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Erika Tedesco

Although technology enables employees to work more efficiently, more effectively, and from anywhere in the world, it also has the potential to complicate the work environment. Complications can occur from asynchronous communication and message richness. Synchronicity refers to communication that is in person and in real time. Face-to-face communication is an example of synchronicity, but so is a phone or video conversation. Asynchronous communication occurs when there is a lag in the time the message is sent and received. Email, text messages, and voicemail are examples of asynchronous communication that can challenge the virtual workplace. It is very easy to ignore asynchronous messages, particularly if they are unwelcome. The old excuse may have been “my dog ate my homework,” but the excuse for the 21st century is “my Internet was down.” In a remote workplace, expectations must be clear about the timeline for responding to messages—whether email or telephone. A good rule of thumb is that emails and voicemail messages should be returned within one business day. Managers should also encourage employees to use out-of-office messages on their email accounts and voicemail. These messages can be used for long-term situations, such as vacation or sick leave, or for short-term occurrences, such as meetings or training sessions. Using the out-of-office feature helps reduce the frustration that can occur when a response is not immediate. When on-site employees are having a bad day, usually everyone else in the office knows it. They communicate their mood, whether it’s verbally or just by the way they walk down the hall. One of the supposed benefits of working remotely is when you’re having a bad day, your supervisor doesn’t have to know about it. However, message richness—the ability of a communication method to convey emotions and social cues—can mean the difference between a supervisor being able to mediate an issue and having to clean up after it. When communicating using technology, remember these suggestions:Avoid attempts at humor, sarcasm, or irony. They are very difficult to communicate without the addition of interpersonal cues and may lead to misunderstanding.Emoticons are a substitution for displaying emotion, but are not appropriate for professional communication. Use words.Before you send an email, ask yourself, “Is this a sensitive issue?” If so, call rather than emailing or texting.When in doubt, supervisors should call or video chat with employees. The interaction is in real time, so vocal tone and facial cues will help supervisors interpret their employees’ reaction. To delve deeper into how to manage remote workers, register for ATD’s next online workshop, Essentials of Managing Remote Workforces.

Challenges to Computer-Mediated Communication for the Remote Workforce

In traditional, co-located meetings we often incentivize people to participate. We supply donuts or the fancy coffee from that quaint cafe down the street. We make sure a high-profile leader attends the meeting. We send out a review email to everyone as a reminder of who did what.A virtual meeting lacks many of those incentives. So how do we get people to attend and participate in our virtual meetings? A good rule of thumb is CASH. No, you shouldn’t have to pay people to attend your virtual meetings, but by using these four suggestions you can make your meetings more productive.Consider who you invite. Not everyone should be invited to your meeting. If you want an engaged, useful, and progressive meeting, you have to have attendees that are invested in the meeting topic. If someone is on the conference call or online meeting as an ancillary participant, they don’t have a reason to participate. Then, the people who should be participating may be less inclined to thinking, “There are 12 other people on this call and they haven’t spoken up. I guess I shouldn’t either.”Accountability for all. For routine staff meetings, invest some time talking about what being an active participant means for the group. I’ve seen groups create a list of rules, including “be on time,” “no multi-tasking,” and “everyone has to speak once.” Then, encourage participants to hold each other accountable.Standardize the meeting with an agenda. Every meeting needs an agenda sent out to all participants prior to the meeting. The agenda will outline the purpose of the meeting, and will give participants an opportunity to prepare their thoughts. Prepared meeting attendees participate more.Help staff manage distractions. When is the last time you were at an in-person  meeting where someone wasn’t multitasking? The same distractions are present for virtual meeting attendees, minus the accountability of someone watching what you are doing. Give staff permission to turn off their email notifications for the duration of the meeting. Set a clear expectation for complete focus. For a brainstorming meeting, encourage an open internet browser to help generate new ideas. Be flexible while modeling the behavior you want to see from your participants.Virtual meetings can be even more productive than a traditional meeting. An adept meeting facilitator, carefully chosen participants, and an investment in the topic can turn a meeting overridden by distractions into a meaningful use of time and energy.For more tips, join me for the Essentials of Managing Remote Workforces Certificate program, starting online December 2, 2014.

Engage Virtual Meeting Attendees—With CASH

Working outside a central office has been part of doing business in many industry sectors for years. Real estate agents, sales reps, and home healthcare personnel, for example, are on the move to sell houses, meet face-to-face with customers, and aid clients.Technology, including that which has allowed outsourcing to another state or country, employee expectations for flexibility, and the modern-day realities of commuting times and costs are among the factors that are driving the expansion of the virtual workplace.While many businesses consider the technological feasibility of allowing employees to do their jobs remotely, there are a number of other considerations to implementing virtual work procedures at your organization.Erika Tedesco, manager of education and training at Hosparus, a regional hospice provider based in Louisville, Kentucky, emphasizes the need to engage virtual employees. Doing so, she says, requires some foresight and centers on four factors: trust, reward and recognition, relationships, and corporate culture. “When attempting to build trust,” says Tedesco, “one thing is critical, though often discarded: You must do what you say you are going to do.” Follow-up emails can help confirm and solidify what was said during a virtual meeting. Logging tasks into a project management system can help to ensure that promises made are promises kept.From an employee-manager relationship, developing a rapport can come down to something as simple as the choice of beverage. Tedesco explains, “knowing whether your employee drinks soda or coffee may not make him more efficient, but it does show the employee that his supervisor pays attention to his needs.”To recognize remote employees, a manager could send virtual gift certificates to a local coffee shop, mention their performance in the company newsletter, or hold virtual town hall meetings to allow employees to ask questions or to note a successful project.Members on the same team who don’t see each other on a regular basis don’t have the natural team-building opportunities that can occur over the copy machine, where bonds can develop when discussing the local sports team or children’s activities. Tedesco says that virtual colleagues do tend to have more professional relationships with their co-workers, but knowing some details about each other—such as a favorite place to grab a sandwich—is “actually important in creating roots for long-lasting employee retention and engagement.”Making sure that everyone is on the same page with respect to corporate culture is often a challenge with remote employees, where it’s easier for signals to get crossed. Tedesco elaborates, “the annual goal may be to ‘increase customer satisfaction,’ but the remote employee may only see emails about cutting costs and managing the budget. That employee would, rightly, assume that the real focus of the organization is financials and not customer satisfaction.”One suggestion Tedesco offers is to ask employees to describe the corporate culture, and see how their view does or does not align with that of leadership. To ensure that the mission of the organization reaches virtual employees, managers are urged to communicate that mission in email footers, on meeting agendas, and in other formats.Erika Tedesco is the author of the December ASTD Infoline, “Managing the Virtual Workforce.” She is also the presenter of the Managing a Virtual Workforce webcast.

Erika Tedesco

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