Before you even think about pursuing a remote working agreement, you need to understand where you stand in your company. What this basically means is, how important are you and how are you perceived by your direct manager who has the power to supply you with teleworking rights.
If you have the reputation of being hardworking, reliable, independent, and have been with the company for a number of years; this will improve your chances of achieving a teleworking agreement in minimal time.
To help you along, I’ve prepared a chart so you can score yourself. Use this chart to determine if you are in the position to approach your boss directly regarding remote work rights or if you should do some work on yourself for a bit.
Work Attendance
If you have poor work attendance, as in you’re always late, have been known to be sick a lot, take long breaks and leave early, you may want to consider doing something about that before approaching your boss. Even if you are highly productive during the time you are at work, your boss may feel that you have a higher potential of productivity if you spent more time at your desk.
Give your boss an idea of your productivity benchmark so that he has a clear idea of how much you can achieve while working full time in the office. This will allow you to impress him more and give yourself a bargaining chip when you increase in productivity while outside of the office.
Also, bosses hate slackers or people who think they’re cocky enough to do what they want. Show some respect and discipline; arrive at work on time and stop taking sickies. This will help boost your image as a person who is dependable and reliable and can be used as bargaining leverage later.
Communication
Can you get things done without ever leaving your desk? The point behind good communication (in the teleworking context) is that you are able to communicate what you want effectively through email and phone and still be able to achieve your desired outcome.
They say it is good to follow up, but if you have to get up from your desk and chase someone around your building in order to complete a pending work task, then you really need to work on your communication.
If you can’t get something done without leaving your desk, completing your work while you are at home or anywhere outside the office is going to be difficult.
Independence
Can you handle working on your own, or do you need to constantly seek advice from your co-workers to do something? Do you feel confident that if you were stranded with no one to contact that you could complete a work task? If not, then you’re going to need to learn to carry your own weight if you’re going to telework successfully.
Reliability
Are you known for being reliable and getting work done in time or ahead of schedule? If yes, then you’re great. If not, then your boss would probably prefer giving you the boot rather than let you work away from the office where he can’t keep an eye on you.
Importance to organization
Would your leaving the company have a significant impact on the productivity of the company? This is usually the case if you are in a specialized position or if you have been with the organization for a number of years. In either case, firing you would be painful and would create a lot of trouble for the company if they knew they needed to spend a lot of time training someone or spend a lot of money to hire someone to replace you.
Summary
Once you know where you stand, you can assess which sections of this book you should look at and which sections you can opt to skip. If you scored great in everything, I applaud you, and you could probably walk into your bosses office tomorrow and request a teleworking agreement if it already exists within your company. On the other hand, if you didn’t score great in everything and scored poorly particularly in the area of reliability and importance to organization, you’re going to have to do some work before even thinking about approaching your boss.
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Yasuo Long believes that all employees should have the right to design their lifestyle according to their needs in order to maintain their health, their relationships and their happiness. In pursuit of this, he quit the 9-to-5 and became a telecommuter to give himself the time and mental freedom to discover what it really means to live with direction and purpose.
