Telework Migrates to the Midmarket

Giving employees the permission and the means to telecommute, or "telework" at home, is steadily catching on in the midmarket.

Even five years ago, teleworking wasn't a novel notion. But in most cases, those employees worked for large corporations with the infrastructure in place to manage staff who wanted to work at home or on the road.

Today, however, thanks to Web-enabled applications, collaboration tools and VPN technology, even companies with only a few hundred employees have begun allowing their employees to work off-site, at least part of the time.

"Because of the tools and applications available today, people who normally work behind a desk can do their jobs from other places and have increased flexibility," said Sandra Palumbo, director of enterprise research at Yankee Group.

In addition to improved technology, which has enabled the move toward employee mobility, other drivers include greater employee retention, potentially lower real estate costs due to workers spending less time in the office, and greater productivity because employees can use travel time or waiting time to complete work-related tasks.

These factors have led to steady growth that is expected to continue, according to a study conducted last year by CompTIA (Computing Technology Industry Association). That study, published in August of 2007, found that almost three out of four companies surveyed with fewer than 500 employees had an average of 7 percent of the work force working from home one or more days per week.

But without vigilance, companies may see a black cloud under that silver lining. Managing employees who aren't physically in the office, which is a new concept for many smaller companies, requires a change in mind-set.

"It takes a different mind-set to manage a work force you don't see all the time," said Phil Montero, CEO of Montero Consulting, a workplace consulting firm. "It has to do with shifting from the eyeball management style where you gauge work based on seeing people in the office to more results-based measurements."

There are other challenges as well, such as device management.

"Smaller companies tend to have smaller IT staffs without expertise in many different areas, so if your mobile workers are using their own devices or tools they have brought in themselves, supporting them could become a big issue," Palumbo said.

A better idea, she said, is to create a consistent policy about which types of workers can use which tools, and then furnish and support just those tools. But, she admitted, balancing and determining the right technology and the right level of support is a big challenge for companies with small IT staffs.

Application management is another issue. Most mobile workers need access to the same standard applications in use at the company's headquarters. According to Yankee Group market research, they need mobility-related solutions for small and midsize businesses, including blogs, wikis, smart phones, wireless laptops and instant messaging. Top software choices include e-mail, word processing, business productivity tools, CRM (customer relationship management) and project management.

The issue is actually less complex now than it has been in the past. If mobile workers have applications resident on a laptop or home computer, a simple VPN or method of synchronizing documents is all that's needed. For others, a good choice would be a form of remote access like GoToMyPC that allows an employee on a Web-enabled computer to use it as if he or she were in the office, Montero said.

"In these cases, there doesn't have to be a limitation on what programs a person can use, because essentially they are using their machine as though they were in the office," he said.

But with these methods, as with all things mobile, security is paramount, and with a mobile staff, security can become a huge issue if not managed properly. The way to handle it, Palumbo said, is to make sure the company has a formal strategy for managing the security of mobile workers and devices.

"A lot of businesses tend to deploy mobile technology and assume that security is built into it. But businesses need to make sure the security is part of any solution," she said. "So have a formal strategy and plan around providing mobility and be careful about what you let users bring in from their personal life."

Montero, however, said he believes the security challenge is a bit overblown.

"I don't buy that security is a valid deterrent," he said. "Any subscription service you use comes with standard 128-bit encryption—the same stuff you use with any banking site. And companies in general have become more comfortable with the variety and level of Internet security. It's just about making sure things are secure and encrypted."

The most important thing any company can put in place to ensure effective and safe use of technology by mobile workers, Montero said, is formal guidelines.

"A lot of companies worry a lot about the tools and technologies but they don't discuss things like guidelines on how mobile workers should communicate with their managers," he said. "Many midmarket companies don't think to put that kind of structure in place, but the companies that are most successful do this."

In addition to guidelines on communication and security guidelines, Montero also recommended a full set of guidelines for any mobile technology an employee will be using, along with appropriate training.

"A lot of companies send workers off with laptops and cell phones and think they are ready to work remotely. But they haven't been taught the correct way to access certain systems. They don't for example, know how to retrieve e-mail when they aren't in the office," he said. "That's where companies sometimes prematurely scrap the whole idea of mobility because they say people are struggling too much with the technology. But it's more an issue of training and education."