SuperManager Podcast: Remote Employees – Creating a Cohesive Culture
Christine: You’re listening to SuperManager, the podcast for people who manage people and business with ideas and expert interviews to help you be a SuperManager.
Sam: All right, welcome to this week’s SuperManager podcast. Today I’ve got my super friends with me and they are,
Sally: My name is Sally Bowles, Prefix Technologies. I handle sales and I manage our techs to make sure everything’s taken care of.
Tasha: I’m Tasha with Web Design by Knight, we do website design, website security, website management for businesses.
Bryan: And I’m Bryan Cavanaugh with the Cavanaugh Law Firm, I specialize in labor and employment law for small to medium sized businesses.
Sam: And I am Samantha Naes with CN video, we do corporate video production. I have a client and they have a headquarters and then they have branches kind of throughout Illinois and they’re expanding into the St Louis area. But it can be difficult when you’ve got employees that aren’t all located at headquarters because at headquarters you see everybody every day you run into them in the bathroom, in the lunch room, getting coffee and have conversation. How do you make people that aren’t physically there with you every day feel like part of the team, they actually do on a regular basis, they call it the SCU Weekday update where management gets together and they do a little news report, kind of the state of the company and they talk about these are the new hires and these are the new products that are coming out and this is how we did last quarter and just news that people want to know and they publish these videos. We even include a blooper at the end and then the employees have the opportunity to watch these videos as they come out and be in the know about what’s going on. It’s worked out really well for them, but I’m sure there are a lot of different ideas, a lot of different situations that are out there when it comes to people working remotely.
Sally: Absolutely, I think if people feel as if they’re part of a team, they feel committed and part of that company, which is gonna obviously make them a better employee. Give you more longevity out of that employee, but I think you also need to recognize someone is remote so you don’t have the facial expressions. You don’t get the body language, so you’re going to have to take time as a manager to figure out, is that somebody that prefers email? Is that somebody who wants that voice to voice on the phone?
Sam: We actually went through that with Olivia… Olivia doesn’t get a voice in this very often. She’s just the lady recording with the headset on in the corner. We had that issue and we started using Teams where we can do video chat with each other and we can text on the computer or use the cell phone, new video chat and it does make a difference. Being able to see facial expressions and nodding of heads and things like that.
Sally: I think you form a quicker human relationship with them if you can see them. Even if it’s doing a Skype call once a week for a half an hour with somebody remotely can make a huge difference to that employee.
Sam: That seems to be important to today’s workforce. People want to feel like they’re a part of things. They want to feel like they’re a part of a team.
Tasha: Yeah, and you have to foster that from the beginning and you have to have a plan moving forward, especially as your team grows or if you have a larger organization that has remote employees, you have to have processes in place of, you know, when are our connection points, what kind of program are we using to keep everybody on task? How do we know everybody’s doing what they’re say they’re doing so that you end up in the same place that you want to be. And contrary to popular belief, not everybody can be a remote employee. You know, I’ve interviewed people for our virtual team and they basically admitted flat out, you know, if I’m not in an office environment where I have my peers around me, I’m not going to be as effective in my job.
Sam: I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, Tom Allen, he’s an IT recruiter. He, he’s talking with people that he’s trying to place in a new job. It’s becoming more and more common with them that they don’t want to work remotely. They want to have that comradery and,
Tasha: Right.
Sam: Because now you can shop from home and have things delivered. You can stay in your pajamas all day. Some people want to get out of the house and be around other people.
Tasha: Yeah, but it’s really an individual thing, so you have to be able to assess your team and figure out who can be remote and who can’t be remote. And if you’re a virtual office, like my team is a virtual office so we never go into an office, but we’re all okay with that. And we have processes in place.
Sam: Do you use Skype or some kind of tool for… When you have a meeting you suggest over the phone or are you able to see each other?
Tasha: Normally we’re on the phone. All my team is local to the St Louis area.
Sam: Okay.
Tasha: So that we can meet as a team if that or meet with clients, that kind of thing. But besides just picking up the phone, that’s a lot of our communications phone, email and we also have some scheduling tasks, scheduling programs that we use.
Sam: Do you at least have like a party or something, occasionally where everybody comes to,
Tasha: We try to meet on a quarterly basis just to touch bases.
Sam: That makes sense.
Sally: I think she brought up the, one of the most important points in that is during the hiring process, try to understand whether or not they’re able to work remotely, but is that person gonna enjoy it,
Tasha: Yes.
Sally: Enough to stay with the company?
Sam: You might be getting into more personality testing with that. I’ve found that when I interview someone they will give whatever answer they think I want to hear and so it’s really hard to find out. Like if you ask someone, are you going to be okay working remotely, working from home? Whether they are or not, they’re gonna say, Oh yeah, absolutely.
Sally: I would love to.
Tasha: Who wouldn’t want to work from home. There are also questions you can ask during the interview process to figure out how people work best. If they work best with teams, if they work best on their own, everybody says, yeah, I’d love to work from home, but one of the downsides of working from home is that you’re at home. Right, and there’s all those other things that can be a distraction. Do you have a designated space for your work or are you just working on your couch?
Sam: I’m picturing myself, I’ve had, I’ve done client calls, well, taking laundry out of the washer and putting it in the dryer. We’ve all done things like that.
Tasha: Yeah, it’s definitely it… It takes a certain type of person, especially if they’re going to be full time remote. That takes a certain type of person, but it also for your organization takes a certain kind of trust.
Sam: Yeah.
Tasha: That they are actually completing tasks. And they’re actually, you know, if you’re paying them to work 40 hours a week, are they really working 40 hours a week? I mean, is that, is every,
Sam: Is their performance the same whether they’re in the office or whether they’re, yeah, I would imagine for some people it might be better,
Sally: I know it is.
Sam: If they’re off on their own and for some people they may need to be in an office environment. And then I’m assuming that there are some legal compliance issues involved as well with having people working remotely.
Bryan: In the hiring process, I agree that people are going to say, Oh yes, that sounds like a good idea, but that’s where it’s important to watch her body language or to pay attention to the kind of the follow up question they ask about, well is it all remote or do we get to see each other, you know, a couple of times a week, that sort of thing. You can pick up about whether the person’s going to be resistant to that or not. So I think we’re talking about two kinds of remote employees. One is kind of the people working at a satellite office, like your credit union example, Sam.
Sam: Right.
Bryan: And it’s important there to make sure that those people feel like they’re part of the team, that they’re necessary parts of the organization so that they don’t feel like second class citizens working at a remote location.
Sam: I think that happens a lot. I’ve had several clients say, we’re going to do this video, come to headquarters. And just in passing they’ll say, well, we need to capture this for the Denver office because they’re feeling a little bit left out. So I think they’re aware of it and it happens when you’re not at headquarters, you’re just not where it’s happening.
Bryan: Right, and then the other kind of remote employee we’re talking about is the work from home or work from wherever the employee chooses to. From a legal compliance standpoint, the first thing to do is to identify what laws you’re dealing with, what employment laws you’re dealing with in the location where every employee is located. So it sounds simple enough to say, we have, you know, 25 employees and they all work from home. Well, you need to identify exactly where home is for each of these 25 employees because now you have an employee, you have an office, you’re doing business where each of those 25 employees is located. And from a legal compliance standpoint, you’re dealing with several levels here. You’re dealing with federal law, which of course covers all 50 states. You know, formally for the most part you’re dealing with state laws. You’re dealing with county laws, local laws, municipality laws.
Sam: So if you have an employee, for example, that your office is in St. Louis and they’ve moved to California, are you then responsible, as a business, for following California laws for this employee?
Bryan: You need to identify what you might be dealing with. A lot of employment laws don’t apply until you have a certain level of employees in that state. So for instance, a lot of employment laws say this law applies as soon as you have 15 employees in that state. But other laws apply once you have one employee in that state. So I got a call years ago from a client who said, I know someone who wants to work part time from us for home doing stuff. She lives in Hawaii. Does that sound okay? And I said, you’re now going to be doing business in Hawaii. We needed check. You know, do you need a business license? What are the requirements there? What are the laws that apply, you know, are you going to have to be paying unemployment taxes in Hawaii now? The best example of this now is a protection against discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation. That’s an example of a law that’s not protected on the federal level and it’s protected state by state, so some states protect it other states don’t protect it. Here in Missouri, it’s not protected. In Illinois, it is protected. So there’s all kinds of factors to consider to know what employment laws are protected, what should go in your employee handbook or employment policies for each employee and what protections are you dealing with. This is something you want to know from a risk management standpoint.
Sam: I feel like more people take the decision to allow people to work from home much more lightly.
Tasha: Yeah.
Sam: It’s, it’s kind of a I, a lot of people feel like, Hey, can I, oh, I don’t see why not take a laptop or do you have a computer at home? And so this has been a real eye opener. There’s more to consider,
Bryan: Right.
Sam: When you’re doing something like that.
Bryan: Right.
Sally: Absolutely.
Sam: And technology as well is another issue?
Tasha: Yeah, probably a legal standpoint. Also, you know, and Sally, you might be able to talk more on this on if they’re bringing their own laptop, if they’re coming from their own network, how does that infect, your network and your business and your, what’s going on in your company?
Sally: Well, a larger organization I’m sure is supplying a laptop,
Sam: You’d be amazed…
Sally: And they do that to make sure that you’re on a secure machine. Right. But that person that’s working remotely may also be jumping on their own laptop to check this,
Bryan: Or their cellphone, to text.
Sally: Oh yeah, yeah. And now all of a sudden it could compromise your network. So again, it boils down to policy, communication, being open, there’s software that’s developed now that if an employee is working remotely and that relationship becomes severed for whatever reason, you can push a button and whatever was, your company’s will just go away on that machine. It’s not gonna take away their personal things, but whatever was associated with your company.
Sam: That’s a good point. If people are taking work home, they have a copy of that and if they’re are longer an employee, what copies of what do they have on their home computer, on their cell phone.
Sally: And especially if you’ve got somebody let’s say in sales and they live in a different state and they’ve got all your customer contact as well as your prospects, is that your information or their information? You know what I mean? You need to think about all of that and protect your own company and the managers need to be in communication with their IT company before they allow someone to just start working from home for whatever reason.
Sam: Right.
Tasha: Yeah.
Bryan: To follow up on what Sally said, you know, confidentiality issues arise too. So you could be working in an industry that has legally imposed confidentiality requirements like the medical field and HIPAA, but any sort of, you know, employer is going to have certain expectations of confidentiality even if they’re not legally imposed. You don’t want your employees storing information in an unsecured manner or discussing information in an unsecured manner.
Sam: If you have a need for employees to work remotely. And maybe the types of employees that you’re hiring, that is the type of company culture that they want, that they need that flexibility. I have a client who, they have people that input data and their primary employees are stay at home moms who want to be able to work while they’re taking care of their kids while they’re at home. Or maybe you don’t have a brick and mortar building. What are some of the things that you can do to help ensure that you don’t run into legal problems, that you don’t run into technical problems, that you don’t run into company culture issues where people are feeling left out.
Tasha: I guess a question for Brian would be do you need legal contracts for those people?
Bryan: I think that’s a good idea and I think you want to get the remote employees to agree to follow those policies and procedures to just use this technology and not use other technology.
Sam: At the very least, you should have something in your, a section in your employee handbook about when you’re working from home, right?
Tasha: Yeah, but if your whole business is focused around either satellite offices or remote virtual office, it seems like legally you would want to contact somebody like Brian to figure out what are your liabilities as a business and what liabilities do you have if something goes wrong in contracts in place so that people can’t be remote or satellite employees and then jeopardize your company’s future.
Sam: Right.
Sally: Absolutely.
Sam: What about, what about from a technical standpoint, what are some things that people can do from a personnel standpoint and helping people feel included? We’ve got the Microsoft suite and we use Teams, so that we can send quick messages or we can pull up a full blown video chat and see each other’s faces and do group meetings and things like that. What are some other suggestions for ways to make that work?
Sally: Confidentiality is huge with for a remote employee. I mean if they’re going to have your customer contacts and they all of a sudden become upset with you and go to work for a competitor, you need to be able to protect yourself. I know that Slack is getting more and more popular as far as,
Sam: What is Slack?
Sally: It’s an app that a lot of companies use. You can put your whole department on it. If there’s an announcement or anything, you just send it out and it goes to everybody.
Sam: Oh, okay.
Sally: It’s a small thing,
Sam: Like an intranet app?
Sally: Yeah, it’s a small thing, but if you’re that one at home or you’re that one in the satellite office, suddenly you’re like, you know, I am part of the team. Right. So I think anything you can do to make those people feel part of the team. I know one of our remote employees does an excellent job. He’s well suited for being a remote employee.
Sam: Yeah.
Sally: And I think that’s key, also.
Tasha: I think there’s also other things you can do. Like we have an online task management scheduler so we can see where everybody is in the process of our tasks and who has what to do, what the deadlines are, that kind of thing. That helps. But also things like a password manager because if you have more than a few employees that are working remotely, if you are the gatekeeper of your password manager and anything goes wrong, you can remove access from them having all the passwords, you know like client passwords so you can remove with a password manager, you can say, Oh this employee violated policy or is disgruntled or whatever is leaving. You can automatically with a click of a button, take all of their password privileges away,
Sam: If you’ve given them access into the company remotely, you need to be able to take it away without them bringing the laptop back and physically handing it to you. That’s a good point.
Sally: And you can remove somebody’s access in a matter of seconds. I mean it’s not a big,
Tasha: Yeah.
Sally: You know, to do labor type of thing at all.
Sam: Sally, you said that your remote employee is well suited for it, personality wise. What does that mean? What are some indications that somebody is well suited for it and what are some indications that they’re not?
Sally: He is somebody that constantly reaches out to everybody anyway, so his personality is very happy, very upbeat, but he also knows himself well enough to stay connected with people, meaning our customers. But we have another employee that I don’t think would be well suited for it at all. He needs the verbal encouragement, he needs advice, he needs to see people and he’s a great employee but he needs to be in the office.
Sam: Maybe people that are a little bit more proactive in communication are better suited for working remotely than,
Sally: I hesitate to say it’s outgoing people cause in my example that is what it is. But I think people before they take on a remote position to need to fully understand what it means, don’t be so eager to take that job that it’s not a good fit for you or the company. Fully understand that you may be home alone for 30 or 32 hours a week and maybe a few hours.
Sam: Make sure it’s a good company culture fit between the employee and the company.
Tasha: And making that cultural reference, my team functions awesome and I’m very happy with all that they do. But one of the things that our company culture is, is don’t stay stuck because when you remotely isolate yourself, whether that’s a satellite office or in your home office, you’re more apt to try to struggle through something that you can overcome.
Sam: It’s harder to reach out and ask for help when people aren’t sitting next to you.
Tasha: Exactly. So that’s one of the things, you know, I’m always like, that’s one of the last things I say to my remote employees is don’t stay stuck if you have a problem call, email, text, so we can all move on successfully.
Sam: I say that too.
Tasha: Um, so that’s kind of one of my litmus tests of when I’m interviewing and going through that task is how do you deal with problems and roadblocks. You just sit there and try to hammer it out. And that might be an indicator that that person might not be the best suited for your company working from home.
Sally: That’s a good point, cause you can’t see each other’s body language either. So that person that is at their desk with their head down and you hear them saying, Ugh, you know, they need help, but you don’t know that remotely.
Sam: With that being said, does anybody have a good office horror story having to do with remote employees?
Sally: Well, one of our clients had a remote employee and they thought they were doing an excellent job and then they found out that they were interviewing and looking for a new job during that work time and kind of filling their schedule. You know what I mean? Appearing as if they were busy or maybe at a meeting, but they were really out,
Sam: Their meeting was a job interview.
Sally: Their meeting was really going, you know, find a job. And again, as Bryan pointed out, you have to have full trust.
Sam: Yeah.
Christine: Thanks for listening to SuperManager by CN Video Production. Visit our website at cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of SuperManager resources or give us a call at 314 VIDEO ME.