Does Your Remote Policy Have These 3 Critical Components?
One of the first things to review when considering a remote office is having a strong work from home policy. This is what sets the tone for what you expect from your remote workers, what they can expect from you and how someone is considered for remote work. It also can protect you from unnecessary liability in certain circumstances. It is important to understand that this should be a living document. Changes should be made based on ideas or concepts that may not work in your current scenario and should incorporate feedback from your teams to make sure it works for everyone.
Here are three critical items that should be in every remote policy:
- Acceptable work hours
It is important that it is understood by your remote teams when you expect them to work. Traveling to an office helps in defining set schedules for individuals but when workers don’t leave their house it is important to define your expectations on when they should begin and end their work day. This serves two primary purposes:
- It defines hours where the remote worker is actually covered by workman’s comp. Injuries or accidents outside the work schedule are not considered under workman’s comp in most cases.
- It prevents remote workers from defining their own schedules which may conflict with the need for team participation. It is common to experience delays when a team has members that do not have enough overlapping work hours to work effectively on projects or work requiring input from other members of the team.
It is completely up to you how open ended this second item can be. The least restrictive scheduling that effectively allows your teams to work together cohesively is the best. It is very possible that you may want to support varied work hours for certain workers or teams that are more effective not being confined to a standard 9 to 5 regiment.
2. Eligibility
It goes without saying that not all jobs can be remote and not all employees are good candidates for remote work. These restrictions and requirements must be thoroughly documented in your remote policy to ensure that everyone understands what positions are eligible for remote work and what the expectations are of employees who work remotely. For positions that have physical requirements for a worker to be located at the office or work location (i.e. brick and mortar retail, restaurants, factory work, etc.) employees would not be eligible for remote work. Even though this seems straight forward, it must be documented so it is crystal clear to everyone. Second, you need to make sure that any performance requirements, productivity requirements and consequences are documented in the policy. This is important if you have trouble with remote workers not being productive or not producing quality work. It must be outlined how productivity and quality will be measured and what the consdquences will be if an employee falls below this measurement. In many cases an employee’s ability to work remotely can be revoked to allow for closer in office supervision.
3. Well defined job descriptions:
This may not sound like part of a remote policy, but having well-defined job descriptions for your remote workers helps to protect the company from unnecessary or unjustified workman’s comp claims. In my next article I will dive deeper into the topic of workman’s comp, for remote employees but for now we just need to consider that defining the tasks that an employee is responsible for during their work day can help to eliminate claims based on injuries an employee may suffer that is not work-related. For example, a remote customer support representative whose tasks revolve around their computer and phone would have a difficult time justifying an injury claim that occurred while away from their designated home office area where as a sales rep traveling to meet a client would not.
As with all matters regarding insurance it is best to seek the advice of a knowledgeable insurance provider before making any decisions. Laws regarding insurance vary from state to state.
With the changing remote landscape it is very likely that a lot of companies are re-evaluating their stance on remote office work. With any corporate initiative it is always a good idea to begin with a well-defined policy that outlines the purpose, processes and requirements that will make the policy successful. This is equally true for establishing a remote office. There are many other considerations aside from just creating a strong and flexible remote policy but that is a great starting point.
The Remote Shift Is Here…Are You In?
The concept of remote work has received a lot of attention over the last 9 months as we all try to figure out how to safely navigate the COVID19 pandemic. The recent lockdowns and social distancing restrictions have forced many employers overnight to convert their business model to incorporate remote teams. Even schools have been forced to figure out how to deliver meaningful content to highly distractible 5 and 6 year olds via Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings. The question now is will this forced remote work norm change the overall societal perspective on the value of a remote workforce once COviD 19 is just a memory?
To really answer this question we need to understand how remote work and the societal perception of remote work has changed over the years. How did we view working from home before COVID19? How was it viewed 100 years ago? It might surprise you that the idea of centralized work offices and people going to an office every day is a fairly new idea. Prior to the industrial revolution people almost always were working from shops that were based out of their homes. It was not uncommon to have a small area in the back of your shop that your family would occupy. This eventually gave way to homes built above the actual shops that became very common architecturally prior to the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Once factories and large machinery became the norm it was necessary to have centralized locations as the machinery and assembly lines were too big to exist in individual homes. Factories were built in large populated areas and drew workers in to a shared workspace as part of their daily routine. In addition, the command and control philosophy of management which dominated the business world until recently required managers to have immediate and constant access to their direct reports and their bosses.
With the improvement in technology and the existence of the Internet the capability of remote work became a reality long before the idea was accepted in the mainstream. Some of the remote work pioneers like IBM and Yahoo embraced this work norm early on which paved the way for many start ups to consider remote work options as a way to attract more superstar talent to their businesses. Advancements in Internet technology in terms of speed and reliability along with the transition of analog phone line PBX systems to digital systems allowed for advanced phone call routing and robust features delivered over the Internet. This opened the door to widely dispursed call centers that had sophisticated capabilities with very little in terms of technology or resource investments needed to implement. Now call centers could route through a call center system on the Internet to individual home offices.
And then there was COVID…
Almost overnight the entire office world was thrust into some form of remote work team implementation which presented significant hardships for those businesses who had never faced the challenge of managing remote teams and resources. Without any time to prepare, suddenly a home-based work force emerged, with its kids, spouses and pets showing up in zoom board room meetings, its managers scrambling to ensure their direct reports were staying busy and many parents without day care and forced to split their attention between work and care giving.
IT teams were run ragged trying to ensure the transition from office to home happened with as little disruption as could be expected but once the physical office structure and technology are out of your direct control it is an entirely different set of complications. Many home networks were unreliable, slow and unsecured. Individual home offices did not have many of the peripherals of a typical office like scanners, quality printers, label makers,etc. Those who needed to participate in meetings often did not have the correct audio or video equipment to even use Zoom or Microsoft Teams and did not have a place to work in their home that was away from the distraction of family, pets and other home based diversions. Remote workers began to feel isolated and cut off from their teams and office relationships and some managers were finding it difficult to keep their teams motivated and focused.
It is important to take this brief stroll down memory lane because it is necessary to see how far we have come in a relatively short period of time and how much further we can go. Does it make sense to continue the trajectory to a more home-based working philosophy, or will we simply snap back after COVID is under control and return to our central offices?
A Gartner survey of company leaders found that 80% plan to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time after the pandemic, and 47% will allow employees to work from home full-time. In a PwC survey of 669 CEOs, 78% agree that remote collaboration is here to stay for the long-term. This is a huge shift in the perception of the value of remote work from a business perspective. But how has the idea of working from home changed for the individual employee?
A survey from FlexJobs reported 65% of respondents want to be full-time remote employees post-pandemic, and 31% want a hybrid remote work environment—
27% of workers say that they would be willing to take a pay cut in order to work from home. And, 81% say they would be more loyal to their employer.
So what does this mean for you and your business?
It is very clear based on the above surveys and countless more statistics that working from home is a genie that is not going back into the bottle. Companies that want to attract the best talent, have the most produvtivity and compete in the new decade of technology innovation and a globally distributed work force should begin to embrace the concept openly and aggressively. It is clear that employees are now beginning to demand the ability to have some sort of flexible work schedule, wehther that is complete remote work or a partial hybrid approach. Employers are seeing the value in increased productivity, less distraction and more employee loyalty. Technology has become sophisticated enough that it is no longer a barrier, and with the proper planning and strategy, any office-based company can be successful in the transition to a remote work philosophy. The question now is are you prepared for this transition? How will your company address the growing demand for full or partial remote work?
Tell me what you think. How has your business been impacted by remote possibilities? Have you made the leap?