Posts Tagged ‘Productivity’

There is no question; telecommuting offers a host of benefits. There is also no question that it is difficult to implement on a large scale.

Why - mainly because we as a society have a “need” to supervise our employees. It’s almost compulsive. After all, how can I ensure that my employees are giving an honest day’s work if I can’t watch them for every moment of the day?

As I pointed out in my last article on the subject, there are much better ways to motivate employees. In addition, we need to stop thinking about employees as machines. We can not demand maximum efficiency and constant activity from them. To think we can is plain stupid.

One approach to this motivation problem is to change the way we compensate employees. Currently, we mainly compensate based on time.

What if we measured employees’ actual productivity (rather than time sitting in a chair)? Wouldn’t that motivate them – whether they were at an office or at home telecommuting?

For instance, going back to our telecommuting example:

What if a call centre tracked the average time an employee spent talking to customers per day and then used that amount of time as a baseline for salary? Would that be motivating for employees to answer the call – even if they are at home?

Yes, that simplistic model could be abused – it would need some more thought. This is just a starting point for discussion. Keep in mind though, that the current model of hourly wages can also be abused. There are many organizations that have staff that are just putting in hours – even though they are on site.

Let’s start thinking about how we can make telecommuting work – for our organizations, for our staff, and most of all, for our environment.