Is It Time To Let Your Big Billers Work From Home?
There’s been a slow revolution underway in how we work over the past decade, with some companies and industries wholeheartedly embracing the many benefits of allowing their employees to work from home.
While it may seem daunting to simply trust that your recruiters will work at the same rate sitting in their lounge room as they would do in a traditional workplace, in recruitment the truth always lies in the billing numbers and the reporting culture that you already have in place. After all, you’ll soon know if someone isn’t working hard from home if you see a sudden dip in their sales performance or their candidate database plateaus.
Because of the target and metric driven culture that underpins recruitment, the recruitment industry is ideally poised to make the move to remote work—although as a billing manager there are certainly some things you should look out for in order to make it work.
What are some of the benefits of allowing your billers to work from home?
1. It drives engagement and retention.
In studies run by Global Workplace Analytics, two thirds of the workforce has expressed a preference to work from home, and more than a third of employees would choose the option to work from home over a salary increase. As a recruitment manager, this is a powerful incentive in your arsenal to drive recruiter engagement and reduce turnover that requires no financial outlay.
2. Remote workers have been proven to be significantly more productive.
Research of major companies such as BT have shown that their remote workers are 30-40% more productive when they work at home, while external American Express workers are 43% more productive. According to research, 600 billion dollars is lost a year due to workplace distractions. Being away from ringing phones, constant chatter and office gossip can free your billers up to concentrate on the job at hand in a quiet space.
3. Gen Y employees are attracted to jobs offering flexible working arrangements.
Recruiting and retaining Gen Y employees is becoming an increasingly competitive business, and organisations that offer the option to work from home attract high-quality candidates. As the overwhelming majority of recruiters are now Gen Y’s/Millennials, it’s important to keep them engaged and happy with flexible work options.
4. Less risk of stress-induced burnout and sick day claims.
In a competitive industry like recruitment, the ability to work from home rather than a high-pressure office (even if just one or two days a week) can have a positive effect on stress levels. Also, given that many employees call in sick due to stress or needing to be at home for family obligations, working from home reduces the amount of productive time lost due to sick days being claimed. An added benefit is that remote workers often continue to work from home even when they’re sick, and they don’t pass any nasty infections onto the rest of the team!
5. Online meetings are shorter and more focused.
Generally, meetings hosted online are much better planned than those conducted in person, and run shorter. No more wasted morning meetings where nothing gets achieved!
What are the drawbacks of remote work?
1. Not everybody is well-suited to remote work.
Some will miss the social aspect of the workplace and become less engaged, while other less self-motivated types may slack off and then find themselves scrambling when the end of month reporting is due. As such, it’s your role as a manager to assess who among your team is naturally suited to remote work, and create very strict reporting procedures for those who you fear may lag behind.
One option is to come up with a mixed schedule of remote and office work, or only offer working from home privileges to those who meet targets (which will add a new layer of incentive to your management strategy!)
2. The team may become less connected.
As a billing manger, you must ensure that your team remains a cohesive whole despite not working in the same physical space every day. Host regular online meetings to bring everyone together, and it is recommended to also meet in person occasionally if your team is entirely remote. Utilise a messaging platform to keep everyone informed on key issues, and insist on a rapid-response ethos to any queries or issues that arise within your team.
Offering flexible work arrangements to your team can have a powerful effect on engagement and productivity. Your top billers are obvious candidates to work from home as they’ve already proven themselves to be self-motivated, but the rest of your team should also be driven to new billing heights if you manage their remote work effectively or offer them remote work as an incentive to hitting targets.
Until next time,
Cheryl