Teleworking in 2016: Not your grandma's teleworking

Thirty-three years have passed since Jack Nilles first coined the term “telecommuting”. Despite criticisms about productivity and Marissa Mayer’s 2012 decision to stop all telecommuting at Yahoo!, telecommuting has only become more popular. We now favor a more active name: “teleworking”, also coined by Nilles. According to this popularized infographic from the New Jersey Institute of Technology MBA program, the number of remote job listings went up 27% from 2014 to 2015. That’s impressive growth.

It would seem teleworking is here to stay, and more and more often the smartest and most creative workers demand it.

But what makes up an effective teleworking environment in today's workplace?

1. Innovative collaboration tools

You absolutely MUST have a collaboration tool to facilitate communication and cooperation among remote workers or between remote and non-remote workers. You have to take the time to pick the right one, socialize it, help people to use it in the most effective ways, and get full support from top management as well as team leaders.

This article from PCMag gives a list of the top collaboration tools in 2015, as well as an intro paragraph that really hits some good points on why you need this type of tool.

2. Shared workspaces

Shared workspaces gained steam with the tech boom and the rise of remote workers who needed a more controlled place to work—or maybe just a reason to get out of the house. Today they have become much more than that. Large companies with office space often also have a membership at a shared workspace—for large meetings, for overflow, for particular types of collaboration—and most relevant to this article, for meetings with telecommuters.

Not only is it a good idea, millennials have begun to expect it. You can cater your level of membership (and thus costs) to your needs. You can get one membership for a workspace that is nationwide if your remote workers are scattered.

The above linked article provides a list of the more popular companies providing shared workspaces: Pipeline, WeWork, Grind, NextSpace, Roam, Industrial, and the list is growing.

3. Trust & flexibility

When remote working started to become mainstream, there were a lot of questions about productivity and accountability. Would remote workers still work hard, work well, and stay on task? And the underlying question, could we trust them?

I suggest that you should always aim to trust your employees. Someone can slack off down the hall from you just as easily as from home, and studies have shown that productivity generally goes up with remote workers.

Also, remote workers tend to demand more flexibility as far as when they work and how they get things done. Focus on the end goal and be clear about parameters if you do need them specifically available at certain times. Otherwise, allow the flexibility and reap the benefits of happier workers.