(this post is adapted from a similar one I just posted on the Future of Work blog, “Managing Telecommuters - Chapter 573.2“)

“How do you manage people you can’t see?” - that’s probably the number one question we get asked whenever we discuss the financial, environmental, business continuity, and social benefits of telecommuting (or, as we prefer to call it, flexible/mobile work).

And it probably won’t go away anytime soon. It’s a legitimate question, even though we believe the answers are reasonably well-known and not all that profound.

Anyway, with all the recent concern about gas prices and global warming, telecommuting (by whatever name) has been lots of attention lately. The most recent report I’ve seen is an Associated Press story by Joyce M. Rosenberg that appeared last week in a number of print and online publications (”Letting staffers telecommute requires management“).

Rosenberg’s focus is on the necessity for managers to reach out, to spend more time talking to remote employees by phone, and generally to focus more on results than on hours worked.

Here’s one small business owner speaking about one of his remote employees:

“The biggest issue I have is tracking time and knowing when he’s working,” said [Lloyd] Princeton, the president of Design Management Co. “The doubt starts to happen when he has offsite meetings — various doctor appointments or the vet.”

But, Princeton said, “he gets the work done. He does quality work for clients.”

That last sentence is critical. As we say all the time, “Manage by results, not by walking around.” Establishing clear performance goals and defining deliverables, budgets, and deadlines is Job One for managers of telecommuters.

But of course there’s lots more to it than that. Over the next week or two I’m going to offer some more formal guidelines and ways to think about establishing and managing a telecommuting program. And I’ll suggest at the outset that technology is critical to making telecommuting/flexwork work, but by itself IT is only a tool; as with any tool what matters is how you use it

The most important thing to remember is that it’s not just a matter of sending people home, or letting them come and go. There are a number of critical legal liabilities - to say nothing of management challenges - that will jump up and bite you if you don’t think them through in advance of launching a telecommuting program.

The benefits are enormous - for companies, for communities, for individual employees, and for the planet. But they don’t just happen naturally. Check back here frequently for suggestions and recommendations.

Tags: telecommuting management distributedwork flexwork futureofwork