Mobile Workforce Management 101

1
Managing the Output
Managers understand all too well how
employee relations, company culture
and workplace dynamics affect a team’s
productivity levels. For a manager tasked with
handling a telecommuting team, the stakes
are just as high but the landscape completely
different.
In a traditional office setting, you see your staff
busy at their workstations, brainstorming with
their colleagues or making small talk around
the water cooler. Making sure they’re doing
what they’re supposed to be doing during
office hours is a simple enough task. But how
does promoting and tracking productivity
change when you don’t see your team on a
day-to-day basis?

Managing the Output
Promoting Productivity
A Forbes Magazine article titled “4 Surprising Truths
about Workplace Productivity” may have a couple of
productivity tips you can capitalize on:
☼☼ Busywork thrills.ResearchersattheUniversityof
California, Irvine found that even employees who
prefer to be challenged at work subconsciously
love rote tasks that require minimal brainwork—
things like sorting through email, filling in trackers
orevenjustorganizingtheirworkspaces.Busywork
gives them a sense of accomplishment without
overtaxing them, allowing them to stay productive
without the risk of burnout.
Management Tip: Give your teleworkers the chance
to achieve this balance by assigning just enough
major tasks to get them through the shift while still
allowing space for minor busywork.
☼☼ Social media. Banning social media websites
like Facebook and Twitter may seem like a no-
brainer for a manager, but experts say such
measures can actually be counterproductive. A
2013 survey by Ipsos and Microsoft revealed that
46% of employees believe access to social media
and social media tools improved their productivity.
Management Tip: The mental breaks and mood
boosts provided by social media are valuable
commodities. Think of social media as a tool rather
than a drain on productivity.

Managing the Output
Tracking Productivity
The internet puts a huge arsenal of productivity-
tracking tools at your disposal—tools you can easily
adapt to a fully mobile workforce or to a mixed group
of office- and home-based employees.
Time-tracking software like Time Doctor, for instance,
allow you to monitor your team’s application and
Internet usage, log work hours, and even record
screenshots and keystrokes for each worker’s
computer at specified intervals.
The main argument against this type of tracking
is that while it’s technologically feasible, it isn’t an
accurate measure of productivity. To make sense
of your team’s numerical tracking results, therefore,
the Midwest Institute for Telecommuting Education
recommends that you factor the following metrics
into your productivity statistics:
☼☼ Quantity of work
☼☼ Deadline management
☼☼ Customer satisfaction
☼☼ Quality of work
It is also important to minimize the gap between your
in-office and mobile workplace processes as much
as possible. For instance, if you use a combination of
Skype and email to coordinate with your office staff,
use the same channels for your teleworkers. This
way, productivity can be evaluated objectively and
efficiently.

2
Managing the People
Managing a mobile workforce involves more
than just number-crunching. In Part One, we
covered strategies for managing the output
of a telecommuting team—that is, promoting
and tracking productivity. But what about
managing the people?

Managing the People
A Balancing Act
Studies from Stanford University and Pennsylvania
State University have found that people who work
from home enjoy greater overall job satisfaction,
better work-life balance and lower stress levels, all
of which contribute to improved productivity. The
benefits of teleworking for both companies and
employees are manifold and well-documented.
That said, managing a mobile workforce still remains
a delicate balancing act between allowing the
individual a greater measure of freedom and making
sure that the in-office culture of engagement and
collaboration extends to the telecommuting team.
Experts believe that the key to this balancing act is a
strong corporate identity.
A Strong Corporate Identity
There’s been an interesting trend among big-name
businesses over the past couple of years: as small
and midsize companies revamp their policies to
accommodate telecommuting, many big businesses
are doing the opposite and encouraging employees
to get back to the office.
Examples include Yahoo, Best Buy and Hewlett-
Packard, all of which have either axed or revised their
teleworking programs in favor of the more traditional
office-based setup.The need for greater collaboration
and innovation is the driving force behind this change,
along with concerns over the disconnect between
remote and in-house teams.

Managing the People
The main takeaway for this is the need for a stronger
company culture.A successful organization is built on
the sharing of common goals and visions among all
team players. No matter where your employees are
based, you need to pay attention to these two things:
☼☼ Frequent communication patterns. One of
the biggest risks in telecommuting is the lack of
communication between mobile and in-house
employees. Such a breach can result in a failure
to collaborate properly on mission-critical projects
or—less tangibly but no less significantly—a loss
of sense of purpose.
Management Tip: Schedule regular in-person all-
hands meetings to make sure everyone stays on the
same page.
☼☼ Appropriate technology. As mentioned in Part
One, you want your in-office work setup to be
mirrored in your teleworkers’ remote workspaces
as closely as possible. More importantly, you want
an IT environment capable of supporting your
remote team’s communication and collaboration
needs.
Management Tip: Cloud-based services are one of
the best ways to streamline document storage and
facilitate collaboration across the entire organization,
independent of your work setup.

Managing the People
What about control?
Organizational behavior and management
expert Charles Handy raised this question in the
May 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review:
“How do you manage people whom you do not
see?”
The answer, he says, is by trusting them. This
goes against the grain of managerial tradition,
which is all about maximum efficiency brought
about through maximum control. This is why a
telecommuting setup is a challenge for many
managers: to make it work, you need to learn
to ease up on the individual reins while making
sure nobody strays from the group’s main path.
Management is a balancing act in more ways
than one.

3
Managing the Setup
As we mentioned in the previous parts of this
e-book, management is a balancing act—
one that requires you to manage people
along with their output. But mobile workforce
management turns the balancing act into a
juggling act by throwing a third object into the
mix: the setup itself.

Managing the Setup
The Good
A telecommuting setup offers a company a lot of
potential perks, especially where human resources
is concerned. It allows you to hire skilled workers
from out of state without requiring them to switch
zip codes. Research also shows that flexible work
arrangements make for happier and more productive
employees, lower attrition rates and significant
savings on facilities costs.
The Bad
That said, teleworking setups come with their fair
share of risks. We touched on productivity and
company culture issues in Parts One and Two. Holes
in security are another risk, but that is more an IT
issue than a managerial one. For managers and their
teams, the primary concerns unique to a work-from-
home setup include:
☼☼ Isolation. Solitude more or less comes with the
telecommuter’s territory. For some people, this is
a good thing—it’s easier to focus on tasks without
the distraction of water-cooler chats. But for
workers whose jobs call for lots of collaboration
and brainstorming, this can be a real disadvantage.
Management Tip: Arrange a partial teleworking setup
if possible. A happy medium would be having the
employee work in the office for a few days each week
and the rest from home.

Managing the Setup
☼☼ Career path disadvantages. Some employees
feel that telecommuting robs them of chances for
career advancement, especially if they wish to
continue with the setup long-term. This is partially
true, as career paths that require strictly office-
based work are shut off to teleworkers.
Management Tip: Make it clear to your team that
promotions are ultimately merit-based and that
advancement opportunities will be open to deserving
employees whether they work in the office or from
home.
☼☼ Work-family balance. Telecommuting gives
employees more time to spend with their families,
but this creates new problems in the process.
According to a study published in the Journal of
Applied Psychology, teleworking reduces work-to-
family conflict but increases the risk of family-to-
work conflict.
Management Tip: To minimize family-to-work conflict,
instill a sense of accountability in each member of
your remote team. Once tasks have been delegated,
each employee must be able to manage his or her
own responsibilities. Nobody gets the short end of
the stick.

Managing the Setup
Final Thoughts
Telecommuting offers businesses so many
advantages, but its inherent limitations indicate
that it is by no means the perfect alternative
to a traditional office setup. Its suitability will
depend on factors like your company’s existing
facilities, the nature of your department’s work
and individual workers’ idiosyncrasies.
Ultimately, it can be a great supplement to your
personnel strategy provided you create a solid
but dynamic framework for it and master the
principles of mobile workforce management.

Managing the Setup
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Mobile Workforce Management 101

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Mobile Workforce Management 101