Most SME's find it hard to trust "home alone" staff

Nearly half of HR managers would find it difficult to trust their staff working from home. That’s according to new research by business communications providers Inter-Tel Europe. The research, which questioned the attitudes of over 400 HR managers at SMEs across the UK, found that 44% of managers do not trust all staff to work from home effectively. One in ten said that they would not be able to trust any staff to work at home alone. Just 22% trust their staff implicitly.

The issue of trust was just one of the barriers to flexi-working revealed by the research. Other barriers included the conflicts flexi-working poses to company culture and the existing business model (33%), and a lack of interest among the management team (8%).

The research also raised concerns among HR managers about monitoring the productivity of staff working from home - in particular the cost of supporting and managing remote employees (28%) was cited as an obstacle to going flexi. Just 15% of those questioned were aware of real time online monitoring tools as an option to counter this. 30% of HR managers suggested using sales or call rates, but 25% claimed that they did not know how to monitor home worker performance - 15 % even said they would have to accept that they couldn’t.

Even so, many HR directors seemed to believe that if they did encourage flexi working they would find it easier to attract staff (48%) and would have a more empowered (34%), more motivated (53%), more productive (33%) and less stressed workforce (94%).

The research also showed that some HR managers think home working can create an isolated workforce (15%). When questioned on how best to overcome isolation, HR managers believed that enforced visits to site (33%), regular round-robin emails (20%) regular social events (11%) and daily telephone contact from team leaders (27%) would help.

Chris Harris, managing director of Inter-Tel Europe, comments:

“Flexi-working is still a prickly subject for many SMEs, who have yet to arrive at a practical answer to overcoming their fears about managing and monitoring staff. 42% of SMEs said their IT network and phone system could be accessed remotely. And encouragingly, 16% said they had IP telephony systems in place, which allow ‘free’ inter-site calls. That means that many SMEs are in a strong position to add on applications that make monitoring productivity easy to do and for relatively little investment. The growth in home computer ownership and broadband are two more good reasons to make flexi-working a reality as part of the extension to the infrastructure is effectively already done for you.”

Chris continues:

“Many SMEs don’t need to be persuaded of the benefits of flexi policies, they just need to be assured that the technology they need to adopt will not dent their budget, disrupt their business model or set their business plan back. With careful planning it won’t and by working with the right partner to support the adoption of new technology it can generate quick results, allowing SMEs to reap all the rewards and cost savings that flexi-working brings.”