Partner Article

5 top tips to having engaged and efficient remote workers

Remote working has steadily increased in the last decade. CBI research has shown that in 2011, more than half of companies had employees that worked remotely. This marks a substantial increase from 2003, when only 22 per cent of organisations had remote workers.

Companies are increasingly seeing the merits of employing home workers. For many businesses, homeworkers are as essential to success as office-based employees. However, for employers and employees alike to really reap the benefits, they need to make sure that remote workers remain efficient, can be effective team-players and remain engaged.

At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, we have developed a remote working programme over three years and our experience is that with robust training and development programmes, remote workers can be engaged, productive and successful. We believe that when remote workers are given the opportunities to hone their skills and progress careers, they become even more committed to the business.

We now employ 100 remote workers at the Enterprise Business Support department - nearly a quarter of our staff. We have worked continually to anticipate and overcome the potential problems that our home-working employees face. Our overarching aim is to make sure that when workers are not in the office, they stay engaged and feel part of the company and its culture. Here is what we have learned about maintaining engaged and productive remote workers:

1. On-boarding is crucial. It’s important that new home-workers spend time with the learning and development (L&D) team. In fact, we’ve doubled the amount of time that our new remote workers have with our L&D team. The goal should be to really nurture new joiners.
2. Make sure that both employer and employee are clear on their expectations. Create a robust road-map that sets performance expectations for employees, and details what home-workers can expect from the management team. This will help ensure there are no mismatches in understanding what needs to be achieved and what guidance is on offer.
3. Build relationships. Email, phone and Skype do not need to be restricted to only business communication. Remote workers should feel they can chat informally a little to make more personal working relationships.
4. Create a buddy or mentor system. Remote workers value a go-to person who is not based in the office to talk to. Having faced similar challenges, these colleagues can prove to be excellent mentors. Remote workers might not feel comfortable troubling their office-based line managers, especially if they don’t think managers would understand or appreciate the issues that only home-workers face.
5. Continue to provide training opportunities. Ensure that remote workers have the same access to skills and career development. Hold events specifically for home-workers, such as sales clinics to ensure they can meet and exceed their sales targets. Make sure that remote workers are included in company events too. For example, Enterprise has a series of ‘women in leadership’ workshops, which are recorded for remote workers. The aim should be to make sure there is no risk of home-workers having fewer opportunities than office-workers.

Within the Enterprise Business Support department, home-workers often out-perform their office-based counterparts. We put this down to the remote workers having a better work-life balance, whilst keeping many of the benefits of office life. We have found that the vast majority of our remote-workers want to develop their careers, so much so that if they weren’t given the same opportunities as people in the office, they would let us know about it.

The attraction to these roles is such that a higher calibre of applicant is now attracted to them, which means there is an excellent pool of prospective employees to choose from.

With a clear plan on how to manage remote-workers, and with a strong training and development programme, you can keep your home-workers engaged, productive and successful.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Janice Clark .