Buzzword Clarification

First, I want to clarify some of the buzz words relevant to this discussion.  ‘In-house’ means that they work for you, but not necessarily in your building.  ‘In-house’ contrasts with ‘outsourcing’.  ‘On-site’ means they work physically with you in your building.  ‘On-site’ contrasts with a ‘remote employee’ — both may be in-house, or one or the other may be outsourced.  An example of on-site outsourcing is the common on-site contract employee.  An example of an in-house remote would be me — I work as a full-time employee of a company that also employs my manager full-time at a different location hundreds of miles away.

Fundamental Lack of Structure?

The context of the question presupposes a biased answer — that being a remote employee somehow implies an inescapable lack of structure compared with working on-site.  I have years of experience on remote teams, and I see no evidence of a fundamental difference in the structure of work required when working remote vs. working in an office.  I have noticed that some managers are good at getting results from employees and others are not, regardless of where the employees are located.

Mangement By Walking Around

I will concede that some management techniques for on-site employees will not work for remote employees.  However, I argue that this subset of management styles is not particularly effective and will inevitably be either replaced or supplemented with a more effective technique that would work for either remote or on-site employees.  For example, if the only management style used at an organization is ‘management by walking around’, how much more effective would that become if the manager followed up new tasks or updates with emails?  Since those emails would be just as effective for remote employees, I conclude that the email follow-up is actually doing the bulk of the work, while the ‘walking around’ is more of a morale boost for the high-context employees.  Unfortunately, the ‘walking around’ style condones the retention of chronic underperformers as described below.

Chronic Underperformance

On the topic of chronic underperformance, I don’t buy that location and performance are as interrelated as the question implies.  Either an employee wants to and is capable of getting the job done or they don’t want to/aren’t capable.  Consider the employee that requires physical babysitting, in person, in order to get the job done.  Without email follow up, there is no way to demonstrate that what was tasked was understood, requiring yet more ‘walking around’ management.  Over time, this employee may decide that the only things that are important are the ones that management decides to stop in and tell him or her about.  This employee may resign to being unproductive anytime management is away — thus, they are absorbing management time and money constantly, regardless of their location.  As soon as I discovered I had an employee like that on staff, I would no longer be interested in retaining their services.  I don’t care what discount I’m getting to have a warm body in the building, if they are not productive without constant supervision, they are wasting my time and money.  However, I can prove their effectiveness by following up with a consistent and verifiable communication strategy.  There can never be an argument over an email follow-up such as: “we discussed XYZ, let me know if you have any reasons this wouldn’t work, otherwise i will assume you can get it done by the date and time specified, and in the manner specified.”*

Working Remote Optionally

I believe this strategy works especially well when employees have the option to work remotely.  This option helps because high-context workers will gravitate towards working on-site, while low-context workers will graviatate towards working remotely.  Low-context workers may be especially irritated by ‘walking around’ management, while workers from high-context cultures will likely thrive from the extra direct attention.  By providing these options, situations where low-context workers or high-context workers were not happy in their existing situation would be diffused, and both types of people would become more productive.  Finally, once this option is allowed, no longer will the chronic underperformers be masked by unhappy low-context workers — underperformers should have no further management process-related excuses.

A Consistent Communication Strategy is Paramount

Many underperforming employees will complain about a lack of communication, for example that they are waiting for responses in order to continue working.  Thus, it is up to management to set the ground rules for responsiveness by email, voice, internet, etc. on project updates, and management must adhere to those updates themselves.  Underperforming employees may have a valid point in arguing that a lack of two-way communication is the cause of their apparent lack of productivity, so I believe that underperforming managers would be as much to blame in a situation of apparent low output (remote or on-site) as an underperfoming employee.  The manager must communicate upstream in situations where projects are stalled because of lack of communication.  As long as enough trackable communication is happening, there should be no unjustifiable delays.

* This email must be worded appropriately for workers depending on the context of their culture.  For more information, I recommend posting a question on the difference in email communication styles between employees from high-context cultures vs. low-context cultures.