Originally Posted by
fancypanz
Me and a coworker are trying to get a "work from home day" to catch on. For the boss to sign on, we have to put a plan together on how employees would stay in touch and be productive from home. Does anyone's job have a work from home day, has anyone tried to get one? I'd be interested to know how it works.
Everyone at my company works from home two days a week and one full week a month. Here's what we do to make it work:
- Have fairly strictly defined work hours. Everybody doesn't have to have the same work hours (I start and end an hour earlier than most people, for example), but there has to be a pretty substantial overlap, and you have to be there during those hours.
- Require everyone to be reachable via IM during work hours.
- Keep our in-office days focused on stuff that makes sense to do in the office, and out of office days focused on stuff that can be done independently or with remote collaboration.
- Hire the right people. You can't do this if people are not responsible, willing to be held accountable, able to collaborate effectively, able to use initiative appropriately, etc.
- Hold people accountable. Setting up telecommuting in a workplace isn't like giving people genius grants and turning them loose -- you're supposed to accomplish things, not just futz around being brilliant. In many ways, while oversight is obviously less intensive, accountability must be even stricter than in a conventional workplace. People get fired here for failure to perform -- they get fired for failure to show up for work on time, for that matter. Not many workplaces will really hold you accountable for your actual performance; you need to if you're telecommuting.