One of the things many of us like about ArcStone is the flexible work environment. Flexible means (at least to me) a recognition that to be most productive and effective you need to have a sensible work / life balance. Sometimes people will be more productive at night, want to work in the early morning, need to take a half-day with little warning, take a two-hour lunch to fit in a work out, etc.
This “flexibility” has been an ongoing experiment. Despite my best intentions and knowing that it benefits everyone from employee to customer – it still occasionally annoys me.
As a manager I frequently need to have short status / update conversations with my fellow ArcStonians. The flexible work schedule sometimes gets in my way and forces me/us to be slower to respond than I would like. I think this is a common feeling for those in management roles over here.
A couple of days ago my frustration level hit a peak and I sent a long, whiney email to the entire office, ranting about needing better communication and consistency so that we can work together more efficiently.
I asked for feedback and help from people and yea, verily yea, I got it.
Over the last few days I’ve been able to reflect, collect, and review the responses from my coworkers. I’ve compiled a partial list below and thought I’d share our efforts with the world. Hopefully they will be of use…
Five Handy Telecommuting Tactics for a Small Office
1. Use IM. In a virtual / mixed telecommuting environment you should have IM running for several reasons.
Instant Messaging (IM) can let your colleagues know what’s going on – in one place, at a glance. You can mark your status and write a brief blurb as to what you’re up to. If you’re working but don’t want to be disturbed you can update your status to reflect that. This is really helpful if you’ve got several team members that are far-flung.
At ArcStone we generally use Yahoo for instant messaging – though there are a ton of options here. Yahoo is free to use and easy to set-up. Many of us use arcstone.FirstIntiialLastname (eg arcstone.dcarnes) for their work accounts. My personal combination is Adium as the client and Yahoo as the server. Adium is cool – I like the duck, he flaps his wings and quacks when I get a message and it’s free to use (the fact that it’s free is probably more compelling than the quacking / flapping).
2. Conform to Schedule. Post a set schedule online – then everyone, management, co-workers, individuals – will clearly understand expectations and availability.
We use a simple Google doc spreadsheet with Name, VOIP Extensions, Cell, Email, IM, and Work Schedules – posted for all to see.
In addition to the posted standard work schedule, as is typical for working in an office – exceptions are the norm, we also update an office Google calendar that displays status for everyone, meetings, etc. We wrote a script that refreshes a feed every five minutes and displays the current status on both our Intranet home page and on a flat screen strategically posted to be seen on the way to the loo.
3. Post and Maintain a Employee Directory.
The above Google doc handles this nicely. When people are telecommuting you need to make it as easy for them to find eachother as you can. A simple easy to use and maintain resource directory is vital.
4. Update a Public In / Out Board Religiously.
We’ve handled this with the virtual In / Out board mentioned above. This is a lot more useful than you might think. There are a lot of times when people have to go to the doctor, have off site meetings, etc. Just knowing when colleagues will be available again enables you to be more accurate and responsive to customers and eachother.
5. Make sure people understand the phone system and can forward calls as needed.
Our phone system enables us to forward calls to another number. It’s very easy to do using modern phones – phone forwarding should be understood and used by the telecommuters. Better yet if you use VOIP phones like us – telecommuters can take their phones home with them and use them just like they’re in the office.
I’ll add more items as I think of them – please feel free to comment. I’d like to improve this list – if you have ideas let me know!
