Management Problems With Virtual Office
As we embrace technology in businesses, we see our global presence expanding more quickly than ever imagined. With this new global territory comes the ability for staff to work in a virtual office. Virtual offices present a nice solution for cutting operation costs, increasing production and producing happier staff with increased mobility and flexible work hours. With all these benefits many companies have chosen to overlook the issues that come with using a virtual office. The most common issues that arise with virtual office's are technology problems, performance management, organization and training.
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Technology Problems
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Management research firm Wainhouse Research lists virtual whiteboards, instant messaging, audio and videoconferencing and presentation sharing as the most common virtual office applications. When used correctly these applications allow colleagues to communicate nationally or globally with the same effect as actually being in the office. The problem occurs when these tools don't operate as they should. When a whiteboard freezes, a meeting attendee will have no idea what the speaker is referring to. A chat session that continually disconnects may cause poor communication with a remote worker. Meeting attendees have tried to log on to virtual meetings only to find that the remote log-in is not active and they have missed a crucial business meeting. Businesses have to be diligent in ensuring that the technology remote workers use is functional and is a priority to their IT department.
Performance Management
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Remote working offers a unique challenge to supervisors; the staff is not visible, so the supervisors have to flexible in their management style. The most common issues for supervisors seems to be the thought that if the worker is not logged on, they are not performing. With remote workers, supervisors have to learn to assess performance based on the results. Specific goals and performance metrics should be set for remote workers and the assessment should be based on whether the metrics were met, not on the amount of hours the employee was logged on.
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Organization
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The manager and the worker will need to be extremely organized for a virtual office to succeed. The biggest problem found in a management study of virtual offices by Bruce McGraw and Bernie Kelly showed that managers found it hard to put the virtual office workload on a realistic work structure. To overcome this potential problem, organize a virtual office using the same rules you would use in a traditional office. Set definite deadlines for tasks assigning them to the appropriate staff members. Make it a point to speak to the remote workers daily and have a weekly progress report to ensure the tasks are being completed according to their timelines.
Training
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The McGraw and Kelly study also focused on how remote employees felt about working in a virtual office. Many employees felt that when beginning a virtual experience, some extra support and training was needed to be successful. As with all employees, the expectations for the position should be clear. Managers need to set a time to provide feedback to remote workers and they need to be willing to provide the feedback in an alternative form. Remote workers are very comfortable using videoconferencing, email or instant messaging to communicate with supervisors about their responsibilities and expectations.
Virtual Offices Do Provide Benefits
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When successful virtual offices seem to provide the best of both worlds for businesses. With creative management and responsible workers, virtual offices can provide businesses with a more productive and manageable workforce.
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