Institute of Internal Communication

Within any organisation, remote workers have distinct communications needs. Steve Doswell, IoIC director and president of the European federation of internal communications associations, discusses strategies for ensuring remote workers remain part of the team and committed to organisational objectives.

In a sense, remote employees are an invisible workforce because of their infrequent appearances at headquarters, regional offices or depots. Clearly, organisations do not wittingly adopt an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude. However, they sometimes unconsciously act as if they do because of the challenges inherent in keeping in touch with remote employees’ needs, perceptions and concerns. If things are currently going well, with no obvious cause for concern, it might be assumed that no further action is needed. However, not to recognise and plan for the distinct communication requirements of non-workplace based employees is risky. Indeed, it could adversely affect performance right across the business.

So what are some of the key considerations in managing communication with remote workers?

Knowing your audience

Organisations now have a wide variety of options when it comes to selecting the best way of communicating with remote employees, including email, the company magazine, intranet, extranet, telephone and video conference, meetings and special events, instant messaging, blogs and social networking tools.

However, understanding the audience has to be the starting point in making decisions about communications objectives, priorities, messages and methods. Staff at headquarters may feel that they know what a typical day involves for their home-based colleagues, but do they really?

It’s easy to make assumptions about the needs of remote workers. However, the reality may be different. The way to avoid tripping up on this is to go and check the facts - send someone out into the field to observe work in progress in order to develop a real understanding of your remote workers’ daily challenges and constraints.

Firm foundations

The communications process starts with recruitment. As well as the benefits, make the challenges of a remote working role clear to candidates, not just in terms of the technical or managerial skills required, but also of the particular issues associated with being located away from the office. Somebody considering switching from an office-based to a home-based role may find it easier to recognise the positives than possible negatives, such as feelings of isolation and stress associated with less obvious structure to the day and reduced human contact. Encourage candidates to consider all aspects of how the change may affect them.

Once an appointment has been made, policies and procedures associated with remote working will help to create clarity and a structure for both line managers and their employees. These can cover issues such as: the provision of diary dates for contact time with the manager and other staff; frequency of attendance at the office or depot; the type of technical support and equipment they can expect; performance management; their responsibilities and those of the company in relation to health and safety, data backup, security and environmental issues.

The line manager

A company may employ appropriate and engaging communications strategies and know how to use technology to good effect. However, this will be unlikely to compensate for a line manager who is not adept at dealing with remote teams.

It should be remembered that employees place a great deal of importance on their direct line manager. An IoIC survey revealed that 70% of employees trusted their immediate line manager, with the figure reducing to 40% for their boss’s boss. The trust figure continues to diminish for managers further up the line. In addition, GfK NOP findings show that staff with an engaged line manager typically have an employee engagement score of around 75% while employees of a disengaged line manager score only 40%.

Therefore, a dependency on messages from ‘on high’ or from the communications team to keep remote workers informed and motivated is unlikely to be a sufficient or a successful strategy.

In addition to formal communication, office-based employees can often get reinforcing information from their manager or colleagues in an ad hoc way – when they bump into people in the corridor or at the drinks machine. This is not the case for remote workers so the manager responsible has to take an even more systematic and planned approach to communication, with a regular pattern of contact.

Mutual trust between managers and remote staff will reap rewards but it can require a distinct – or a change of - mind-set. For example, a manager may feel concerned or even suspicious when a home-based worker’s phone is unanswered but far less so or not at all in the case of an office-based colleague. However, it generally makes more sense to focus on achievement of agreed objectives than to get bogged down in minutiae, while sufficiently detailed remote worker policies should help to set the ground rules.

As remote employees may not always find it easy or convenient to articulate concerns, managers need to be both skilled at ‘reading’ their workers when contact takes place via phone or email and be able to open out discussion when they sense that more lies under the surface.

Managers may not realise, or wish to admit, that they are not as effective as they could be in dealing with remote workers. A training programme may be useful in addressing any skills shortfalls. Similarly, remote workers themselves may benefit from training that helps them to develop effective strategies in relation to their new style of working.

Culture and cohesion

One of the risks of remote working is that employees may feel detached from organisational culture, vision and values. Indeed they could actually lose sight of what their organisation stands for and its key objectives, and view this as something removed from their own day-to-day activities.

Effective communications strategy should aim to help them feel part of the whole, and this may involve the development of very specific initiatives. One company organises a recurring, rolling programme of one-day workshops for its employees who are based at clients’ offices.

These events fulfil multiple goals by briefing employees on the latest industry and regulatory developments, reinforcing employer brand and current priorities, and providing updates on the latest company news.

Another risk is that remote workers may have a tendency to be more retentive of information about activities, contacts and clients. Organisations should look out for this as a possible issue and design procedures and IT systems to maximise central pooling of all significant information.

One of the central challenges organisations face in managing remote workers is how to create cohesion in a team when its members are widely dispersed. Office-based workers might assume remote members have an easy life, devoid of the pressures of a nine-to-five existence and commuting, while remote workers might think their office colleagues are much better equipped than they are and still do not seem to want to provide adequate levels of support.

Communication strategies should seek to maximise opportunities to increase understanding, minimise misconceptions and offer opportunities to exchange views in a constructive, non-threatening way.

Welfare and development

Feelings of isolation amongst remote workers may include a sense that the organisation does not really know or care about what they are doing. This may extend to believing that the organisation’s policies relating to professional development and progression do not really apply to them. They may also be reluctant to discuss health or family problems that would emerge more naturally during the on-going dialogue of an office environment. All of this could store up potential problems for the future.

Ensuring that remote workers feel they are getting exactly the same treatment as office-based staff can mean some very fundamental decisions in terms of how the organisation operates. For example, one security company has organised the number and location of supervisors and account managers to ensure that all staff, including security officers, have a meeting with a manager once a month.

Their documented staff welfare and development programme enables a free and frank discussion about workplace issues, concerns, necessary training and career aspirations. It also encourages feedback from staff on how company performance could be improved which is then fed back up the line.

A variety of strategies can help to reduce feelings of isolation in remote workers, from ensuring that all important organisational documents are easily accessible via intranet to on-line networks that encourage discussion and assistance on specific issues. ‘Buddy’ networks can be specifically geared towards remote workers, with individuals meeting office-based colleagues to keep in touch. The ‘buddies’ may also be given responsibility to forward information that cannot be accessed remotely.

Tools and technology

It always needs to be borne in mind that communications tools that are popular with a high proportion of office-based staff may be of more restricted value for remote workers. For example, workers who spend a lot of time on the road may not have easy access to the intranet during the day and may not be inclined to spend a lot of time trying to keep up with the latest company announcements and news in their spare time.

One exhibition and events business needs to keep in regular contact with its front-line employees who do not have ready access to computers and cannot spend a lot of time on the phone. Text messaging has been identified as a viable solution. It was established that everyone had their own mobile and was happy to be kept in touch with operational activities via text.

In the past, individuals working on infrastructure maintenance for energy and utility companies would go to the nearest depot to get their instructions. Now many are home-based and use laptops or personal digital assistants (pdas). One solution currently being used to fulfil multiple objectives is to both send out instructions and company news updates via the pda system.

There has been much talk about the demise of the company magazine because of the proliferation of new ways of reaching employees – often at lower cost. In fact, the needs of remote workers are probably one of the strongest arguments for communicating in print. Publications are a physical symbol of the employing organisation that can give remote and office-based employees alike a tangible sense of being part of the corporate entity. Beyond this, the potential advantages of newsletters or other print publications are well-known – when intelligently-written and skilfully designed, they can provide complete, coherent stories, be skimmed or read in detail at leisure and do not require any specific IT know-how or equipment.

However, an impressive array of sophisticated technology is continually being developed, much of it particularly suited to remote worker applications. Project management tools help remote workers and office colleagues to work collaboratively and complete projects on schedules. There are also instant messaging and scheduling systems that assist in identifying whether mobile workers are available and the best way of making contact with them.

Specific corporate responsibilities, for example relating to health and safety, may lead logically to the use of specific technologies – for example, mobile solutions that help organisations locate their employees and check that they are safe.

Organisations should always stay attuned with technology developments as these can provide timely solutions to some complex challenges. However, communication tactics and tools chosen to fulfil organisational objectives should be firmly rooted in employees’ actual needs, the true nature of their daily working lives and the equipment at their disposal. The most effective communication strategies are audience-centred, especially when the audience is dispersed. Approaches should also reflect the key role of line managers and the importance of providing them with appropriate levels of support to enable them to fulfil their communication responsibilities to remote workers. Finally, in developing strategies and plans, the key goal should always be a fruitful dialogue rather than a one-way flow of information.

This article originally appeared in HR Director magazine, June 2009