The growth of telework and virtual teams in midmarket companies

This past week I was interviewed for an article in eWeek entitled Telework Migrates to the Midmarket. The reporter was asking me why I thought midmarket companies (which she defined as companies with 50 - 1000 employees) were starting to embrace more telework and virtual teamwork. While it has been my observation that companies of all sizes, not just midmarket companies, are embracing the concept of having their employees work from outside the office - the question made me think - why the increase specifically in companies of this size? I think there are 2 main reasons for this . . .

My initial, more obvious thought, is that it is largely due to the increase in easy-to-use, affordable technology that companies of any size can implement without the need of a large IT staff - such as web based collaboration tools, remote access to computers, and web meeting services. These subscription services allow companies access to all the tools they need to work from anywhere without the IT headaches for implementation. Even solo professionals can take advantage of these tools. Read more

TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) - Free Conference Calls

In this Mobile Work Tip Phil talks about using free conference call services for real-time brainstorming with people you don’t get to see face to face.

**get more tips like these in our free Mobile Work Tipbook.**

TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) - Communication Guidelines

Here’s a new installment of The Anywhere Office podcast: Mobile Work Tips. Phil offers up some best practices for remote work and virtual teams in 2 minute, digestible tips. This first one deals with setting communication guidelines. You can find a collection of tips like these relating to virtual teams, home offices, laptops, email, and palm pilots in our free Mobile Work Tipbook and we’ll be posting more to the podcast moving forward. Let us know what you think, or if there are any topics that you’d like to hear more about.

Virtual Collaboration and Brainstorming - Use the right tools

I recently stumbled on a great article on Read-Write-Web about the “Work From Home” Generation.

They give a good overview of the pros and cons. While I agree with almost all of it, the first issue they raise as a negative is “Brainstorming is difficult”. While I agree initially it can be more challenging while you adapt to collaborating with others virtually, like anything it becomes much easier with practice. A large part of successfully brainstorming and collaboration with others across distance is choosing and “thoughtfully applying” the right technology. This is something we often talk about and stress in our workshops and books. Read more

The Virtues of Going Virtual

Many people consider the pros and cons of moving to a completely virtual office setup but aren’t sure whether it is right for them. I recently came across a blog post from Don Loper who manages a web design firm. At the end of May he made the jump from a physical office to a full virtual office. Read more about his thoughts and experience in this post - The Virtues of Going Virtual.

He also posted some thoughts about the experience a few months later in his post The Virtual Office is Complete (love the photo Don!)

Now while many of you may be thinking it’s easy for him to go with a virtual office setup because he runs a web design firm, I think you will find most of the points he makes to be true of many businesses in varied industries.

Free Business Continuity and Disaster Preparedness Teleseminar

Well it’s July and that means hurricane season in Florida, which is where we call home. The season lasts from June all the way through November (it’s not all paradise here in the land of Palm Trees!). For people living and doing business in Florida, hurricane season is an annual reminder of the importance of business continuity planning and disaster preparedness. No named storms made landfall here last season, but the two years before that caused catastrophic damage and derailed many businesses beyond just South Florida. Currently, a big concern for assistance organizations and authorities in Florida is that people suffer from what they call ‘hurricane amnesia”… in other words, because we went a season without any major storms, folks get complacent and aren’t as diligent about making sure they have supplies and a plan. Well, that’s true of business owners and managers just the same. So remember, the best time to prepare for any emergency is before it happens, and that’s not just true for South Floridians, there are many types of possible business disruptions or emergencies regardless of where you live and work.

Last year we got together a small panel of South Florida experts to discuss best practices, strategies, and tools related to business continuity, disaster recovery planning, and continuity of operations; we offered a free teleseminar in the interest of helping people figure out where to start and what they could do to protect themselves, even on a tight budget. The session went excellently and we not only participated in the presentation, we learned a great deal. We have decided to make an audio recording and the handouts from the teleseminar available for free download throughout the rest of this hurricane season.

Here’s a link to the audio and handouts for our free one-hour teleseminar “Riding the Storm Out”. In this teleseminar we discuss developing a solid disaster preparedness plan, choosing the right communication technology, as well as how to use home offices, virtual offices, and virtual teams to help ensure your business is ready to weather any storm (or interruption).

Make sure your business is prepared and listen in to this valuable audio program today!

Working Together…When Apart - WSJ.com

Working Together…When Apart - WSJ.com

Phil and I have been wood-shedding as of late, releasing updated versions of our Tipbooks, creating 3 new Virtual Training CDs, and conducting a number of Virtual Team Workshops youcanworkfromanywhere.com/store

When I saw this Wall Street Journal article I wanted to share it on the blog because it is a perfect distillation of the key issues and ideas in which we have been immersed.

Although each virtual team situation has unique qualities, there are some fundamental challenges that appear repeatedly - these are highlighted in this excellent article by Lynda Gratton along with 10 steps that any team can take to collaborate more effectively across distance.

In our workshops we often stress the importance of fostering informal communication, and many times organizations are surprised by this (or even dismiss the idea) because it is an area they have given little or no thought. I’d like to point out that the first step Ms. Gratton details relates to informal communication…

Notes from Jessica Lipnack on Virtual Teams and the Networked Organization

I came across this recent blog post with notes from a recent talk given by Jessica Lipnack, author of several books on virtual teams and CEO of Netage. She makes some wonderful observations about strategies for keeping virtual teams connected and some of the typical challenges.

Definitely worth a read . . .
Notes from Jessica Lipnack on Virtual Teams and the Networked Organization

Teams Across Timezones

There are many challenges when trying to manage or work on a cross-cultural virtual team. While some of these deal with language or differences in expressions, a more base issue is dealing with time. While there are a variety of tools that can be used for rich asynchronous communication and collaboration, there will be times when you want to have a live conference call or webconference to bring everyone together in real time.

When working with a global or wold-wide team it can be difficult to find a time that works for everyone on your team. I came across this post on the Web Worker Daily blog that offers some good tips and suggestions for dealing with timezone differences.

Web Worker Daily - Teams Across Timezones

A panelist at the NICSA convention discussing the changing workplace and virtual teams

I arrived at the beautiful Doral Resort in Miami today (only a few hours South on the Florida Turnpike for me). It was a beautiful day in the mid 60’s and the sun was shining, so I really enjoyed the drive. I felt guilty guilty for a second getting ready this morning and watching the weather channel when I saw that it was -10 degrees with the wind chill in Boston today (the place I called home before moving to Florida). But only for a second . . .

I’m speaking on a panel tomorrow at the annual NICSA convention. Our session is called Looking Forward/Looking Back: Changing Demographics in the Workplace of the 21st Century.

Our panel (which lasts an hour) will be discussing:

• How to get the best candidates
• How to integrate part-time and remote employees into the culture
• How do alternative work arrangements impact the bottom line in terms of cost savings and increased productivity?

I’m looking forward to an interesting discussion. I’ll post more on Wednesday with more info on how the panel went and a summary of best practices and lessons learned.

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• Recent Posts

  • The growth of telework and virtual teams in midmarket companies
  • TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) - Remote PC Access
  • TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) - Free Conference Calls
  • Travel Delays Highlight the Need for Virtual Team Strategies
  • TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) - Communication Guidelines
  • Virtual Collaboration and Brainstorming - Use the right tools
  • Happy Holidays from The Anywhere Office - a musical gift!
  • Dropping Outlook for webmail? My 60 day experiment
  • Free Business Continuity Teleseminar for National Preparedness Month
  • Small Adjustments = Big Changes

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