 4) are really a goal setting conversation between the manager and employee. Too often performance reviews are an annual event where the manager tries to think up clever phrases to support the number they gave the employee under each category: communication, motivation, etc. . . Instead have the employee list what they would like to focus on and accomplish over the next 90 days, as well as a review of how they did with their past quarter goals. Then discuss these with the employee giving them feedback and guidance in the discussion. By making these a working planning session, you will get better content and a more collaborative relationship, and the employee will have a much stronger understanding of where they should be going, and how they are doing. No one has ever gotten a good understanding of how they could “communicate better” (or how they were successfully communicating) because they got a “3” on a review.

5. Performance Grid Plotting – So if we don’t rate employees with a numeric system on their reviews, how do we understand how they rate in the overall scheme of the company? The most accurate way to understand how employees are doing as part of the whole, is to plot them on a grid (that measures both performance and potential), on where you think they would fall. From top performance/potential, to lowest. Then get together with other managers (ideally 1-2 times per year), and discuss why you would rate each person as such. This gets all managers on the same page as to what they think constitutes a top player vs a bottom achiever, and often times, managers may shift where they think their employees fall, during these meetings. This rating grid should never be shown to employees. Instead it is a management tool to help each manager know where they need to focus, with each of their employees.

Using this progressive tiered plan will keep the messaging and goals clear, as well has ensure a consistent way to track and measure performance.

Jenny Douras © All rights reserved

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Technology Tools for HR and the Remote Workforce

Quickly disappearing are the days in companies where all employees are based in one office. Remote and virtual workforces are growing with the need to improve speed to service, lower travel cost, and improved customer service. Research has suggested that now approximately 75% of US companies have employees that work virtual or remote. This can prove to be a new challenge for the HR role in administering to this dispersed group of employees. There are many technology tools now available to help in the HR function with remote workforces.

Document Management and Workflow systems
There are many document management systems that can make storing, finding, accessing and securing documents better than ever. With the amount of documents produced in corporations, it can be a productivity drain to find and utilize needed info. Document Management systems use a concept called metadata that tags documents with properties for easy organization and retrieval. These systems also allow for more granular security, providing better privacy for HR employee files.

Workflow automation tools are also increasingly popular to help companies streamline processes through technology. Systems can take an employee through the on-boarding process from job application submittal to training and review, or other processes such as expenses, vacation requests or 360 reviews.

One technology tool that incorporates both document management and workflow options is SharePoint. This tool can provide document management benefits such as auto versioning, searching, and metadata views and organization. It can automate processes such as document approval, or alert users of changes to calendars, employee document folders or company announcements. It also has tools that can allow you to convert your employee handbook into an electronic wiki, or provide employees with online tools to access benefit vendors or forms.

Communicating with Remote Workforces through Webinars
There are now many different webinar services to choose from that allow you to communicate with a remote workforce to give presentations, have visual meetings, and share computer applications. Some of the most popular services are: Citrix Go to Webinar, Adobe Connect, Microsoft Live Meeting, WebEx, and even the local Denver based company: Ready Talk. The best system for you depends on your needs. They all offer a different array of features including: Ability to view participants with web cams, surveys & polling, remote desktop take over, either uploading PPT presentations to the web service or displaying them on the fly, downloadable files, multiple meeting rooms, etc.

E-learning Tools
There are many technology tools that can help you create e-learning or blended learning scenarios to help with the onboarding and training of remote workforces. Often the amount of features available in the different tools is synonymous with the needed learning curve of the product. Some tools allow for easy conversion of PowerPoint presentations into videos, such as Lectora’s Snap or Adobe Presenter. Others allow you to capture animation on your computer as you click through items, and allow for narration, branching logic and other more advanced development features. Some products along these lines are: Adobe Captivate, TechSmith’s Camtasia, or Articulate. The more advanced products require some programming skills but will allow you to build interactive elements and custom animation using programs such as Adobe Flash.

All of these different technologies can help the HR function in working with a remote workforce. Finding the right product for your company depends on the specific features you need. However, just understanding some of the options out there, and how they can benefit the HR function, will provide the first steps toward finding the right tools.


Jenny Douras © All rights reserved