| How I improve tech support by allowing staff to work from home
I worked for a firm in New Zealand which was acquired by iiNet in 2003. The tenure is much longer, so they tend to stay with the company more. It's exactly the same system. They get exactly the same support. We don't have that often. However, that's happened very, very rarely. We have about 15-20% of our Australian staff working from home right now. The other decision was to allow more people to work from home. They don't have to dress up, or worry about that other stuff, they're just logging on and supplying the highest level of service. So if you have a passion outside your normal area, you're given the scope to go and do that. But we're not about to take somebody who has a sick leave issue and then just allow them to work from home, for instance. We were in-between buildings, so there were quite a few factors involved there. People love the fact they can just ask to work from home for three months at a time, or for a week if their child is ill, or even permanently, if they are a young mother and have to be home. We did a good deal of focus groups with staff, looked at what other people were doing, and then we implemented a couple of big changes. The first was that we implemented a system of following the sun, so we run our tech support from Auckland to Capetown. I'm hoping to get 30% of the Australian workforce from home. It really works well with what we're trying to achieve with our staff, and it's important for their work-life balance. One of the things we've seen in Sydney can be a big uptake in the number of staff who work from home there. Now, they don't have to. We do find that half the people will come into the office once a fortnight. When that happens they call the customer straight back, or contact the team leader and the team leader calls that customer back. We're flexible with times as well so they are able to log in, and log off if they need to. There isn't a lot of red tape. Other ideas you have are taken into account. How I improve tech support by allowing staff to work from home |
Friday 30 March 2012
How I improve tech support by allowing staff to work from home
