A short while ago, I was invited to speak (along with a panel of experts) about how to set up a telecommuting policy for your company.
The webinar was organized by AgilQuest – a company that offers software and services solutions for the mobile workforce – and moderated by Doug Lucy, AgilQuest’s director of marketing.
The webinar was divided into two main parts:
- Part 1 was about organizations that are just starting out with a new telework or flexible work strategy, and what they should include in their new telecommuting policy.
- Part 2 was about organizations that already have a telework or flexible work strategy in place, and the challenges they should be aware of in their existent telecommuting policy.
The webinar was chock-full of incredible tips that will help you avoid the common mistakes that organizations make in setting up their policies.
You can watch the 1 hour replay below, or if you prefer to read, the entire transcript is below the video as well.
Experts Panel
The following individuals were presenting on the panel (listed in order in which they appear on the webinar)
- Brooke Hamilton: Sustainability Projects Manager, Washington State Office of Financial Management
- Debra Dinnocenzo: President at VirtualWorks!
- Kate Lister: President at Global Workplace Analytics
- Emily Klein: Principal at Flextime Global
- Hassan Osman: Senior Program Manager at Cisco Systems and author of Influencing Virtual Teams
- Jason Morwick: Telework Consultant and co-author of Making Telework Work
- Chuck Wilsker: President & CEO of The Telework Coalition
Telecommuting Policy Webinar Replay: “Seven Experts on Telework and Flexible Workplace Policy”
Click play below to watch the webinar (video credit: AgilQuest).
Telecommuting Policy Webinar Video Transcript
Doug: Well good afternoon everyone, and welcome to another AgilQuest Workplace Leaders webinar. Today we’ve got an incredible lineup of panelists, all talking about telework and flexible workplace policy. This is a panel discussion to figure out where to start with your policies and how to change them over the life cycle of them. Here at AgilQuest, we hear an awful lot of people who are interested in how to setup policies for the very first time because they’re deploying our technology to get their program started and we hear things like “wish we had known this at the beginning.” “We wish we had included this.” And then from people who’ve been doing this for quite some time, we often have them turn to us for advice in what they should put into their policies or how to deal with specific situations. We’re really on the technology side, so we gathered a bunch of experts today to answer these kinds of questions. And we’ve got seven folks from various parts of telework and flexible work fields. We’ve got Brooke Hamilton, Chuck Wilsker, Debra Dinnocenzo, Emily Klein, Kate Lister, Jason Morwick, and Hassan Osman, who’ll be answering some of these basic questions to help you get started with the right policies and what to do once you actually got a program in place and it starts to evolve. We’ve got a lot of content here today. We’ve got a lot of panelists so we’re going to get jumping right in there. We’ve got their bios and a lot of information about what they’ve done in their companies as we actually answer these questions. We want to get to the content quickly. We want to get right to the experts. So we’re going to start off with part one of our questions and these are really aimed at organizations who are just beginning to deploy some kind of program and are interested in what kind of policy they should be setting up. So we’re going to start off with Brooke Hamilton. And our very question, which is “what’s the critical elements, what are the things that we should be putting into a brand new program from a policy perspective?” Brooke?
Brooke: Thanks, Doug. I’m happy to be here and excited to share my experience. From working in state government, I found that there are a couple critical elements that I needed to address before rolling out the policy. I believe that taking a phase approach is a really good avenue to have a solid policy at the end of your product. What I mean by that is understanding what the basic elements of your policy may be, test them, tweak from what you’ve learned, and then you’ll have a solid policy at the end. But before you can do that, it’s really critical that you know what the culture is within your organization. You need to understand what it is now and have a sense of where it’s moving in the future. That will give you an opportunity to determine “does my policy need to have a lot of structure behind it? Does it need to be very formalized or can there be more an informal approach that will help shape that policy in the end?” What I learned, working for one of the largest agencies in Washington State, at the time I was really not a new program was, even though I’ve been for a very long time I didn’t really know all the miniature cultures within the culture. And so you need to be aware of those before you take off on drafting your policy, so that you’ll know how you can be most successful with those managers.
Management support is a no-brainer. You need to have that before you can roll out a strong policy. I found that you really just need one champion and from there you can create more fans and create a fan base, but you really just need one solid manager support to get moving.
Engaging a team internally can help your policy be really strong at the end, and I focus on having an HR representative. You want the employee services piece and labor piece. You want your IT folks. You want your customer service IT folks as well as your server support and more. I don’t know all the technology terms there but you need both sides of the IT shop with you, and then also incorporating your facilities folks in that team.
Those are all the customer-base, if you will, where your policy may impact them in a way. And when you have those teams engaged from the upfront, your policy is much more solid at the end. I also found that once you have that team together, you can get all the history if you’ve never had, if you’ve had telework happening in the agency or mobile work, you’ll find out if it’s ad hoc or who’s approaching it in different ways and how it’s come into those different avenues. The biggest thing that I learned for a state agency, we’d had telework on a policy since 1996, so it’s nothing, but we never had a basic understanding of who was eligible to use this option. What positions did it work in? When you start having that conversation, you can easily start defining your terms. You need to know what telework means. You need to know what mobile work means. You need to know what ad hoc schedule means. You may have several different things identified in your policy and knowing who can do it and who can’t do it or which positions can do it and which positions cant is a real basic start for a policy. And that was something that our agency, my agency at the time did not have.
I’m just going to say one last thing of the phase approach, the testing. If you test your basic components of your policy, that’s an opportunity to engage at the supervisor level, the employee level, and the management level. And then those experiences help you really determine what it is that needs to be in that policy.
Doug: Terrific. I was just going to say and we’re going to go in more depth a little bit later on who should be included in the program. Debra, I just want to turn to you really quickly, anything else you’d like to add just in the last couple of seconds here on where to get started, what things are critical in a new policy?
Debra: I think Brooke covered all of the key points. I love the notion of multiple cultures. I also think all the constituency groups that were mentioned are important, as well as informal influences, people that can help facilitate not only getting something new started, but that more difficult thing that Brooke touched on where we already have some experience it’s in informal and we’re trying to get it formalized. So leveraging the success that you have already seen around the organization and funneling that in to a more formal process or policy.
Doug: Terrific. And Debra, while you’re still on mic here, let’s go on to the next question of: what are the things that should go into the initial policy that an organization creates?
Debra: Let me touch on a few of those things, and of course I think probably everyone knows there’s really no one size fits all campsite for this. We really need to consider the needs, the type of work, the cultures, as Brooke said, the multiple cultures, and the other circumstances that impact work, workflow, relationships, whether or not we’re dealing with a union environment, etc. However, there are some general factors and conditions, components of the telework policy that are likely to be incorporated into a formal policy. Initially it’s important to determine if the policy will be organization-wide and rigid in its application. There are usually some sort of fundamental rules, if you will, or things that will apply across the organization. But it’s also important to understand the degree to which individual managers will have some latitudes to implement the policy at the local level where really work gets done, and make decisions about how the policy will function at an operating level and determining eligibility for participation. Is that going to be a rigid process or will that happen at an operational level as well?
In terms of eligibility, we typically think about and wonder about how we decide who should telework. And typically telework policies provide some guidelines on eligibility in terms of tenure with the organization, knowledge or skill level, the nature of work involved, and employee characteristics, and I’ll touch on that just about. And all of this, it’s really to help organizations and managers determine if the job is telecommutable, that’s certainly an important criteria, and if the employee is a good fit for telework. Eligibility criteria needs to be fair, of course, in its application across various employee groups and needs to be communicated clearly. Additionally, telework policies would include things like responsibilities and approvals, who does what in that process, who handles approvals, how are approvals processed, etc. The policy might address scheduling in different types of telework for everything from full time or regular telework where that’s just the way someone does their job, to part time or occasional and casual telework, to emergency or business continuity situations where we really only have people doing that when we have a situation that requires that they stay home or work from someplace else for a variety of reasons, which we are increasingly seeing examples of that. Policy might touch on equipments and resources, what’s needed to supply this. In the early, early days of all of this, it was more typical for organizations to supply for computers and pay for internet access. We don’t see as much of that anymore, but it is important to clarify what does the employee bring and what does the employer provide, what expectations does the employer have. As it relates to equipment and resources, the policy should provide guidelines on not only what people should have but how they keep it safe, secure, free from damage. The policy should address information, access, network access; information security is a growing concern. Any training that would be required or available would be included.
Another major component of the telework policy would be to address the telework environment. What expectations are there relative to the home office environment? Do we expect people to work from home or will it be acceptable for them to work from anywhere? Are teleworkers expected to have certain conditions within their home office? Safety is certainly a concern because typically it’s covered by worker’s compensation, whether they’re working from home or in the workplace.
And finally, organizations often utilize a telework agreement that formalizes aspects of the policy. So if there’s going to be an agreement that should be mentioned, perhaps a copy of it, a thorough policy would reference the agreement and how the agreement will be executed.
Doug: Terrific. And Kate Lister, is there anything that you’d like to add really quickly around what should go in the policy question?
Kate: I think it’s important to spell out right up front that this is a privilege, not a right. The employer can reverse this in the future. Some would argue that we should consider it a right but I think from a policy point of view it has to be spelled out that that’s not the case. And I also think it’s important, Debra mentioned spelling out different kinds of workers – part time, fulltime, occasional, ad hoc, mobile, so forth. That has really big implications with department of labor, compensation law, worker’s comp, as does where is there official duty place.
Doug: Terrific. Okay well Kate let’s keep you on the mic here and go on to our third question. How do you decide what kind of people or the roles and the individuals that should be allowed to be part of these programs? I think you already kind of told us the basic answer here, but how much of that needs to be in the policy itself?
Kate: Well that’s kind of a two-part question. One side of it is what kinds of jobs are eligible and the other is what people are available. I think it’s important before you answer that or individuals answer that to kind of do an audit of how they work already. What’s the level of face to face interaction that they have? Is there a need for office coverage? How portable is their work? Are they good with technology? Are they going to need support? How measurable their work is? Obviously the security issues, how privacy issues might apply. And then at the individual level, you might want to look at the recent performance rating if there’s been any disciplinary action, the extent to which this person needs supervision. A lot of people will opt out because they realize, I shouldn’t say a lot. About 12% of the workforce typically will opt out because either they don’t have a suitable location or they just don’t really, if you will, trust themselves to work remotely or they want to be with their colleagues. But one of the other things for the individual is do they have a suitable location. Some policies require a separate office. Make sure they’ve got good internet connectivity. Make sure there’s no distractions or noise. Spell out in the policy whether they can have children at home. It really gets down in the weed sometimes in the federal government. They learn as they went through the program. “Oh gee, if we had a snow day, if the kids are home, can a worker work from home, because their kids are home and our policy says they can’t.” There’s a lot of things you sort of stumble along that you might not have stumbled upon, you might not have thought of otherwise. And really some companies are even going to suitability testing to really test their personality and test their strengths.
And then I think one other thing is the extent to which this person understands the company’s culture as good relationships with people. The majority of companies do not telework from day one. There are some that do call centers in particular, but mostly you’ll want to have somebody that already understands the company culture, mission, has good relationships with their colleague and so forth.
And one other thing I forgot is manager suitability. If they’ve got a manager that doesn’t buy into this, it’s going to make it very hard and that’s where the work has to begin, is on the manager.
Doug: That’s interesting. You’ve got some really, it seems like obvious points there but the idea of doing a suitability and even with things like if somebody’s going to be home because of snow days, is that environment going to be appropriate for work. That’s interesting. Debra, before we leave this question, anything you’d like to contribute to it?
Debra: Yeah. I think Kate really nailed this one. I would reinforce that it gets a little tricky and then it starts to feel overwhelming because you do need to get down in the weeds. The problem then is we tend to say “we’ll just try some things out.” And then it really can unravel from there. Recovering from that is always more difficult. There’s a lot to think about. Just think about the issues that Kate just raised and working through those, the implications of that, the application across different departments, it’s a lot to think about. But not thinking about it gets a lot of organizations in trouble later. I think another important, and Doug, you and Kate just touched on this, and that’s the idea of accessing or using a process whereby you determine not only who will be a good teleworker, but who potentially has the capability just maybe has some developmental areas. Going with gut feelings on this or kind of letting it serve you loosely applies also can get you into some risky circumstances.
Kate: And Doug we’re kind of dancing around it but one of the big things you got to consider here in terms of thinking from the courtroom backwards is discrimination. You want to be sure that you’re applying these rules equally across your employee population.
Doug: Okay.
Debra: Or as equally, they can be applied for different departments, different kinds of work, but Kate’s absolutely right. You do have to think that way.
Doug: Okay. Those are excellent points. Maybe during the questions we can come back in and see if there’s some resources, there’s some specific pointers that’s something you got from sources out there that we can point to. Let’s turn our attention to one of the constituencies we have out there, and Brooke, maybe you can help us with all the experience you’ve had with unions. I know that here in the D.C. area that’s a very big issue, that even with programs that seem to have so many employee benefits, the unions always have some very specific issues. How do you get them involved? How do you get them to look at the programs positively? And more importantly, how to get buy in from those groups.
Brooke: Yeah Doug, thanks. I found that there’s a way, two ways to approach it. One is that informal outrage and then the other is the formal engagement. In the organization I was working in at the time, over 7000 employees, 3 major unions. We had a telework policy on the book, originally. We have many contracts with the union. And so you really need to do your legwork upfront before you engage the unions with your internal staff. So talking with your HR labor specialist, the labor manager, understanding the history you’ve had with the unions as it relates to this type of policy, those folks are the experts on the contracts. They can tell you “here’s the area of the contract we need to be concerned about.” Really understanding how many grievances have there been in the past as it relates to this. That kind of tells you if you need to do more informal engagement versus formal engagement. I found in the program that I was reeling out, because we had an existing policy, by testing a new policy, piloting a new policy, it really gave a lot of leeway to do things inside the contract language. So I reached out to them informally through my labor manager and we let them now. “Hey we’re rethinking this based on the feedback we receive from your customers, our employees.” We engage them early to let them know that we were thinking differently and maybe changing the policy and we wanted them to be aware of it. They appreciate that, just engaging them upfront. Then as we went through the testing piece and started to have results, I met directly with each labor union separately at different presentations and gave them a progress report, and an opportunity to say “gee this is radical” or “wow, this is awesome” or “how are you addressing this?” Giving them enough information that they could have and an opportunity to ask questions and get clarity and actually ask me to look into specific things. So now they have ownership, right? There’s a lot to be said about that.
And then at the end when I was getting ready to actually draft this new policy with all the changes, I provided them with a crosswalk. “Here’s what the policy was before” or “here’s how we were doing this ad hoc and here’s how it’s changed.” And that’s the telework policy. Nothing changed in the contracts. Because we did the piloting, we didn’t have to actually negotiate. I did have to go to a formal negotiation process with one union and in there you have the expert at the table. You can communicate well. You have good composure. You’re talking to people like they’re people, not some “we’re the unions.” And you listen to their concerns and I had experience behind me from the testing that I could address how we made it better. And really, really sharing to the unions this policy is better for your customer. And we all know when you’re talking to management inside your agency, you’re talking to management, the executives, and saying “this policy is really great for our organization. It’s really great for business. This is how it’s going to help the agency.” So you have to turn that around with the unions and show them how it’s helping them and their customer base.
One thing that I believe was successful with working with the unions and with our customers, the employees, was we cut the policy really cut-and-dry. We really focused on that eligibility piece that Kate and Debra were just sharing. And then we created a handbook, and the handbook had all the guidance that an employee, a manager, supervisor could have. That’s all the nuts and bolts, the procedural piece but not the policy. And so here was another thing, another tool that the employees didn’t have before, that they could now point their finger and say “here’s the policy but then here’s the direction on how we should go about this.” And that was another tool to help the unions support their employees.
Doug: You’re actually talking about a physically separate document?
Brooke: I am. Yeah. Correct. That’s very true. We had a policy document that really stuck to only the policies associated with telework. We referenced all the other policies that already exist. The labor stuff didn’t changed. The compensation didn’t change. The IT security didn’t changed. Then we had the handbook, which could be edited at anytime and not have to go through a rigorous process, but then that handbook had all the questions everyone’s always thought about and we’ve already experienced. So that was a really tool that could help the employees have better conversations with the union. “This does this. Then how does this fall into this?” That’s very vague but it ended up being a really great tool and the unions loved it.
Doug: Terrific. I definitely love hearing that. That’s all interesting. So far we’ve heard three different documents – a policy document of some kind, some kind of agreement between the organization, the individual, and now more of a procedural handbook or frequently asked questions and their answers. Terrific. Alright, so our first section here is really the head questions focused on organizations that are just getting started or looking to make some kind of really big significant move forward in the program. Our next set of questions are really going to be aimed at the organizations who had a program in place, they’ve had some kind of policy for some period of time, and now they’re struggling with issues or things are changing or they’ve got more people who are in the program because of mobility, and the kinds of questions that come out of that. And I think we’ll start off here with Emily. Maybe you can help us understand some of the places where organizations eventually find some kind of problem or difficulty or challenge related to their policies. Emily?
Emily: Sure. Thanks Doug. So we see a few ways that organizations get into trouble when it comes to work policy. Some organizations who had ad hoc approaches to flexibility for many years without a formalized corporate stamp on it can find that there are multiple policies that get created across divisions and departments, where one policy then differs from another. What happens in these cases is that it leads to confusion on many things, including for example what are the reimbursable expenses in a home-office setting to when do the definition of a remote work employee from someone who works two or three days in the office, a mobile employee, to anything from what is the acceptable use of company equipments, knowledge of security and compliance requirements.
Another way organizations get into trouble is having inconsistent approaches to agreement. Employees should technically have a signed flexible work agreement. We’ve been talking about this with their employers that often in organizations with ad hoc approaches to mobile working, that’s not always the case. That agreement should cover expectations about being a remote work employee, including what are the requirements for an appropriate workspace, and work environment from home, their weekly schedule, the compliance requirements related to corporate IT’s, security, other things like use of internet services.
These are binding agreements and these should be reviewed and signed annually. When we see organizations not reinforcing agreements or having some employees have that kind of agreement, others do not, the liability risks increase around things such as inconsistent security practices, lack of awareness about acceptable use policy, or lack of awareness about whether an employee can work from any remote worksite outside of a home office. As Kate was sure worth mentioning earlier, what happens when an employee wants to work out of state and they’re a full time remote worker? Some companies also get stuck on having that consistently followed enrolment or approval process that’s been identified and we’ve been talking a little bit about that, with companies who are just getting started also. Organizations can conduct an assessment to define those parameters around suitability for a particular role. Companies also without a formalized policy may have overlooked risks related to whether than employee injures himself in a home-office. Again, we’ve been talking about this that state workers comp laws vary, but do typically cover injuries if the injuries arise out of in the course of the employment. But they may be limited to injuries sustained in that defined designated area for performance of job duties.
Those are just a couple of the areas. There are many, many areas where organizations can get into trouble without a consistent and standardized approach to creating a policy. But then again, to Debra’s point earlier, there used to be some flexibility for managers as well that oversee this at their operational managerial level.
Doug: You’re needing a balance between formal or not. Perfect. Okay, well Hassan, perhaps can you share your perspective on the same one that places where organizations get into some kind of challenge or some kind of difficulty?
Hassan: Sure Doug, thanks. And I think Emily pretty much covered the breadth of it with the ad hoc approaches. I think that one is a big one with an organization. On the opposite side of that, one challenge that organizations have is that when they’re setting up the policies or they already have one and they’re kind of going through it is the usual policy dilemma of how granular do you want to actually be. On one end you’ve got very generic, very high level where you kind of open yourself up to loopholes. And then the other end of that stick is the very detailed, very prescriptive where you might be a little bit too limiting. And so one area of struggle is that companies think that in a way it’s set up in stone and you can’t really modify it. The area where they kind of miss out on is the fact that this really should be approached like a rolling wave sort of policy where you modify as you go. One thing that Kate mentioned earlier that this is a privilege and not a right, and I think that should definitely be spelled out for employees who do telecommute, along with the provision that this is going to be modifiable in the future because a lot of employees do end up using the telecommuting policy, and so in a way when you do look at things that don’t work or do work, you can have that privilege to modify it as you go along.
Doug: Terrific. And I think this actually comes, we’re rolling right into the next one. Our questions here really are what are some of the issues. Now we’re going to talk about how we overcome those issues and then we’re going to follow up with how we respond to them. Hassan, instead of going straight to Emily, can you go ahead and share with us your perspective on how you overcome some of these issues.
Hassan: Yeah definitely. I think, going back to Brooke who mentioned that a lot of cases are where you’ve got many cultures within a company, and so you really have to take those issues on a case by case basis and a team by team basis and look at where the issues are and where, if there is, any sort of abuse within a small team or a small department are arising. Typical case was the Yahoo case a couple of years ago by CEO Marissa Meyer, where nearly a couple of hundred telecommuters were not apparently logging in to their work systems and they were actually doing those little startups on the side. That issue isn’t a telecommuting one as much as it’s a management by objectives one, meaning that those employees, if they were actually doing their jobs, then typically it’s okay to do something on the side if not on company hours. But if you don’t have very solid management by objective type parameters for those employees, then there’s no way you can actually allow that without having some repercussions for it. Again, I think the issues and the way you solve them is that you need to take them on a case by case basis and understand what the root cause of the issues are and whether they really are a telecommuting policy or they’re an employee integrity one.
Doug: Perfect. Emily, do you have anything you can add to Hassan’s…
Emily: Yeah. Just to add to the point I was making earlier, Brooke spoke about crosswalk, that if you find that an organization has a variety of different policies that exists across departments, we recommend always to do an audit. From there, just create a gap analysis to pinpoint those areas that are missing or where policies conflict. And oftentimes it can be helpful too to contrast those missing areas to get something that’s a comprehensive flexible work policy to identify those missing areas. We know a lot of organizations also create agreement forms. These forms can be created online, which are easily referenced and updated and then can be renewed inside any old data, so that’s really helpful for organizations also. In regards, we’ve been talking about in regards to eligibility and enrolment, that you conduct suitability assessments for particular employee roles, which can be very helpful. Also companies might want to create a standardized enrolment program video that instructs employees and managers about how to request to work from home, when employees can propose that to their managers or how managers can initiate those conversations with their employees.
And then just finally when it comes to workers comp, to minimize risk, companies benefit by providing training, compliance training on home-office safety. They can create a home-office safety checklist that’s compliant. They can create a process of where remote workers report safety issues in their home and what is the protocol for correcting problems or immediately reporting any kind of injury at home. And then of course any organization needs to know what their worker’s compensation carrier provides and does it absolutely provide that same coverage in the remote work setting as it does in the office.
Doug: And I would assume that those kinds of regulations, they’re going to vary a lot from state to state.
Emily: Yeah.
Doug: Okay. So larger organizations, that complexity is going to blossom and they’re going to deal with people across state homes.
Emily: Yup.
Doug: Alright. So we’ve heard a lot about the different kinds of issues that could come up. And Jay, perhaps you can help us with when those kinds of issues do arise, what are the ways to respond? What are the right things to do for the organization and [34:17]?
Jason: Yeah. It’s important to understand that ideally over time the telework program or your flexible work arrangements will just become a part of the way that people in your organization conduct business. And the reality we know that there are always going to be issues that arise from time to time, and that could be the results of something that was not identified originally when you drafted the policy. It could come from a new disruptive technology that is introduced into the organization that changes how people interact or how they perform their job. Or the issues could arise just from trying to leverage and scale the program to other parts of the business. From an organizational standpoint, the business can conduct regular reviews of the program’s performance, whether that is incorporated into your reoccurring business reviews or if you do this as a standalone that can work as well. This can help provide a good form to address some of the macro issues that arise, and you should be regularly reviewing the policy itself. Policies are meant to be living documents. They’re not a one-time exercise. It’s not something that you write up once, release it to the organization, and then put it on the shelf and never have to worry about looking at it again.
Like Hassan just mentioned a moment ago, the policy itself is really not set in stone. It’s meant to be able to be flexible and to change as the business needs change as well. Also when you’re talking about addressing some of these issues through policy, you got to make sure you have cross functional support. When you implemented your program, you may have used this cross functional steering committee that was made up of representation from across the business. This is something similar to what Brooke mentioned at the beginning of our call today. So you can still use that same group of leaders to help that certain large issues that you’re seeing across the program and make broad policy-type decisions that something needs to be addressed in that sort of way. And of course you always want to ensure that you have cross communication regardless if that preferred communication vehicle in your organization is the internet sites, e-newsletters or even just team meetings or something like that. And this is not only just to solicit input on how to handle certain issues but also to notify others of the type of issues that you’re experiencing within your department or your team so others can be aware of that issue and perhaps can leverage your best practices.
From an individual standpoint as these kind of transactional issues pop up from time to time, it really becomes a responsibility of that manager or leader to help handle those in the best possible way. So therefore it’s critical that your leaders, especially your frontline supervisors and managers that they are very aware on the policy – what can be done, what is allowed, what is not allowed, where they have flexibility to make decisions and where certain things are a little bit more governed, we should say, by the overall organization.
Doug: Terrific. I know we’ve got Chuck on the line here. Chuck, anything you’d care to add to how an organization responds when issues come up?
Chuck: Well I’d like to say that both Hassan and Emily and Jason have covered a lot of the points that I was going to address. But I think that the things that we have always seen is by that…the way an organization first sets up the whole program is important. How many layers are there going to be usually if you get buy in from the senior people. You put together a policy and that policy pretty much is the policy, again the question “how are you going to address these situations that are going to arise?” I have seen frequently that an organization, and this could be more than one person, has a leader of the program, somebody who is going to… a supervisor-supervisor. I think what happens in many cases is when an exception comes up, it has to be determined. Two things – how much leeway is an immediate supervisor-manager is going to have? Is there a small thing like “I need to change my hours for a couple of days” or something like that, or is it going to be something more extreme – a change of equipment, security issues. Jason mentioned something like that. I think that you need to say “who can make decisions along the line?” But I think the safest thing to do is in the whole pecking order is bringing exception whether it’s large or small to the person who is in charge of this whole program, and you have to have somebody who’s basically going to be the go-to person because you might find that a lot of these minor exceptions that are left to managers are going to be major exceptions. They are going to be things that are going to be brought up department wise. And everybody who has been addressing this point has said that you put together a policy, but it’s not a static document. It’s something that’s going to be changed. You put it together. You tweak it. And I’ve heard several people say tweak. You put it together and there are going to be tweaks, and it has to be an ongoing. You have a policy, you tweak it, you see how it goes, you address the issues. I think what you need to do is see how many of these exceptions that come up are in fact issues that are addressing more than just one or two people, and how many of them need to be changed and made a part of the whole policy, because in the end the policy is the policy and it’s something that you have to agree. It pretty much has to be agreed upon by everyone.
Doug: That will be fundamentally a part of the bigger program process.
Chuck: Part of the bigger program, sure. But you need to see, again how many of these exceptions are really exceptions and how many of these things are going to lead to what the other people have said are going to be the tweaks and revisions that need to be part of the whole program. I think that’s one of the things that has to be addressed.
Doug: That’s interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that that might be something that you actually bake into the whole process right upfront but it makes an awful lot of sense. Jay, is there anything that you would add to what Chuck has already said about how to empower or how to set precedence or guide the folks who are going to be in the frontlines and dealing with these squeaky wheels or maybe a local business unit leader who wants some special kind of dispensation from the teleworking policy.
Jason: I think that the frontline supervisors and managers are really the backbone of the organization. Executives can have the vision, craft a policy, and really want to move the organization in a certain direction, but it’s really the frontline managers that have to execute. To use a cliché, the word the rubber meets the road. It’s important, #1, that you do have buy in from those managers, that they’re fully bought in. They understand the business case of what you’re doing. They also understand the policies, they understand the processes and procedures, and we were talking about earlier how the enrolment process works. What is the reimbursement process? Or who can get reimbursed for a home office, for example. The managers have to have obviously knowledge on all these things so that they can be able to articulate these to their employees, again if they’re having certain challenges with other managers that they can help convince them because they’re well equipped with the information. I’ve seen other organizations do things such as create meetings in a box or other prepared collateral. That way it helps managers to be able to go and address issues. If they have a question, they can go to some place to search for frequently asked questions and to use that material as leverage to help address, as you said Doug, those squeaky wheels that they may encounter.
Doug: Okay. Take out the comments we’ve had so far about this thing, living documents and especially Brooke’s ideas on testing and using testing not just to find the right policies but also as a great way to getting buy in from different constituencies in the union. When you do have some kind of change, when you’re going to make some kind of change to what people expect to the privileges that they have been enjoying for some time, how do you handle making those changes and rolling out what might be an unpleasant change for someone throughout the organization? Chuck, any ideas?
Chuck: I think that you’re not going to please all the people all the time. As with Jason, we don’t want to throw out too many clichés, but I don’t think you’re going to find something that everybody’s going to say “wow, this is wonderful.” You’re going to have to just address those. As I mentioned, a policy is a policy and it’s meant to address the majority of the issues that are going to come up. And I think that’s pretty much what you have to do. And again, are there minor issues or major issues, and if there’s a major issue that somebody has, perhaps it could be of the extent that they shouldn’t be part of the program because their issue is so large. Again, as I mentioned twice, it’s a privilege, not a right. And it’s something that’s not for everybody. And I’ve seen also many people enter telework programs and find out it’s not right for them. And they try to make some exceptions and you just find out that this is not right for you through the way you and your organization are laid out and perhaps you should not be a teleworker and you should either be not be an employee or go back to an office space position.
Doug: Hearing everybody say this exact same thing or at least at some point it sounds like, all of these issues, even the ones that are way out. You’ve been doing for years and years. A program really needs to be baked in, really needs to be considered when you’re creating that very first policy with an organization. Jay, anything to add on how you manage rolling out changes, especially things that might take away let’s say some of the privileges somebody might have.
Jason: Yeah. I mean let’s face it, changing organizational culture and changing behavior can be one of the most difficult things a leader or organization can do. So just because you have that written new policy doesn’t actually mean people are going to want to adopt it and follow it and practice. Most organizations think, in terms of change management, they equate that with communication and training, which are the two obvious things that kind of fall out. So as you have this new policy that you’re introducing to the org and you want people to do things, you communicated obviously, create a clear business case, conduct training for both employees and leaders, and that’s all a good thing but also keep in mind that you should have some clear metrics, not just the performance but around the behaviors that you expect people to exhibit when they go into this new work environment. You also probably to do some stake holder analysis and look at the landscape within the organization to find who’s going to be supportive of the change and who’s going to be resistant. You may have some evangelist within the supportive groups that you can leverage for those that are more resistant. And for those that aren’t resistant that you identify, you may have to develop specific strategies to address exactly why they may be pushing back on the new policy and address it there.
And also make sure that your policies are aligned. People tend to overlook this one. For example, if you have a geographically distributed teams and you want them to adopt videoconferencing technology or conference call technology just so they can work more virtually together, but yet your travel policy is very liberal and allows your employees to travel at will, well the two policies – your telework policy and your travel policy – are in direct conflict because why am I going to use technology and deal with people virtually if my preference is to deal with them face to face and my travel policy allows that. Likewise, look at your expense policies as well. If you want people to work from home but your expense policy don’t help those employees out anyways, then employees are going to be reluctant to leave their office cubicle and go into their home environment.
Those are the types of things that you can think about as you want to start trying to influence behavior and get people to where you want to eventually have them be.
Doug: Perfect. We’re actually right on time here, which means we’ve got plenty of time for questions. I forgot to tell at the top of the hour, those of you in the audience we’ve got 15 minutes here to take questions. Probably on the right hand side of your WebEx screen is a facility for Q and A. Please just type in your questions now. We’ve already got a couple here in the queue, so there’s plenty of time to type in your question for the panel here then I’ll just put them as they come in. The first one is a comment really, and it looks like they’re asking for anybody’s thought from the panel about this. Let’s see. When advising managers who raise the issue of fairness, I advice them that they need to be fair in the process they use to make decisions, not necessarily the decisions themselves. There will never be absolute consistency across the organization. The questioner is asking does the panel have any comments on this. I think this is awesome.
Jason: Doug, this is Jay. I’ll chime in very quickly. I agree with the comment but I would also add to that that for most everyone, perception is reality. So if you’re not very clear on your expectations, then you always have the chance for perceptions of bias to creep in over time. So my advice would be that yes, you want to make sure that you have fairness in the process of making your decisions, but also be very transparent, have very clear expectations of what you expect from your employees and that should help mitigate some of the challenges that you may have down the road.
Brooke: Hi, this is Brooke. If I can, I’ll chime in as well. Jay is absolutely correct. We found though in that fairness, if you can make sure that the ‘why’ is provided, so the employee knows why their position is eligible for telework or isn’t eligible for telework. Then when they approach their manager or their supervisor, the employee knows why they’ve been approved or why they’ve been not approved. And you can document that, if you have a formal process that such, or the conversation that’s had and the employee has the right to document that. The employee then would also have the right, from your policy, to rebuttal a denial, whether it’s address ticket to the HR director or something. You need to make sure that that loop is provided in your policy, that if an employee doesn’t understand why they can’t have the option, that there’s some way for them to get a better answer.
Doug: I think Kate, was there something you wanted to add to that?
Kate: No, not to add to that. One thing that I do want to bring out, well two things I want to bring up – this sounds all doom and gloom, let’s not forget that this is something that more than 80% of employees want to do. There is middle management resistance. We have ways of working through that. This is a good gig, and people are not likely to sue. I’ve interviewed a number of organizations and say “what kind of experience do you have with your folks that work at home with workers complaints, with lawsuits and so forth?” And every person I’ve asked said that it’s actually much lower among their teleworkers. The other thing I want to just reinforce because I don’t think we pounded the podium hard enough on it, is the issues of taxation and department of labor violations. When somebody is sitting in their home office in New Jersey but their headquarters is in New York, they are subject to the workers comp rules in New Jersey, the DOL rules in New Jersey, wage an hour, what counts as overtime and so forth. And even taxation. There are 37 states that has some kind of policy that would involve double taxation if you’re working across state lines. And sometimes it’s as simple as having one day in another state. The laws are crazy and there are a number of people trying to get them changed. Those are realities that employers have to face.
Doug: Kate, let’s go back to the first part of your comment there. We’ve had a question come in and is right along the same line, and perhaps more of the panel can chime in, and the question was all the comments seemed to be negative in some way – looking out for the company and weighing risk, rather than being employee focus. What common practice supports a positive perspective for talent, flexibility, serendipity and innovation? Is there a perspective out there that’s…
Kate: I’ll chime in. I was going to let somebody else go first since I just spoke but okay let’s go again. I think we shouldn’t be looking at just a telework policy. Leading organizations are looking at an entire new way of working that includes a gamut of flexible work options. Not everybody is going to be able to work from home. Not everybody wants to. There’s the third place to consider. Some people like to work in coffee shops and co-working facilities and all of that, just allowing the flexibility for people to work where and when they work best. And I think that if you look at this in a broader sense of what do we need to do to empower employees to do their best. And what we hear over and over again is give them control. Let them know what their job is, help them develop goals. Hold them accountable for those goals and then get out of their way. That’s what management experts since the 50s have been telling us of the way we should manage.
Doug: And I think a lot of the data that’s coming out of the workplace right now supports that as well. [53:11] 2013 study [53:14] a grand correlation between giving people choice. Where am I going to work today? How is that work? What kind of workplace am I going to use? The physical location have a big positive impact on productivity and innovation. I think your comments are certainly well founded on that data.
Chuck: I’d like to make a point.
Doug: Sure Chuck, go ahead.
Chuck: I think one of the things that Kate just made me think off was that when you take a look at telework, as we have these people that are working on a regular basis and they are part of the telework program, and these rules, these policies are put together for them, but there are still a tremendous number of employees who work from home periodically. They’re not really formal teleworkers, but something has come up. They have a repairman coming. “Can I work from home today?” They are travelers who are not part of the telework program, even though they walk like a teleworker and talk like a teleworker and quack like a teleworker, they’re not part of the telework program. And I think that many times you have to put together policies that are going to address all your workers, who might have a tendency to work out of the office. An example, I think I mentioned when we first talked about this, during snowmageddon in D.C. several years ago, when the government closed down, it was found that 30% of the workers were teleworking, but at that time fewer than 10% of the employees were formal teleworkers. So we had a delta there of another 20% of the of the people were not formal teleworkers but they had the technology in place to do this and I think that when you’re putting something together, you need to address not only the regular people who are going to be doing this as a way of life but you need to address everybody who’s going to have a tendency to work from home because this is management issue of not, again as things Kate mentioned, not just the people that are doing this fulltime but the people who might use these technologies at one time or another.
Doug: Both of us, Kate and Chuck, are kind of touching on the next question we have here. And the question starts off with pointing out one of the statements made of kind of making very black and white teleworker versus office desk, but surely there’s more than just working at my desk at the office or working at my desk at home. When you talk about telework policy and flexible work policies, what other kinds of flexible options should be considered to be part of that policy?
Emily: This is Emily. I feel like we see a preferred work style today, really moving towards this blended approach, where a lot of employees want to be able to come in to an office a couple of days a week and then work in a mobile context. There should be a definition of what that mobile worker is and how they divide time between home and the office, and that it can be helpful to include that and have that in the policy is important.
Doug: So would that extend the eligibility side of it? If I come to work for a brand new company and I’ve come from a place where I had flexible work, just me saying “hey I want to work the same way I have before” doesn’t necessarily give me the right or the privilege within this organization. I still will have to conform or comply or qualify for whatever the eligibility requirements for the new organization will be.
Emily: I think so. And companies that are evolving those ad hoc approaches and policies and becoming more standardized will include that category, a growing amount of employees who are working flexibly like that every week.
Jason: I had a lady who called me up and her problem was half the organization travelled and they work from wherever they were, as we all do. When she went back into town, into the D.C. area, her employer insisted they come into the office. Why? Because he didn’t believe in telework. Everybody was working four or five days a week remotely, but he didn’t believe that that should be a formal policy for anybody when they’re here in town. If that’s the way he wants it, fine. But you still need a policy to address how are people going to work remotely.
Doug: It’s rare that we want to jump in with some kind of add request experience but we’ve heard from so many customers about these problems with people when they do have the ability to work outside the office, when they are able to be mobile, that you break some of the community. You lose some of the camaraderie and the collaboration that comes from everybody sitting in the office, but what we found and what we were asked for was the support policies that have ‘our team is going to be in every single Tuesday’ or we need the ability from your software to say ‘gather up all the people in this particular department and find the best time for them to be all in the office on one particular day so that we can support both sides, that we can foster the community and retain my compatriots and my colleagues and people I like together as well as support.’ You guys are going to be outside of the office, wherever that might be, most of the time. It’s good to hear that the policies can evolve and technology becomes better and younger workers and mobile workers want more of that blended approach and are okay with being managed based on their performance versus whether or not they’re clocking in and checking into the office everybody. Those are really hopeful things happening. We have time for just one more question here. I’m going to put out there for just anybody. If the organization has adopted a flexible or virtual work policy, how do you get buy in from managers who seemed to be hesitant or resistant in some kind of way? And how do you make sure that everybody who is eligible for the program is genuinely being considered? Any ideas? Any thoughts?
Brooke: This is Brooke. If I can jump in from my experience, and I have to say it was a lot of handholding, but the approach that I took with management was first I started with the easy folks, the low hanging fruit that needs less convincing. And then as I moved around to the more difficult, it was bringing those management, bringing those folks together, sharing with them what it was, what the goal of the policy and the future culture that we’re trying to create, and giving them an opportunity to voice their concerns, their excitement, body language, sitting down in a room, face to face, and having that feedback opportunity. And then having the experience from the pilots to say “this is how we’ve addressed that concern in our organization, both at headquarters and both outside in the regions.” And then giving them the tools, like I mentioned before – having the handbook. I built a webpage with everything you could possibly need to have on there. And the ability to call me, email me, talk to me any time to help them get past what their issues are or concerns. And then let them know that everyone has the same issues. It’s very unusual, in my experience, and I’m sure everybody else will say the same thing, that some managers, supervisor is going to provide a concern or question that nobody else has brought up, but actually engaging them and listening to them and then providing experiencing helps them move off the fence post, come over to the other side, and it can be slow and that’s fine, and acknowledge it.
Emily: I would add to that Brooke. The easiest thing, the quickest way to turn them around is to have them actually work remotely. All of the research points to that. Once they’ve done it themselves, they are much quicker to buy in.
Doug: Well that’s interesting. I would not have thought “hey make sure that the managers who are complaining get to see and live and breathe this exact same environment.” Terrific. Thank you. Well we’ve actually hit the end of time here today, so I want to talk all our panelists: Brooke Hamilton, Chuck Wilsker, Emily Klein, Hassan Osman, Kate Lister, Jason Morwick, and Debra Dinnocenzo.
Debra: Dinnocenzo.
Doug: Dinnocenzo.
Debra: There you go.
Doug: My Italian is slow today. Thank you all of you who joined in and gave us some wonderful questions. We’re going to have in our emails that come up a couple of survey questions and we will get the bio’s and the links to everybody’s information and their websites to you in email. And I just wanted to make sure that everybody keeps their eyes open in your email inbox for the announcement about the date for next month’s AgilQuest webinar, which is going to be on moving to performance-based management. So panel, thank you so much for sharing with us today, and audience thank you for joining us and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Thanks again from AgilQuest. Have a great day.
Everyone: Thanks Doug.
