Set Clear Goals and Accountability for Telecommuting Success

Five Tips for Motivating Virtual Teams

Everyone has been in an uproar about Marissa Mayer’s ban on telecommuting at Yahoo. Some think it’s a wise move, citing co-location as a requirement for complex IT projects. Others think Mayer’s stance is a mistake and misuse of executive power.

I’ve touted the benefits of telecommuting here before. But, ultimately, the decision to either introduce or ban telecommuting is the business of, well, the business. What works for Yahoo may not work for every business since every workplace is different. As well, certain jobs just aren’t cut out for telecommuting, while others lend themselves perfectly to being at home. As you can see, this isn’t a black-and-white issue.

Regardless of your stance, I think we can all agree that it’s a conversation that needed to happen as more companies move to adopt telecommuting. And it’s a conversation that you should be having with your managers since they’ll be fielding questions from employees looking to work from home.

If you’ve decided to allow telecommuting for your employees, it’s important that you set clear goals for measuring productivity and accountability to ensure overall success. Use these tools from the IT Downloads library to create a telework policy, calculate potential savings and to cover any network security issues.

Telework Policy and Agreement: Use Info-Tech’s Telework Policy and Agreement as a starting point for your enterprise’s telecommuting policy.

Telecommuting Calculator: This calculator will help you evaluate the potential cost-savings of a telecommuting plan, which are usually dictated by office space costs. Other benefits, such as employee morale, are much harder to measure.

Telecommuting IT Checklist: This checklist is designed to help IT managers ‘cover all the bases’ for telecommuting arrangements, including safety and network security issues.