Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2010. Its forecast that telework will “sooner or later” reach every company, and the tools it mentions such as BlackBerry, reflect that time. Remote work spread widely after 2020.
Telework will sooner or later be adopted by every company. Perhaps in Spain and some Spanish-speaking countries we’ll take longer than elsewhere, although several companies with branches in Spain are already putting it into practice with resounding success. We look at the factors a company should consider in order to encourage telework.
When we talk about telework, we don’t just mean working from home; picturing it only that way is very old-fashioned. By telework we mean being constantly connected and making it easy for employees to do their job from wherever they are, whether at home, on a business trip, in a hotel and so on.
Today, new technologies make all of this possible, and in the end, using them wisely translates into cost cuts and greater productivity from employees.
If you’re the kind of business owner who likes to keep tabs on employees at all times, you’ll have to learn to trust your staff. The office time clock has become outdated in the new times we’re living in, and will be even more so in the times to come.
A business owner should start measuring employees’ performance by the objectives they meet rather than by the hours they work. If you think an employee won’t perform well enough because you’ve introduced telework into your business model, my advice is simple: don’t keep that employee, and find one you trust.
The biggest advantages telework brings a company have to do with travel expenses, maternity leave and not “needing” to have someone employed full-time when you may only need them for two hours a week.
This isn’t to promote junk contracts (precarious, low-quality jobs), since we know that a teleworker can provide services to several companies at the same time, which is a clear advantage both for them and for the companies.
Some companies that are already opting for this way of working give their teleworkers everything they need to do the job while setting foot in the office as little as possible: a laptop with an internet connection, a BlackBerry and mobile internet on their phone.
A company can now have a workforce spread across an entire country, or several countries, and hold virtual meetings with all its staff through multi-party videoconferencing.
This avoids all the costs of bringing together staff from different cities every two weeks or every month.
Telework will be adopted by sales reps, since their work is out on the street, not in the office. They carry the office with them.
Disadvantages of telework
The disadvantages of telework are no greater than those of working on site. The only thing you need to worry about is employees getting too comfortable: since the company isn’t supervising them and they have freedom of movement, they may underperform. That’s why we talked about measuring employees by results.
It doesn’t matter what that person has done or how they’ve done it. What matters is that they’ve achieved it. To me, someone who works 2 hours and brings in €500,000 a month in sales is far more valuable than someone who works 12 hours and brings in €300,000 a month. And that’s the only thing you should measure.
Without a doubt, telework as such is an incredible opportunity for business expansion and cost-cutting, and above all an excellent opportunity to have employees in any corner of the world.
Further reading
Featured image: CruiseAmerica, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
