Get Over Your Fears About Home-Based Employees

I know, you have this vision of work-at-home employees sitting around in their pajamas watching soap operas and talking on the phone with their friends, maybe doing an hour or so of work. Few small business owners feel secure in this relationship believing they will not get value for the effort and thus most often will not even consider this as a possible alternative.

Change your thinking, it’s not so. It works.

In this case, the large corporations are way ahead of small business owners as they have been experimenting for years with this alternative style work program. They first offered this program to experienced reliable employees in small doses to see what would happen. Then, once deemed successful, they offered it as a benefit awarded to successful, deserving employees, a little at a time. They would start with one day a week and slowly expand it to two, three four and then five.

The results have been stunning. The studies indicate a significant increase in productivity for the worker. In short they get more done at home than what they had been doing in the office. Productivity was measured and compared and actually increased with work-at-home employees.

Important to the success of the program was determining exactly how productivity would be measured and once this was determined the at-home worker would know exactly what was expected and could assess his or her success independently and would know how well he or she was doing. This gave the employee the guidelines needed to increase productivity to a greater degree than what was attained in the traditional work environment. This was successful mostly because the at-home employee appreciated this benefit and wanted more of it and wanted to keep it, thus their performance improved.

Finally, to keep the office culture going and to maintain the social network which is also important, the home-based employee would have a scheduled morning in the office weekly for face-to-face meetings and to stay in touch with the colleagues who were still in the office.

I believe this model will work in the small business environment as well. There are fewer reasons than ever with the advent of the cell phone, fax machines, e-mail, computers, etc., for all the employees to sit in the same office. Everything required can be accomplished without being able to touch the person you’re doing business with. In fact, with video conferencing and conference calls, this work-at-home organization is practical, valuable and satisfying to all involved and the employer gets more productivity in the bargain.

Try it, start slowly and follow this basic model. Select an excellent employee and start with one day at home followed by more as it develops and works out to everyone’s satisfaction. It will expand. It works. Make certain you design a measuring process to determine productivity as it is crucial for successful implementation.