The Top 10 Strategies for Managing Mobile Workers
First the facts:
According to IDC:
- U.S. mobile workforce expected to grow to 73% of total U.S. workforce in 2011.
- Across the world 30.4% of the workforce will be mobile in 2011.
[Source: IDC, Worldwide mobile worker population 2007-2011 forecast, Doc #209813, December 2007]
According to Nemertes:
- Nemertes estimates that the number of virtual workers has increased by 800% within the last 5 years.
- 60% to 70% of all employees work in locations difference from their supervisors.
The facts show that mobile workforce is no longer a special or isolated case. It is beginning to become the norm. So how do you manage a team that in an office somewhere or working even out of country?
Terrence L. Gargiulo, President of makingstories.net, put out a whitepaper discussing the nature of mobile workforce and outlining ten strategies to deal with it.
- Focus on building relationships.
- Streamline communications.
- Incorporate less didactic forms of communications.
- Spend more time listening.
- Let mobile workers define communication and reporting practices they want to follow.
- Manage deliverables not activities.
- Engage in more frequent and informal performance management activities.
- Give complete trust until given a concrete behavioral reason to do otherwise.
- Use adaptive management styles tailored to individual workers.
- Leverage technology.
For me the key here is not to manage them, but to build relationship with them. Easier said than done, perhaps. But I know it can be done. 
*Photo from MorgueFile.com