Using Coaching to Close the Gap Between Remote Workers and Managers

It’s common for coaches to work from home.

But increasingly, some of the world’s biggest corporations are saving money by allowing employees to telecommute—by one 2009 estimate, 34 million Americans work at least some of the time from home—and researchers at Forrester predict 43 percent of US workers will telecommute at least some of the time by the year 2016.

With outsourcing and companies operating exclusively online, it’s increasingly common for workers and managers never to have been in the same place at the same time.

The rise in “remote employees” means re-evaluating company policies, expanding digital technology to keep those employees wired and working, and—for coaches—a new emphasis on coaching managers of those employees who spend some or all of their time away from managers and co-workers.

“Supervising a group of workers that is geographically diverse is a great challenge, but it doesn’t have to be difficult if the right tools are used,” said Yaron Sinai, founder and CEO of Elementool, a software company.

Sinai says the advantage of an employer having employees in various locations is more than just the cost savings of having a smaller office space. You can “pick the best workers,” Sinai says, no matter where in the world they live. The downside is, you won’t see them face to face, and coaching them becomes challenging—“you are managing without the benefits of an office setting, such as the daily face time and impromptu meetings for status updates and clarifications.”

Jeffrey Jones, an executive coach and managing director at Human Factor International, researched the topic of coaching remote workers at Columbia University. “More and more companies are realising that their ability to orchestrate excellence across dispersed networks of employees, suppliers and business partners will be a key component of their competitive advantage,” said Jones. “The globalisation of business, culture, language and time zones adds complexity and challenge to the picture.”

As far flung corporate teams present challenges, coaching offers opportunities to close geographic gaps and help remote workers to their best possible work.

“Coaching is ideally suited to support remote employees using technology such as Skype, gotomeeting and virtual realities such as Second Life,” said Jones, whose company established an executive coaching practice in Second Life. “Coaches working with dispersed global teams can also be an important source of information to management by reporting back trends and common issues that are impacting the clients. Of course, the reporting needs to remain within the pre-agreed boundaries of client confidentiality.”

An MIT study found four primary areas where coaching can help the remote worker:

• finding a work-life balance
• overcoming isolation
• compensating for the lack of face-to-face communication
• compensating for lack of visibility

According to the MIT study, “Successful companies will find ways to adjust to the differences and provide specialized training, mentoring and broad opportunities for social and business interactions with both traditional and remote employees.”

Susan Gerke leads workshops for managers on these very topics, helping answer common questions like, “how can I get to know them when we haven’t met face-to-face?”

Many managers of remote workers, Gerke says, struggle with evaluating the performance of workers they can’t easily check on or sit down with. “In the remote environment, we lose visual clues to help us understand people,” Gerke writes in an article designed to help coaches work with managers who can’t simply grab an employee for a cup of coffee to see how they’re doing.

“Because you lose the body language when you are coaching over the phone, listening skills become more important than ever,” Gerke said. “That includes the key listening behavior of checking for understanding.”

Gerke says focusing on interaction styles and use of language is key to working with a remote employee, as is being very specific about measuring performance—with objectives, feedback and evaluations.

“When we interact by telephone, sometimes we miss the casual interaction we have when we meet face to face. For example — I might comment on your new haircut, a color that looks good on you, etc,” Gerke said. “We need to be sure to make space for some connecting and relationship building. That may be checking on the weather, sports, family, or other areas of interest. When we are interacting remotely, we need to be more deliberate about relationship building.”

As Phillip Montero, a remote working expert says, “By learning to manage by results rather than activity, improving communication, and nurturing trust between managers and employees the whole organization benefits. In fact, virtual team managers have reported that their overall management skills increased for both on and off-site workers.”

Have you coached managers of remote workers? What’s been the biggest challenge—and your most effective coaching tool?