Watercooler chat at more small businesses takes place in a messaging app. Staff meetings are held via Skype. Some companies don’t even have an office.
The Associated Press reports many owners are using messaging programs like Google Hangout and Slack that let remote staffers hold group or individual chats.
Having a remote staff can be a good fit for many companies. Among the upsides: expanding the pool of job candidates, and lowering a company’s overhead since there’s no need for a big office.
But there can be downsides, including the risk of personal and professional isolation. And sometimes interaction isn’t quite as effective as it is in person.
A remote employee’s morale needs to be an important consideration when a boss makes any kind of communication—especially a critique.
“If you don’t word it correctly, people can take offense at something very simple. You have to be very pointed in how you ask questions or give feedback,” says Michael Fry, president of Deepwater Subsea, a Houston-based company that inspects oil rigs and has 11 staffers in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. His solution: Pick up the phone.
Employees overall are doing more telecommuting, though it’s hard to quantify how many work remotely and how many of those are at small companies.In a report from Gallup released earlier this year, nearly a third said they work remotely 80% or more of the time, up from nearly a quarter who said that in 2013.
