Supervising telecommuters employees who work out of their homes or satellite offices - requires special awareness on the part of managers.
It's easy to inadvertently treat those employees differently than others or even to forget about them at times.Here are tips for supervisors on improving their dealings with telecommuters:
- Don't lessen use of your management skills just because the employee isn't in the office. The work situation calls for special use of these skills: planning, delegating, setting timetables, assessing prog-ress, giving feedback.
- Choose the right people to be telecommuters. The ideal telecom-muter needs minimal supervision, has good communication and organization skills, is trustworthy, assertive and self-motivated and is not being forced by personal circumstances into telecommuting.
- Make sure you and the telecom-muter agree on performance standards from the start.
- Don't overlook telecommuters for special projects.
- Include your telecommuters in social events and other office-related activities.
- Suggest the telecommuter spend at least a few hours each week in the main office to keep in touch.
- Maintain regular communication about schedules, work days, problems and progress.
- Visit the telecommuter's home or satellite office so you know that person's work environment.
- Don't look at telecommuting as a remedy for problem employees. Moving problem employees out of the office often only exacerbates the situation.
- If the telecommuter can't attend important meetings, use conference calls or speaker phones to include that employee.