So you have an overperformer on the verge of burnout, a teleworker's output has slipped, or your in-house staff is frustrated because a teleworker colleague is unreachable during business hours. What can you do to remedy cracks in the telework program?

Train, contract, track -- and retract, if necessary.

In my previous column, we discussed how identifying flaws in a telework program is essential to ensuring its long-term success. Recognizing the warning signs of personal or program failure is important to staving off an impending teleworker implosion.

Long ago, Debra McKenzie learned that training is essential to the program's success. "We do a lot of up-front work, mandatory training, make sure the teleworker and manager sign an agreement, then train the teammates to work on communication," says McKenzie, director of Alternate Work Solutions with Lexis-Nexis, the Dayton, Ohio-information provider to the legal, business, government and academic markets. Some 2,200 of the company's 8,000 employees worldwide participate in telework or full-time home-based work programs.

At the outset of a telework program, teleworkers, managers and support personnel are trained in their respective roles -- whether it's how to work remotely, interact with a remote worker, or to support them. Duration ranges from several hours for experienced teleworkers, managers and company veterans, to several days for first-time teleworkers or new hires, McKenzie says. Workers are trained in time management, handling home-office maladies like distractions and overworking, co-worker interaction and other skills. Managers are taught how to identify and select personnel who are most likely to succeed in the home office environment.

Before workers head home, a telework agreement has laid out interaction, performance and other guidelines that the teleworker and team will follow. In-office peers will know the teleworker's working hours. Minimum daily contact standards will be established. And there will be an out-clause for either party of the gig just isn't working out.

Here's some ways to remedy problem areas that may arise with the telework program:

• Ensure the right tools are available. If new teleworkers are accustomed to high-speed network connections in the corporate office -- but only have dial-up modems at home -- will they come to loathe logging on, and as a result become more remote and disconnected from the team? Where available, make certain workers have the technology they need. Investigate a broadband connection for the worker. Ensure their take-home computer is comparable to what they use in the office. And give them access to the network, so they can mimic their in-office functions from their home office.
• Choose wisely. Has a manager selected a worker for a mandatory telework program -- even though the worker has pre-existing performance issues? Address and fix the problem before dispatching the worker home. Performance issues often come to light three times faster with remote workers than with those in the corporate office, McKenzie says, because in-office workers can appear busy, while remote workers have little more than their output to be measured by.
• Scale back the telework days. Too much telework can be more than the team is ready to handle. Limit telework days to those days teleworkers have projects that require solitude, like conducting research, writing a proposal or preparing a document. They might be more productive working from home on those days anyway, aand the need to check in or interact with the team will be minimized.
• Foster camaraderie among the troops. If you sense teleworkers drifting away from the team, reel them in for a group lunch, after work get-together or other outing. Keep them engaged.
• Pull the plug. If telework just isn't working out for an individual, and the manager, the team and the worker have tried to remedy the situation, don't be afraid to reel in the worker. If your telework agreement was written correctly, the manager can curtail telework or ask the teleworker to return to the office environment. Of course, this is a case-by-case situation, and no telework program should be tainted by one worker's inability to succeed.

With any failed exercise, honesty is the best approach to either rectifying the problem or eliminating the cause.

"Just tell people the truth," McKenzie says. "Just like any other team issue, tell the worker why it's not working. The goal is to coach to correct performance issues."

» posted by ITworld staff

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