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Years ago, as a young employee, I loved snow days. But as a business manager, I've come to dislike them. The fact is, you can't sail the ship forward if you don't have crews at their stations.

I have a lot of experience with employees working from home; most of them have been negative. If you are the kind of manager who worries about maximizing productivity, working from home can create problems.

First, there is the obvious problem of a decline in productivity. But more importantly, there's the stress it puts on you as a manager. In a work-from-home situation, you become disconnected with the productivity levels of your team; that disconnect breeds mismatched expectations and conflict. When you try to address this disconnect, it can feel heavy-handed to your employees, almost as though you don't trust them. This, in turn, can breed indignation and resentment, which only furthers your own concerns about productivity. It's a negative cycle.

Fortunately, there is technology that makes work-from-home scenarios more palatable to Type-A management styles:

• Communicate with your employees. If they understand the stress you feel, they will be more likely to give a little bit in terms of extra communication.


• Ask for e-mail updates. All of my supervisors get an e-mail when employees start their day; the e-mail includes a list of what they hope to accomplish. Supervisors also get an e-mail at the end of the day, explaining progress. The e-mails take only minutes -- far less than even the drive time that is saved.


• Use an instant-messaging client. All of my team uses Google Talk. Team members are asked to be online when they're working and to set an away message when they step away. If you reach out to someone and they don't immediately respond, then you have cause to ask why. Set up group chats for all of your key departments so any department can engage in a discussion.


• Use desktop sharing and conference calling. For this, my team makes regular use of GoToMeeting because it's comprehensive and affordable. One person starts the meeting, others join via their Web browsers, and then everyone dials into the conference line. Control of the desktop can be passed around as needed. You can collaborate very successfully with a tool like this.


• Use Google Docs. My team uses the spreadsheet application to maintain task or project lists. You can then go into the administration of the spreadsheet and "subscribe" to any changes. This gets your team into the habit of frequently updating their to-do lists. By subscribing, you'll get e-mail notifications of individual's to-do list updates.


• Consider a private branch exchange, or PBX, system such as Grasshopper or Virtual PBX. With this and mobile phones, you don't need land lines. Most importantly, your customers won't know the difference between an employee at his or her desk and an employee working from home.

Even when working in the office, I find myself getting concerned about productivity. The feelings are magnified when I can't walk over and talk to the person. Leveraging technology has successfully eased some of those concerns.

I'm almost starting to enjoy snow days again.

This was originally posted on the Central Penn Business Journal Gadget Cube.

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