How To Persuade Your Billing Manager You Should Work From Home

You’re a high performing recruiter who wants to make the shift to working from home. You know you’ll be more efficient and be able to produce high sales results away from all the distractions of the office.  

But how do you get your billing manager to agree?  

It’s time to put your legendary pitching skills to good use, and pitch your idea of working from home as a win-win proposition…and crucially, one where the company and billing manager cannot lose.  

Here’s an 11-step plan to state your case for working from home in 2018. 

1. Know where you stand right now. 

The first step is to check your contract to ascertain if work from home provisions have been mentioned.  

2. Know the data and use it to your advantage.  

Research indicates that people who work from home are between 35 and 40 percent more effective, due in large part to the removal of workplace distractions and conflict, elimination of commuting time, and reduction of sick time due to office-borne illnesses. Present the relevant statistics to your billing manager to back up your request.  

3. Consider a mixed arrangement to begin.   

You might suggest a soft start, such as working 3 days at the office, 2 days from home. Before you go into the discussion with your manager, figure out which days would be more beneficial spent at home, which may depend on which days team meetings are scheduled.  

If you produce data showing that your days at home are more productive over time, you may be able to use this data to lobby to transition to full time work from home. Of course, you might find that 3 and 2 is a really nice combination! 

4. Pitch it as an experiment with a time scale.  

Agree to a week or month-long trial of the working from home arrangement, and then be sure to deliver some fantastic results. As your billing manager adjusts and realises that your work is not being affected (and crucially, that his or hers isn’t either), your move will hopefully become permanent.  

5. Make it clear that this ‘experiment’ is tied to your billing numbers.  

If your performance lags, make it clear that you’ll return to the workplace, no questions asked. 

6. Consider sweetening the deal. 

This is particularly useful if you’re experiencing resistance to the idea but are really determined to persuade your manager. Would you sacrifice this year’s pay increase or another perk for the opportunity to work from home? 

7. Explain why you want to work from home from a purely work perspective.  

This is not the time to talk about your brand new puppy being lonely at home alone, or how remote work fits in better with your kids’ school schedule.  

You need to focus on what will resonate with the billing manager: you need to make it clear how your choice to work from home will result in better billings. So focus on things like finding it difficult to concentrate and make pitches in a noisy office, or that the long commute is diminishing your performance.  

8. Make sure it doesn’t make your manager’s job any harder.  

Offer to come in for meetings and whenever required. Ensure that everybody is aware of your working arrangements/hours/days off to prevent confusion, and be extremely alert to emails or calls coming in from the office so you’re not inconveniencing people who would typically have just wandered over to your desk to ask a question.  

9. Put the manager’s mind at ease. 

If you meet with any resistance from a manager worried you might not work as hard without oversight, offer to time track your activities using programs like Trello or even Hubstaff, which takes regular snapshots of your screen to show what you’re working on. Also agree to a strict reporting schedule so that they know you’re taking your obligations seriously. 

10. Don’t push your billing manager to decide straight away.  

As a recruiter, you’ll understand they need time to think about the costs and benefits, and potentially speak to senior management or HR.  

11. Don’t mess it up!   

Remember that you’re not only trialling working from home for yourself, but for everyone else in your team who might like to have flexible work arrangements in future! Make your manager see that working from home can deliver superb results.  

Until next time, 

Cheryl