What Should An Employer Check Out Before Allowing One Of Their Staff To Work At Home?
A Company can achieve great savings if a good chunk of the personnel are able to work at home. In these tricky trading circumstances any suggestion of a saving can be pounced on and put into practice almost right away but the idea must have diligent contemplation and setting up. Each employee’s circumstances will be different from their working colleagues from within the organisation and so each set of circumstances has to be reviewed on it’s own merits.
The first question that should be considered is whether the role itself can be carried out from a distance. Look at the job specification, equipment needed to carry out the role and what kind of contact is needed with other team of your organisation. Archetypal unskilled home working roles are ones where the individual may carry out online surveys for money but if your role if at the other end of the intricacy scale you have to think hard. If all that stacks up you can then look individually at all those employees who work in that position.
In these situations you have to consider their conduct to date, has there been trust issues or behaviour worries in the past, are they reliable, do they have a good record. Layout some criteria that you can check them off against, if you calculate you are unable to allow them to transfer to home working you will then have the information that confirms this.
Then thrash out with the staff member the practicalities of working from home. Do they have a separate room or area of their house where they can get away from the rest of the family and remain undisturbed? Which family members are at home throughout the day, and are they prone to cause distractions?
Lastly consider the person’s outlook to working from home, could they become too isolated? Are they likely to become too disconnected. Once all these considerations have been carried out you should have a decent idea if the plan will be successful, of course circumstances can alter but at least you will have done your best.