The other topic, which has just recently come to the forefront for me, is how to manage remote (off site) employees. That topic is less interesting to me as I fail to see anything unique or unusual about remote employees that can't be handled with well known tried-and-true management techniques. Indeed, I believe off site employees have been around in various forms forever. Outside sales people. Service technicians. Delivery people. And, to a large extent, the problems of managing off site (remote) workers isn't all that different from situations where people are working on site without a boss being present. Like a convenience store clerk. Or a 2nd shift of 15 people in a manufacturing company with no on site supervisor or group leader.
A few days ago a friend told me he was having a great deal of difficulty with remote employees. He suggested they were quite different and hard-to handle. "Give me an example," I said.
He told me of a stay-at-home employee who constantly disrupts the department with requests to access customer files with information the remote employee needed to do the job. These frequent requests were wearing the department thin, especially my friend the manager. Seems the remote employee usually calls him to look up and transmit the information.
One answer of course is to put all the necessary documents and relevant information into a database so the needed information could be accessed remotely. My friend thought that was a good idea, but his company didn't have that technological capability at the moment.
"Then have your remote person take the files home," I responded, "unless there are other people who need them or other reasons the files can't go off site."
"Not a problem," my friend responded. "He can take files home. But he often gets into a project and doesn't have a needed file or other information."
"Perhaps he needs to come in to the office occasionally to get what he needs," was my next thought.
"Oh, he's required to spend one day a week in the office now," was the response.
"Then why is it se doesn't have the files he needs when working off site?"
"Sometimes he doesn't realize what is needed until he gets into the project. Sometimes I guess he forgets," said my friend.
"Well there's your real issue," I said. "Any person who works at an off site (such as a client site) quickly learns to plan ahead so they can bring what they need to do the job. Accountants know that. Consultants know that. Plumbers know that. It just takes a little forethought and discipline. That's what you need to deal with as the coach. The fact that your off site employee needs to plan ahead so he can leave the on site facility with everything he needs to do his work before the next on site visit. And, if you need to reinforce that lesson, it wouldn't hurt to have the off site employee have the inconvenience of making a special trip back to the on site location when the requests for support are getting out of hand."
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Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
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3 comments:
Why don't they use remote control software to access office PC? This remote person could easily get all files stored at office computers.
Don't know. But that's the sort of thing I was thinking of when I mentioned a database. Seems that either the data base doesn't exist, or the information the person needs isn't in the database. However, if either condition is true and they have a lot of need for access, then these sorts of systems including the one you suggest should be put put in place.
Well, I didn't suggest any software yet. It doesn't matter if they have data base or not, they can connect to any office computer with remote access software and work at this remote PC in real-time. To give some examples, I mention VNC technology, Radmin Remote Administrator and MS RDP. Remote worker using these programs will never forget a file.
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