7 Boss buy ins

It's rare to start as a telecommuter, usually you need to get the boss to buy into the idea. How?

1. Accountability

This is probably the biggest reason the boss might not like the idea of telecommuting. "How do I know you're busy, or you're not slacking off?" Or even "how can I manage you if you're not here?" You need to prepare and establish this one before you even step into his office. Shift as much as possible to phone and email beforehand as a demonstration to how little you need the face to face time. Without establishing the trust that you will get things done, it's hard to push the idea. Even something as simple as offering to provide a daily update on what you accomplished will go a long way towards this.

2. Availability

Preach the fact you'll be able to get right to any issue from home. No having to commute into the office means you can get on top of something right away if there's a problem on the weekend or evenings. Do keep in mind you won't regularly be working then, on-call 24-7 defeats the point of the flexibility of home office work!

3. Savings

For you and the company. For you, it effectively gives you a raise with the lowered commute and food costs. For the company, plenty of savings in terms of office maintenance&supplies, power usage, and other in-office perks.

4. Temporary

It's much easier for the boss to swallow if you stress it's something to try in the short term to see if it works out. Give a timeframe you'd like to try X days a week from home, and then review at the end. When you do review at the end you should be able to point out the benefits that the company got out of you for that period as ammo to continue the remote work.

5. Retention

Don't approach this as a threat. They want to hear that this will make you happier, and keep you at your job longer. Not having to commute all or some of the time is a boon to the work-life balance. HR loves to tout phrases about work-life balance, and this is a chance for them to really show off in this regard.

6. Conservation

Not for everyone, but the saved commute energy and the savings at the office itself is a significant towards environmental impact.

7. Productivity

This is the easy one. They will doubt this, so don't make it the primary focus of your pitch. The benefit is there for most people, even if it's simply taking half of your commute time and adding it to your effective day instead of 'wasting' it traveling.

Challenge Driven

Interesting conversation with a manager this week on some of the differences between remote workers. Many do an acceptable job and get things done remotely, but rarely extend themselves beyond immediate tasks. This does happen all the time in the traditional office environment, but becomes even more noticeable when working remote. It's easier to coast along in the office, but when you're remote, it'll be apparent very quickly.

Even if you do have skills, it's easy to fall into the coasting trap and not go beyond the immediate assignment. To be successful remotely, you have to be more active than passive. Take on new challenges, think of better ways to accomplish tasks. It'll show, quickly. Managers should really not fear giving people the chance to go remote, because it becomes easier to see the performance, not harder!

Moviation

I'll stop banging on the communication drum for a bit, and expand into motivation. Particularly self-motivation. This was the hardest area to keep up for me, and it's rare that people are naturally self-movitvated when it comes to a relatively isolated work environment. Fortunately, the more isolated environment certainly increases shorter-term attention on tasks thanks to less distractions from around the office.

The long term though? Harder. Some folks may have gotten through high school and college by waiting a few days before a large project was due to actually start on it, and that just won't sustain you at your job. If it does, you're very lucky, or overly skilled for what you're doing.

Break it down into smaller bits. Nothing should take more than one day to accomplish. If you've got 500 of something to go through and that will take all week, break it into 100 a day. If you only do 50, you'd better go back and re-think how long it's actually going to take without killing yourself in the process. I'd much rather think 'I just need to get through 100 today' than 'Crud, I need to get through 500 this week'.

Once you get better at breaking things down into day (or even half-day) chunks, your boss will love you when it comes time to making plans. You don't have to share your day max breakdown, but it gives you a much more accurate idea of how long something will take.

Where were you?

'Where were you?' is one of the worst things to hear as an anywhere worker. I hate to keep banging the communication drum but it just keeps happening. Today it was discovered that nobody on this particular project call had talked to one of the people involved for an entire week. It's not as if he had nothing to do. Most of his time is dedicated to the project in question, but if he does show for the call tomorrow, I expect a lot of very pointed questions. Our mutual manager was out half of last week, but it's hardly an excuse.

Sometimes it's hard to take the extra effort, but in this case he could have saved himself a lot of trouble and from having extra scrutiny in the weeks to come.