ASK GERBER: WHAT'S YOUR STANCE ON REMOTE ACCESS FOR EMPLOYEES?
by Randy Gerber, Founder & Principal
At Gerber, we support employees working from home—but only in moderation—because we think the idea is far better in theory than in practice. The opportunity to work from home (or Starbucks) when life outside of work requires us to do so is what gives our employees the flexibility they need to lead balanced lives. And it’s one of the perks we are proud to offer our team. But, we do require it to be used sparingly because 55% of communication takes place through body language, which means email or a phone call just won’t cut it 100% of the time.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that remote access is right for all employees or for all companies, however. Take Yahoo as an example: President and CEO, Marissa Mayer’s decision to completely remove the opportunity to work remotely certainly wouldn’t work for us, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong to have done so. We’re a team of 12: Yahoo is a team of 13,600—it’s pretty tough for us to speculate whether or not it’s what’s right for them.
And the same goes for your organization or any organization for that matter, which is why we suggest considering the following questions before making the remote access decision.
o Can we implement and manage a system of checks-and-balances that will hold our employees accountable for work and hold our management team accountable to the employee?
o Do we have the staff, technology, and support bandwidth needed to embrace remote access?
o Will the decision to allow employees to work outside of the office upset our customers or clients or impact our relationship with them?
So here’s how it works for us: when severe weather prevents safe travel to or from the office, when the kids are sick, when the hardwood floor is being installed and the spouse can’t be there, or when they’re feeling a bit under the weather and would rather stay in the jammies—we ask employees to, yes, please work remotely.
In the interest of full-disclosure, we have had an employee in previous years work remotely majority of the time, managing our online marketing and social media efforts from two hours away. While working from home worked perfectly for her situation, even she made it into the office once a week for face-time with the team.
