This evening I met with Pat Coyle and other Smoosiers at Pat’s Open House at Smaller Indiana Headquarters.
One great discussion I had was with Lalita Amos, a Leadership Coach and Human Resource Specialist, Purdue Alumni, and Adjunct Professor at NYU. I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Lalita when I spoke to the IABC about the use of Social Networks within companies.
Lalita made note that technology is actually forcing managers to become better leaders. One of the byproducts of telecommuting is that managers aren’t able to micromanage, judge one by their looks or listen to office gossip to create a false impression. Telecommuting requires managers to communicate effectively, manage schedules properly, trust their employees, set and maintain effective performance plans and goals, as well as gauge their personnel’s performance on their actual performance!
Nothing might put a weak leader over the edge than enacting a solid telecommuting program! Although it brings a host of other challenges, a great leader can drive incredible productivity through a program such as this, while improving employee satisfaction and retention. Of course, with the price of gas exceeding $4/gal, there’s a monetary incentive as well.
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There still seems to be a hesitency for companies to adopt telecommunting even though it’s been proven to be good for the environment, employees mental health, not to mention the hours and control an employee recoversin their life. Perhaps there needs to be more training for leaders and managers on how to manage their telecommunting workforce.
Richard,
I could not agree more! I spoke with Lalita about this very subject and that it could be very ‘whitepaper-worthy’ to put out an informative document on the advantages of telecommuting as well as some sample policies, legal information, etc.
Thanks!
Doug
I’m not sure about this one. At my last job, I was in the office and my boss was telecommuting. It was terrible. She had an impression of what was going on and what I was doing that wasn’t accurate. I think she was trying to micromanage from a distance, and it drove me nuts. When it got to the point that I was spending more time trying to prove I was doing my job than actually working, I quit.
No disrespect meant, but maybe that actually supports the early point…that this type of structure actually reveals the weakness in a poor manager. Unfortunately in this scenario you were the one who got the “short end”, but if there’s enough unrest among the troops regarding the particular manager’s interactions with the staff, it would open the eyes of upper management to that manager’s issues…”pushing them over the edge” is the phrase I believe that was used.
Hopefully when you left, you were able to go to something better?