I attended a webinar today hosted by FierceCIO. It was pretty basic, Telecommuting is good for these reasons… Managers are afraid for these reasons… A lot of the same stuff that I consider to be common knowledge in the Remote Work and Telecommuting arena. For this post I’m going to take some time to properly explain what was presented and then challenge the industry.

What I did find interesting, though, where some new statistics provided by Chris Neal, a knowledgeable telecom and high-tech industry analyst and consultant. During his part of the presentation he discussed a recent survey his firm conducted with 144 IT decision makers from companies with more than 1000 employees. What he found was that the most common fear of IT decision makers – network security. There seemed to be a lot of fear concerning how remote users access the internal network. In addition, his research found that the most common reasons companies were looking to Remote Work were to “Increase Worker Productivity (42%)”, “Enhanced Employee Availability (23%)”, and “Increased Collaboration (16%)”.

Chris then finished with some additional stats that pretty much equally supported the fact that Remote Work is growing and IT professionals are constantly looking for ways to increase network security both on-site and now in people’s homes.

Next to present was the General Manager of Telework Exchange, Cindy Auten. She gave another basic presentation on Telework, citing government and a few private company examples. Good information, but basic nonetheless.

It seems that every seminar, webinar, presentation, etc. I attend about Remote Work or Telecommuting just covers the REASONS why people should do it. They all seem to miss the “How.” It is my belief that enough people now know about Telecommuting and its benefits, but what they want to know is HOW to make it successful in their organization. It is important to note that I do not believe in any one way of managing or working remotely, but I do support a combination of best practices.

I think it is critically important for companies considering Remote Work or Telecommuting programs to consider how a work model like this will fit into their own work processes and culture. Without successful integration, I believe your program is doomed to fail. Even if it succeeds at first, without the proper documented and trained support, your Remote Work program will eventually fail as the knowledge of work processes is lost in the second or third generation of Remote Workers.

Interested in a presentation that outlines the “How-to” of creating a Remote Work or Telecommuting Program? Email me below and I’ll send you a copy of one of my latest presentations on this topic. This presentation will serve as a Diagnostic Tool of sorts that will help you either evaluate your current program or assess what needs to be done to create a new one.

Brandon Dempsey
SuiteCommute
1-888-878-4832
Brandon@suitecommute.com

CIO.com just released a great article on “Telecommuting Support: Five Tips to Enhance Your Network” .

This is a great article for IT departments who are looking for ways to improve the network security of their telecommuters. In the article it lists these 5 steps:

1. Make sure your employees have strong home broadband connections.
2. Be sure to have a wireless backup option.
3. Understand that security goes beyond the VPN.
4. Know that strong software can be just as important as strong network design
5. Keep your wireless devices in line.

In addition to these steps I would challenge IT departments to truly understand what information is being accessed and by who. Many times employees may not have access to the information they need to complete their job, or may be given too much access to the company network. Either extreme may cause serious disruptions in the employee’s productivity or network vulnerability. It is important that the employee, manager, and IT department are on the same page for what needs to be accessed. This will help to ensure accessibility as well as security. You would be surprised how many company’s miss this mark, and pay for it in the long run.

For many employees they may not even need access to the company’s network. If their work output is producing reports, reviewing documents or information, or submitting electronic information via word or excel documents, then they may be able to get by with just email access. Talk to your employees and see what they feel they need to have access to in order to complete their job, many times employees may not need all that you have granted to them or need more, and are just afraid to ask because they don’t want to lose the privilege of working remotely.