According to the KJR Manifesto, relationships precede process (Guideline #4) — before employees can work together effectively they first have to establish trust.
That’s hard enough when employees work in the same locale. Such factors as working on different floors or for rival managers can be enough to prevent it.
It’s harder when there’s no face-to-face interaction, as is the case when some employees work remotely, or when the entire enterprise is virtual. While telepresence technologies have improved, web conferencing software like WebEx and GoToMeeting, Instant Messaging (a necessity, by the way), e-mail, shared files … even teleconferencing … aren’t remotely close to what Dave Taylor, Sr. Manager, Technology Services calls “That synergy you feel when you’re brainstorming with a group and the discussion ‘magically’ leads to an answer that no one had thought of before walking into the room.”
“People and interactions are the most important thing to successful projects. Phone calls and instant messaging aren’t quite a substitute,” added Scot Mcphee, who’s tried both. Another virtual team participant added, “Email communicates facts, but it doesn’t build teams. Teleconferencing permits the exchange of ideas, but not the connection of co-workers.”
And even if current telepresence technologies were up to the task, remote collaboration still requires planning and preparation, and is simply more formal than dropping by someone’s cubicle to sketch ideas on a whiteboard.
Kelly Williams, who has been both CIO and an Army Master Sergeant, added, “I’m a huge advocate for building teams (“real” teams, not groups of people who share an organizational title), and that’s a task made much more difficult by geographic separation.
“I saw the same dynamic in the military: A remote detachment, nominally part of a larger organization, becomes more and more isolated — and starts creating a unique self-identify — when left to its own devices.
“That can work well for a sub-team that necessarily works away from the Home Office, but it can be deadly in the context of individuals. One of the biggest challenges a manager faces in a telecommuting environment is how to create and sustain a team dynamic in the absence of “normal” face to face contact between team members.”
Worst is a team with both in-office and remote employees, because the remote employees reliably become passive participants. Quite a few factors contribute to this, but the clearest, and probably the most difficult to solve, is that whether interacting through a teleconference or a webcam, remote employees have a much more difficult time breaking into a discussion to make a comment.
There’s nothing sinister about this. It’s just that people in a face-to-face group intuitively recognize the body language that says, “Give me room to speak, please.” There’s no equivalent when you’re teleconferencing in.
Web conferencing technology does have an equivalent — the “raise your hand” function. It works quite well when those in the meeting pay attention to it and is worthless when they don’t.
Which brings up the larger point that web conferencing technology greatly enhances the ability of remote participants to be part of team interactions when, for everyone involved, operating the technology is second nature.
When it isn’t the technology becomes a distraction, taking attention away from the conversation instead of facilitating it.
Any company that plans to rely on a remote workforce while failing to invest in a web conferencing system … and in training both remote and on-site employees in its use … is a company that’s planning to fail.
Scheduled telecommuting — the 80/20 solution
Once trust has been established, telepresence technologies greatly enhance the ability of employees who are remote from each other to collaborate.
That’s why, of all the forms of “telework,” scheduled telecommuting — working at home most of the time while spending one or two days in the office each week — is the easiest to implement.
Scheduled in-office time allows for team meetings, impromptu collaborations, general-purpose schmoozing, and making sure employee and manager are still “real people” to each other. The time at home allows for the better focus, travel-time-and-cost savings, and other benefits of telecommuting.
Sadly, scheduled telecommuters cost more than on-site employees, because they need both on-site facilities … a fully equipped work cubicle (hoteling won’t do) … and the added expense of telecommuting infrastructure and support.
Which brings up the question, why bother?
The answer: It’s the logical first step in moving to a remote workforce. And that, implemented well, does save cost, and increases flexibility and productivity too.
Making it happen, though, is like sculpture.
You have to chip away patiently, or you’ll turn your organization into a pile of rubble.
“Which brings up the question, why bother?”
Employee retention.
Dual income families face moves all the time where one spouse needs to move the family for whatever reason. Compare the cost of replacing a valuable employee with a new one vs the cost of providing the infrastructure to retain that employee as a remote worker. If you have a few of those a year, you’ll directly save more than enough to cover the cost. It’s from a different budget, and needs to overcome the hurdle of “not my budget, but overall company dollars” though.
Any company that’s large enough to have multiple locations (or just a very large campus) has to already solve this problem as teams interact from many locations already. To these teams, a remote individual is just like a team member from another location.
The concerns you express about telecommuting are real. As someone who began telecommuting for a large software company in the 1990’s I experienced first hand the plus and minus sides of this issue. Since then I have managed remote teams, where no one was at the same locale, and offshore teams where the two teams, one in the states and one offshore worked together. Both were successful, and I believe the key to all of this is a manager/project manager who is committed to making it work. In a perfect world my job would have been easier if the team was in one place, but the economics and logistics for assembling these teams required the physical separation. A third remote team I was a participant on was not so successful. When I reflect back on its failure, the underlying reason was bad team leadership. Our leader discouraged interaction. I believe that the location of the team had less to do with our failure, and more the bad leadership. So what does this boil down to, that a company committed to making this work, will innovate, review, revise and improve. Those that don’t, will not.
I’m involved in a Master’s program from an accredited university in California that is completely taught online; I never step foot on campus. The level of collaboration achieved between the students and instructor is amazing. We have never met and given our geographic diversity, many of us never will, but we have been able to work in teams, accomplish assignments and learn in a deep way. I will say that I had my doubts about this; always enjoying the classroom setting for discussion. But this new frontier is not less, it is different. The learning occurs in a different way. Maybe we could learn something from this. Trying to take the old paradigm of management into the new world may not work, but could we do it differently and still be successful?
As a person who is 2000 miles away from the rest of the team I have many of the same issues as a telecommuter even though I am in a brick and mortar building. I am the only one at the remote location so I could just as easily be at home or at starbucks and still be just as busy. Two hurdles regularly present themselves. I am not privy to hallway conversations or impromptu whiteboard sessions and am often forgotten when new things come along. Not to mention the fact that I can only attend team events and lunches via video conference, if they remember. I also have to deal with the fact that nobody can easily see what I am doing, every time I get a new manager I end up being labled the “least productive” of the team until I can get the manager to recognize that we need to talk often so that he/she is cognizant of my workload and status. Then once that communication finaly clicks I become one of the most productive even though nothing changed on my side. I call this the “out of sight – out of mind” syndrome. If you cannot see a person sweat, they must not be working very hard.
To anyone who does want to work remotely or tellecomute, please be prepared to over-communicate, and if the office is near enough, get in there and network with your managers and peers at every oppourtunity. I work with a lot of other, remote, individual contributors in the same boat, the story is almost always the same, poor recognition despite concerted effort to over-communicate.