How a Remote Work Policy Can Help Solve HR Issues

During the past year, this column has addressed the many Human Resource issues facing our members and it appears that many of the challenges are not industry specific. A recent survey that asked businesses to rank their Top Five HR challenges in 2022 returned the following results:

1. Employee retention and attrition

2. Staff welfare and resilience

3. Employee engagement and experience

4. Staff planning, including flexible workers

5. Talent attraction and recruitment

However, one concern that keeps rearing its head and includes all the Top Five wrapped into one huge ball of wax: The ability of employees to work remotely for all or part of the work week.

Before you dig in your heels and say that employees will not work from home now that the COVID threat has lessened, let’s talk about how a pre-emptive strike on the part of business owners can improve employee retention and attrition, enhance staff welfare and resilience, create a higher level of employee engagement and experience, make staff planning more strategic and provide a valuable perk for talent attraction.

As we learned from Elon Musk and his Twitter debacle, dropping the hammer and forcing the workforce to choose between working at the office or leaving the company had devastating results. Musk was forced to backpedal and make concessions in order to retain his current staff and rehire the folks who kept Twitter running.

In other words, take that challenge and turn it into an opportunity to make your workplace the model for employer-employee relations.

SO LET’S LOOK AT IT FROM BOTH SIDES:

● From an employer’s perspective, remote workers may not be as productive and not being onsite limits accountability. The concept of teamwork becomes much more difficult to embrace. In addition, staff collaboration and socialization is reduced, which can negatively affect the workplace.

● From the employee’s perspective, working remotely actually makes them more productive because they tend to work more “off” hours, they are not wasting windshield time traveling to the office, their exposure to workplace health hazards is reduced and there is more of a work/life balance.

It is not an all or nothing solution. Can some of your staff work remotely a day or two? Can you schedule one or two days each week when all employees are onsite for meetings and project participation? Can you give your employee weekly production goals that are measurable and achievable so that results become a non-issue?

And it’s not rocket science – it’s common sense. For example, payroll can be done from anywhere. Customer service can be done from anywhere (unless you have a storefront where customers show up). Outbound sales calls can be made from anywhere. All an employee needs is a laptop, a printer/copier and a cellphone – all of which should be provided by the business for proper oversight. The employee must agree to have dependable internet access, a secure office in their home, locked file cabinets for document storage and the promise to work regular business hours. There should be clear communication - preferably written - of employer expectations. A “Working Remotely” company policy should be included in the Employee Handbook and distributed to all.

There are some employees who can’t work remotely because of their job duties, so be sure that is listed in their job descriptions so there is no confusion, no misunderstanding. Be fair to employees who can work remotely and make it available to all who qualify to avoid any legal issues. Just to be clear, some companies need the staff onsite every day because of the nature of their business or staffing. Having employees work remotely is simply not an option.

So just for a second, think of how remote workers can change the business for the better. The employees become engaged and more loyal to the company. Engaged employees are generally more productive, thus helping the company’s bottom line. There are no snow days. The business has another arrow in its quiver to recruit new talent. The days when everyone is onsite allows for team building, live project participation and employee recognition.

There are not too many downsides except maybe changing the way you think about working remotely.