Avaya - the case for home workers

Avaya (1) have published a white paper discussing the reasons for having home workers.

As the MD of Plasmanet and owner of Hopgood Consulting, I'm happy to employ people offsite to assist with the expansion and growth of my businesses.

The 2 main questions for me are,

1. how do i measure performance

2. as a positive leader, I want to include my team - how can I do that if my team is offsite?

Well the answer to number 1 is clear. The performance of my call center team is recorded using the call switch I have deployed, be it Avaya, Nortel, whatever.

The main challenge is in letting the team know constantly what is needed of them and how they are doing.

The ERIC report (2) about goal setting research, concluded that

a. Feedback increased productivity substantially
b. Goal setting increased productivity further
c. Incentives did not add anything in productivity when combined with the above 2

Well how best to get this information to them?

In the workplace, corporate digital signage systems such as SignageStar and Plasmanet can show data on screens, but installing dedicated plasma screens in the home may not be considered cost effective.

A cost effective and appropriate alternative is to have a desktop channel. A view of a corporate digital signage channel, showing Incentive, Feedback and Team Goals and info would be possible, filtering data for the individual and team.

Corporate Digital signage systems which show exactly the same content on a web browser as on screens, would need minimal reconfiguration of content for application for home workers.

Plasmanet and SignageStar from Hopgood Consulting Ltd offers this functionality.

References:
(1) Avaya - home worker paper
Contact Center Costs: The Case for Telecommuting Agents
http://www.avaya.com/master-usa/en-us/resource/assets/whitepapers/gcc3211.pdf

(2) ERIC - Feedback, Goal Setting, and Incentives Effects on Organizational Productivity.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED283963&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED283963