Leadership Challenges
Managing Executive Summary: More companies are allowing employees to work remotely, but will they succeed? Learn how to manage employees you can’t see from people who are doing so successfully. Among their ideas: Set up performance and productivity guidelines as well as parameters for an acceptable at-home workspace; ensure employees feel connected with collaboration tools and daily check-ins.
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By Lori Widmer on’t look now, but the trend toward working remotely has just found solid footing in the form of a global pandemic. Companies around the world have been forced to conduct business in new ways since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March 2020. Employees were sent home in droves—many of them expected to work from home. For a significant portion of America’s workforce, it was just another day at the home office. According to Upwork’s 2018 Future Workforce Report, 63 percent of companies in the U.S. already had remote work arrangements with some or all of their workforce, thanks in part to a tight labor market and a new generation of workers pushing for more flexible work arrangements. It’s a trend that was already on the rise. The number of workers who work remotely part or all of their workweek has risen 173 percent from 2005-2018, according to Global Workplace Analytics data. But while hiring managers believe their companies are equipped to offer remote work, the company policies simply aren’t there. The Upwork study shows that 64 percent of hiring managers feel there are resources and processes in place for their company to offer work-from-home options, but 57 percent of the companies
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surveyed said they lack a remote work policy. Colleen Ritchie is senior vice president of operations for TTEC, a digital customer experience technology and services company that serves a number of industries, including the property/casualty space. TTEC has offered remote work options to employees for five years, and Ritchie said that far too many companies try to replicate the physical location experience rather than adapting the business to support a remote environment. “Trying to replicate a physical location adds more obstacles and creates a lessthan-perfect experience for remote employees,” she said. It’s a common problem, said Dean van Ormer, senior vice president of North American Work at Home Operations for SYKES Enterprises Inc., a multichannel global customer engagement services company that provides personalized customer insurance life cycle support for agents and brokers. With 10-15 percent of the SYKES workforce working remotely, van Ormer has seen companies assume that sending employees home is all that’s needed. Not so, he said. “You need to set up your organization very thoughtfully around how you’re going to do it.”
The Benefits
So, why should carriers go remote at all? Jill Johnston said there are plenty of
Workers reasons why companies may want to embrace the work-from-home model. Johnston, director of Work at Home Project Management for SYKES, said virtual employees give employers an immediate benefit—access to more job applicants. “You have a much larger talent pool because the geography in which you can hire is much larger.” Also, Johnston said companies that offer remote work can attract candidates who might otherwise be looking elsewhere. “Work-at-home is one of the most desired benefits that employees are asking about.” Moreover, Johnston added that remote work and flexible work pays back in another big way. “We’ve also seen a reduction in attrition.” In fact, the 2017 State of Remote Work report by Owl Labs
