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Thursday October 27th 2011 2pm
Three Barriers to Home Working
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Having worked with over 500 companies in design and deployment of home agent strategies over the past two years, clear threads of highly successful implementations and barriers to entry are emerging – fraudulent activity, cultural connection and control.
Progressive and innovative organizations understand that the question has evolved from “if” to “when” home reps become part of the customer contact strategy.
Short-term, while we refine our business processes and technologies, building out a home agent model within the neighborhood of an existing contact center is a smart and low-risk way to start, unless there is a proven, incompatible labor market.
Longer term, the best employees will demand mobility from us, as the technology is present to support it. The question then becomes, “will your organization be one that pursues best talent by removing geographical restrictions or will you settle for employees that you can control by tethering them to your home town?”
The innovators are already thinking about these things. Meanwhile, they are preparing to move critical mass to the teleworking model in many organizational functions, far beyond the contact center work force.
For those that get stuck in the strategic analysis process and struggle to move forward due to these barriers, best practices and processes in high utilization are below. They should encourage a fresh look, or perhaps inspire your next round of continuous improvements.
- The risk associated with fraudulent behavior or manipulation of data at home seems daunting.
How can we reduce or control someone’s ability to write down non-public information in a home office? How can we
prevent a roommate from looking over the shoulder of a home-based employee and writing down sensitive information?
The risk at home clearly is larger than in our contact centers.
Survey results from a study AHCC (At Home Customer Contacts) conducted earlier this year with over 90 companies
deploying the home agent model showed that 95% of companies experienced same or fewer incidents of fraudulent
behavior at home vs. in-house. How is that achieved?
Tools that many companies utilize to mitigate risk of fraudulent activities include surveillance and controls
that function as both monitors and as deterrents. Specifically, tools that companies are using include webcams
(continuous or intermittent throughout the day); use of IVRs for segments of calls where sensitive information
is conveyed from customer to company; and added layers of pre-employment screening. Others conduct frequent
home visits (even weekly) and sometimes include coaching and feedback sessions. There are a number of strong
levels of control that can be integrated into business processes. They will obviously impact the cost model;
analysis is required to find the optimal balance for your organization.
- There is a higher risk that home-based employees will not connect and subscribe to the
company’s culture.
Do employees need to be in-person to collaborate with team members, or in-person at company events where
key messaging and vision is delivered by management to forge cultural connections? IBM and AT&T don’t
think so. Forty percent of IBM’s employees work remotely and a third of AT&T’s managers are post-geographic.
To ensure values are well-defined for all employees, a best practice is to develop a framework to evaluate
core values or cultural pillars, vehicles used on location to effectively connect values to people, followed
by tools we can use to connect remote team members. There are many effective means and channels available,
most of which are already in use for connecting headquarters to regional offices, and teleworkers to their
corporate-based counterparts (i.e. chat, webcasts, telepresence). By starting here, the balance of the work
will flow quite naturally.
- There may be risk that employees won’t work as expected (or as hard) if out of eyesight.
This is no longer a majority-held fear. We have been managing productivity via technology for the past decade,
and we’ve gotten very good at it. For some, this fear may linger at the C-suite level, and can generally be
dissolved with data and analysis on effective business processes and management. Data may not carry the day
immediately to allay this dated concern, but it wears down the barriers.
When we find managers and supervisors who believe employees won’t work as expected (or will work less) at
home, alarm bells should ring. We have leaders with trust issues, and we need to address them before we
can optimize a distributed work environment. A best practice is to send these members home to work and
experience teleworking first hand.
To summarize, transitions always require reevaluation of existing management processes and approaches
in order to maximize benefits. Examining perceived and actual barriers and risks through that lens has
helped leading organizations move forward.
Michele Rowan is President of At Home Customer Contacts, helping companies develop and implement virtual
contact center solutions. See
www.athomecustomercontacts.com for more information.