7 Rules for Managing a Mobile Workforce
By Joanna L. Krotz
reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center

It's 10 a.m. Do you know where your employees are?

The ranks of mobile workers are swelling, fueled by the wireless Internet, powerful handheld devices, VPNs (virtual private networks), and WLANs (wireless local area networks).

As many as nine out of every 10 employees now work from locations other than company headquarters, according to Nemertes Research, a New York market researcher that specializes in emerging technologies. In addition, some 40% to 70% of employees work in locations remote from their supervisors.

No wonder. Hiring remote workers can provide big benefits for small business. "Employers can cut the costs of office space as well as recruit from a much larger talent pool," says Manny Avramidis, senior vice president of global human resources at the American Management Association (AMA).

But managing untethered workers also creates thorny challenges. How do you oversee performance? How do you keep communications moving at the speed business now demands? What about training and camaraderie? With so much information flying around, how can you secure intellectual property?

Then there's the conflict of time zones. "With our folks all mobile, we're pretty much round the clock here," says Doug Young, co-founder of LiveCargo, which provides mobile productivity tools and is based in Greensboro, N.C., with offices in Singapore and China.

As with any business innovation, there are bound to be new pain points and tradeoffs as the mobile workforce takes hold. But you can reap early rewards by implementing these smart ideas.

The mobile rules of engagement

Begin by drafting thought-out policies for remote work. Don't wait to be blindsided. Set policies with teeth in them that allow for training, content filtering and rules about e-mail and file transfers. Then be sure to keep monitoring.

For example, does your mobile worker save competitive company data to his desktop PC? What about backup? Do you have access the moment he quits? Is there a written agreement assigning rights for company work produced on his laptop or wireless device?

Next, review your technology. If you still don't use a reliable up-to-speed server, such as Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, to swiftly network communications, then tracking employees and performance becomes that much tougher.

Here are other guidelines that will protect your interests and motivate mobile employees to produce their best work.

1. Update your management style. Supervisors often distrust or resent mobile workers, who are then overlooked or uninformed. The command-and-control style of bygone days doesn't work with self-motivated offsite workers. "When the relationship fails, it's often more of a manager challenge than the worker's fault," says the AMA's Avramidis. One remedy is to require everyone on staff to work remotely for a while. You'd be surprised how quickly that changes attitudes.

2. Put everyone on the same page. Without consistent guidance, each remote worker will set an individual list of priorities. In that case, if you're lucky, all you'll lose is efficiency. Instead, make sure mobile workers have the same business goals as you do. Tech tools are making that easier. For example, Microsoft's SharePoint Services can be harnessed to set up a centralized, password-protected Web site for employees and managers. When teams need to compare notes, each member can log on from remote locations to share virtually any type of file, track progress or monitor schedules and goals. To learn more, find a Microsoft partner in your area. Other online tools designed for frequent performance reviews are also available. SuccessFactors, based in San Mateo, Calif., provides an on-demand product to help align employee performance with shared goals. Employees and managers log on to a browser-based template to input goals as often as, say, once a week. "It helps everyone in the company to know the objectives," says SucessFactors general manager Andy Cohen.

3. Limit access to need-to-know. There's no good reason why every staffer should be able to access all company bytes and archives. "Access needs to be engineered from the company's perspective," says Harprit Singh, CEO of Intellicomm, a unified communications service provider based in Philadelphia. "IT needs to question who needs what access and when, and then get managerial-level sign-off. You can also limit data on a remote basis but allow more access in the office." Working out such policies on a day-to-day, staffer-by-staffer basis takes effort and tradeoffs—or as Singh notes, "increased security equals increased discomfort." Still, it's well worth the effort to protect your confidential data. "When operating from the virtual office, people should remember how important it is to build and reinforce perceptions of reliability and trust," says Patricia Wallace, director of information systems and institutional technology at Johns Hopkins University. "They should over-communicate, and they should be very clear about what they are doing and when they will finish."

4. Work on the glue but stay vigilant. Communications and follow-up with isolated employees demands special effort. After all, on site, every staffer takes one look at the boss' face and gets an instant company weather report. For remote workers, relying on Instant Messaging, e-mail, or texting will not cut it. Have real-time phone conversations, often. Bring in mobile workers for periodic updates to maintain ties with the rest of the staff. In addition, you must monitor corporate networks and remote workstations. For example, one technology consultant was brought in to help when its client found that an executive was running a side business of an online travel agency during working hours. "You need to be proactive," says SucessFactor's Cohen. "Sooner or later, over time, people working on a remote basis have a tendency to take advantage." Establish regular checkpoints, so problems are quashed before they surface.

5. Bridge HR and IT. What happens when a mobile worker calls in sick? Do you even believe it? And how can mobile workers take advantage of company benefits or training programs? HR forms, benefits, and policies must be as immediately accessible to remote workers as they are to on-site employees. One way to resolve such issues is to put your human resources manager and your technology guru in a room and walk away for several hours. Ask them for policy suggestions. This is far from easy. It's like asking each side to learn a foreign language. Still, just having them exchange views will be helpful.

6. Keep tools up-to-speed. A serious challenge of the untethered workforce is keeping tabs on all the wandering devices and technology. How often do you update which workers? How do you integrate personal mobile tech, such as cell phones and home WLANs, with company firewalls? What about internal communications? Will your PDA talk to mine? Naturally, as mobile work grows, marketers are meeting new demand. Doug Young's LiveCargo, which launched in 2003, provides three categories of on-demand online tools for mobile workers scaled for individuals as well as for enterprise use. The software is designed for file transfers, such as e-mail attachments, remote storage, and collaborative capabilities that can integrate spoken comments into electronic documents, such as Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint. "You can talk about changes to, say, PowerPoint slides you see on screen and than send the file to someone else, who opens it and can 'hear' what everyone has to say by reading the comments," says Young. Plus, LiveCargo solutions mean you don't have to download multiple copies of every file to everyone's hard drive or mobile device, which saves on storage and bandwidth costs.

7. Measure productivity not activity. "If you lay out clear expectations and performance goals, and the employee doesn't need to be in the office or verbally interact with other people, then it shouldn't matter if the eight-hour workday is from midnight to 8:00 a.m.," says Roberta Matuson, a human resources consultant based in Northampton, Mass. In addition, offsite staffers often have a hard time proving themselves, which means they may not achieve promotions or bonuses as easily as employees who have face-to-face relationships with influencers and management. It will help to create clear remote-performance benchmarks. Mobile work can lead to enormous energy and productivity—if you make the right moves to harness its power.