Usually when we read about the concepts of workshifting, being a digital nomad, a web-worker or any other term related to working from outside of an office building, we usually view it through the lens of the employee. Articles tend to focus on how the employee benefits from the ability to work from outside of the cubicle. But, one area that's not always covered are the hurdles that managers of remote workers face as well as strategies to help them adapt to have a mobile workforce. As the number of employees workshifting continues to grow, it is important that we consider ways in which we can better help managers.Recently Terrence Gargiulo, President of makingstories.net produced an excellent whitepaper focusing solely on this topic: The Top Ten Strategies for Managers of Mobile Workers: Surviving and Thriving in the Emerging Mobile Workforce. There are tons of great tips included throughout the whitepaper including stats, benefits and challenges of having a mobile workforce, and detailed strategies to help managers.
Here are Terrence's top ten strategies for managers of mobile workers...
Top Ten Strategies for Managers of Mobile Workers
- Focus on building relationships
- Streamline communictions
- Incorporate less didactic forms of communications
- Spend more time listening
- Let mobile workers define communication and reporting practices they want to follow
- Manage deliverables not activities
- Engage in more frequent and informal performance management activities
- Give complete trust until given a concrete behavioral reason to do otherwise
- Use adaptive management styles tailored to individual workers
- Leverage technology
You can download the entire whitepaper, as well as a bunch of other useful whitepapers, eBooks and reports, over on the Downloads page.
Do you manage a mobile workforce? If so, how have you adjusted from having your team in the office every day to having them dispersed all over the place? What tips can you provide to help other managers that may be struggling?
Photo by: joelogo
