Best Practices for Managing Virtual Employees

Posted by UPmarketArt under Management
From http://smallbusiness.uprinting.com 333 days ago
Made Hot by: MindCircusMedia on June 24, 2012 10:03 pm

Telecommuting and virtual offices are now facts of life for a significant number of small businesses. This relatively new development however, brings challenges you won't find in a traditional office setting.

Read on to learn how to best manage employees in a virtual office setting!

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Written by Dave Hubbard
328 days ago

Outsourcing the work to virtual contractors or employees, either on a part time or full time basis, can make a lot of financial sense. It obviously has the potential to reduce company expense. However, you could also outsource marketing work to a part-time contractor to help increase revenues and profit.

When the employee is in the office, you can easily confirm they are working and even monitor their activities. It’s a lot harder when the person is hundreds or thousands of miles away.

In my experience, effective management oversight is critical to having a happy and productive contributor. Odesk, for example, monitors whenever the person is actually working on a PC for business and randomly takes snapshots of the screens as part of a management report. Similar systems are available to measure and monitor telephone operations. In other situations you could monitor performance based upon tasks performed (e.g. process 3 applications or write 5 articles) or based upon results achieved (e.g. close $x sales) versus hours worked. Weekly status meetings can identify and resolve any barriers to getting the work done.

Be particularly sensitive to ensuring that both in-house employees and virtual employees are treated equally and fairly so they feel part of a powerful, integrated team.

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Written by Sian Phillips
330 days ago

Great post Jessica - I kind of work as a virtual accountant for some clients and really wish they would communicate better sometimes. Waiting for replies to emails can be frustrating sometimes and end up holding up my work for them. Thanks for sharing this on Bizsugar.com

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