With internet speed reaching amazing levels and technology advancements bringing more phenomenal productivity tools, the question is: does your team have to sit in the same office as you? This surely isn’t anything new – people have worked remotely for years and Virtual Assistants (VAs) are common just about everywhere. Is there a space for more complex process being performed by people that sit a 
different office, work from home or even work in another time zone? We are not talking here about upcoming hologram technology, but more about deploying working practices to lead teams and manage processes remotely. There are few pre-requisites for this to take place:
• Using the correct tools (ie technology)
• Employing the right type of people or outsourcing provider
• Deploying the appropriate control mechanisms.
Technology
This is probably the easiest problem to solve. Having a solid internet connection just about everywhere these days, you can talk, see your staff anywhere. Tools like Skype, Viber, GoToMeeting, Teamviewer, etc make it easy to connect no matter what the circumstances. Only twenty years ago, we relied almost exclusively on fixed phone lines for communication. We can easily record activities for training purposes using smart phone or screen capture and email them anywhere. Cloud storage and applications allow unprecedented level of collaboration, with applications such as Box, Dropbox, Google Apps, etc making possible concurrent work from different locations. Once the hologram technology becomes a cost-effective reality, people will be able to even ‘sit’ in the same room while being located remotely.
Right People
Having the right talent is critical in getting the functional teams, remote or not. For a start there has to be a level of trust on behalf of the employer and a level of ‘hunger’ on behalf of an employee or a supplier to get the remote relationship working. Some important characteristics when looking for remote staff are:
• The ability to work independently
• Solid understanding of technology (IT)
• Good casino online communication skills
• Good project management ability
• A level of motivation to work from a distance (independence, pay, work from home, etc)
Controls
No-one these days believes that a direct supervision is the best way to ensure full control over employees or contractors, right? Probably not, the workplaces are full of ‘micro-managers’ who are not fully aware of any other control mechanisms rather than direct supervision.
In his 1996 work, Robert Simons broke a new ground in defining four ‘levers of control’, i.e. four mechanisms to improve managerial effectiveness:
• Boundary controls (e.g. rules/laws)
• Diagnostic controls (e.g. visual metric driven controls)
• Interactive controls (e.g. word of mouth work that improves contols)
• Belief controls (e.g. actions that make employees embrace & engage with the organisational goals)
By understanding all of these levers, savvy managers can reduce requirement for direct supervision and get more out of their employees/suppliers based remotely. By combining these three pre-requisites, managing remote staff becomes a cost effective reality. This way businesses can outsource as well as manage in-house processes that are better done elsewhere without relocating staff or employing in more expensive environments.