Truth 63. Absence makes the employee happier

It was never funny, even when it was new. But somehow this joke experiences a magical rebirth with every new generation of managers who think they’re amusing: The manager walks by an employee deeply concentrating on work and says, “You working hard? Or hardly working?”

But what if the employees are hardly ever there? What’s a manager to do then? Whatever you do, don’t bug them via Instant Message. According to the study “Why Teleworkers Are More Satisfied with Their Jobs Than Are Office-Based Workers: When Less Content is Beneficial,” the authors discovered that the ability to work in peace outweighs any advantages that onsite employees might enjoy, such as picking up the whisper of a career-boosting rumor floating in the halls or engaging in interoffice skullduggery. Authors Kathryn Fonner (assistant professor of communication at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee) and Michael Roloff (professor of communication studies at Northwestern University) found in their research that job satisfaction actually increases when personal interaction decreases.

The ability for individuals to telecommute will continue to enhance companies’ ability to perform at high levels—expanding and contracting as necessary to achieve their objectives. Once you can accept the idea of employees working remotely, your small local operation can suddenly expand to a national, if not global, enterprise. A kitchen table in San Jose, California, can suddenly make a New York consulting operation a bicoastal enterprise. Add to that mix the population of independent contractors, virtual assistants, and freelancers available around the world, and you’re a 24/7 operation spanning the globe.

So, how do you manage all that scattered talent—with at least partial focus on keeping them by making sure they’re engaged?

Upgrade your ideas around your own work. You are not a by-the-hour manager making sure your employees are 100% focused on company business during clock-in time. You are a by-the-project or by-the-objective manager. So it really doesn’t matter what your telecommuters are doing at 2:30 p.m. And it doesn’t matter what they’re doing at 2:30 a.m. Your job is making sure that business objectives are met on time, not what time it is. This will make your conversations with your telecommuters much more satisfying for both sides.

Learn to love the online meeting services like Skype, Zoom.us, and GoToMeeting. You can hold team meetings online with no one leaving his or her desk—whether those desks are down the hall or Down Under. These services offer best-of-all-worlds advantages in that there is face-to-face interaction but no one is likely to waste everyone’s time fiddling with the coffee maker, scrounging around for creamer, or popping out of the room to find a file or accept an interruption from a colleague. There’s just something sacrosanct about staring into a monitor-mounted camera at a prearranged time.

Implement a zero-tolerance policy regarding scapegoating. The upside to teleworking is that distance workers largely get to stay out of the interoffice political stream. The downside is that they are at a disadvantage for defending themselves once they are sucked into that stream. Traitors are chicken. And it’s so much easier to set up and blame the absent teammate they won’t have to look in the eye. As a manager, it’s your job to make sure that the team culture is one where everyone takes full responsibility for his or her own work and maybe just a little extra responsibility for each other’s work.

Be sure to invite your teleworkers to real or virtual social events with your team. Even if your teleworkers are independent contractors, if they’re regular contributors to your organization’s efforts, don’t overlook them when building your holiday party guest list. If they’re full-time, permanent employees—just far-flung ones—make sure you have built into your budget travel funds to bring them to the office, ideally at least once a quarter. Four face-to-face meetings a year beat 15 daily interruptions.

Remember that teleworkers need to be engaged as much as their onsite colleagues do. They need your attention. They need to know that they have a key role in helping the organization achieve its objectives (and they need to know exactly what that role is). They need to be able to trust their coworkers. And they need to know and care about the intrinsic value of the company to the marketplace overall.

Teleworkers also need to know that there is forward momentum in their careers. Professional development is still an important engagement driver for your offsite employees. When you bring your telecommuting employees in for their regular onsite visits, be sure to reserve some of that time to focus on their career development needs and interests.

Whatever you do, lighten up on the IMs. Unless you know for an absolute fact that your teleworker loves interruptions, resist the urge to ping. Interruptions are interruptions—even if you’ve got this really funny thing to say.