Greetings,
Please do find my inputs accordingly :
what are the methods of calculating salary payment, does the normal annual leave, sick leave, overtime apply to this kind of jobs - The salary can be tasks based or role based. Here are few experiences for managing the WFH employees. This is how their work was measured and they received the benefits.
- I have handled employees at 24/7 Maintenance and support for IT. There was a salary which was at par with the employees working in the office in the normal 8.5 hrs a day. The leaves declaration for them stood similar as the work was extremely grueling. They had VPN connectivity , hence their managers could keep a live-check on their work. It was similar to how e-lancing works , where the managers can see the monitors or screen and dashboard with task completion live on their screens. There were several spot checks. For a company who wish to implement this and not invest on VPN , they may consider Skype for 24/7 connectivity to the employees . It even offers the Screen Sharing option. A similar dashboard to vies task completion can be built even on MS Excel or MS Access. These sheets can be stored in Google docs with access to the reporting manager to view it live.
- There was another role which I handled and it had sales employees. These were purely task based. The employees didnot have to report to office everyday . they could be in field or at home, they had to report twice a day with the number of sales made.
- Fianlly was a work from home recruiter. It was another task based role. The recruiter had an access to the resumes to screen through the first few rounds and arrange the technical rounds. This was purely based on the numbers and stages covered.
- I understand researchers and writers follow similar WFH polices. Request such a company in this community to share their practices.
how do you subject this kind of jobs to training as you mentioned they should be given equal treatment as those who work at the office All these employees had an access to the online training right from the Code of conduct to behavioral/ communication and technical skills training. The Classroom training was arranged in parallel with the office based employees. The ROI was calculated similarly through the difference measured at work.
are they going to be allowed to travel outside the country for training and given equal amount of travel/ training allowance same as those who are working in the office. Well this was different for the roles. Please find the accordingly:
- The IT Maintenance and development team was offered an allowance only when they traveled to the client site. The TA & DA remained similar to the office based employees.
- The sales team had the total budget for each employee out of which the TA & DA was provided
- The recruiters received TA only when they had recruitment drives and traveled to hire in different cities or off location away from the office.
how do you evaluate their performance ( based on their deliverables only) This was the first description made clear to them right during the interview. There was a scorecard which was directly related to the dashboard they would be maintaining on a daily basis. Their reporting managers had a live access to these dashboards. This was clearly defined in their goal sheets and created a career progression.
will I be paid bonuses/ increment as per the HR manuals same as office working person. - The compensation, benefits , increments were all based on the tasks which was targeted and achieved. Now the employees at office were given their own goals all aligned to the project. Hence the parity was built ultimately with the focus on performance.
Am I entitled to only what is provided to me in the contract or all conditions mentioned in the HR manual applies to stay at home worker. Yes virtual office required the employee to follow the same rules applicable to the real office. Though there were differences, such as work timing, dress code and etc. The guidelines for Code of Conduct, IPR, Non-compete, legal discipline, Financial declaration, all remained the same.
Does the organization has the right to develop such policy or should the relevant government organization be involved like your local ministry of manpower ? In my experience , we did not have any litigation to what was practiced. I have requested the Legal experts in this community to comment on this.
Question: in the policy have you considered hindering situations that will not be in the working at home employee such as - Requiring inside documents / information from members of staff- will they deliver-how to claim ownership of the project as a stay at home worker cause I am not in the office will my efforts be recognized To answer these questions, here's my comment
- The work arrangements offered live access to all the documents and data required to deliver the job through VPN. In case a company don't consider it, Google Docs is free and best, security to the information can always be designed.
- We had Jabber which was an inhouse Chat server which allowed the cohorts to exchange notes at the earliest. Skype is the best option and its free, yet offer the same usability. It even offers the voice option with camera, so the manager can arrange for online meetings with the entire WFH team.
- The dashboard covered the ownership and the employees had a turn-around-time on every task including answering emails and chat messages.
Please do revert if I answered all your queries. Will look forward to know more what you wish to learn in this.
Regards,
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