Enhance Remote Work with a Webcam

When it comes to working remotely from home, the reviews are mixed. On one hand, you have employees that enjoy the freedom of working in their pajamas. On the other hand, some employers don't like having their team spread out because it takes away from company culture. Taking advantage of a webcam is a great solution that may satisfy both parties.

By taking advantage of a video conferencing solution like Skype, remote workers, their employers, and other co-workers can have some semblance of face time. Seeing a person's facial expressions and body language communicates a lot more than just audio and instant messaging. By adding a visual element to team communication, you can see how someone really feels about a project, and it will be easier to avoid the miscommunication of reading false emotions and opinions into e-mails.

Adding a webcam to the remote working experience is not a radical suggestion, although, to make webcams work best for remote workers, it may be in your best interest to use webcams in the radical way of always having them on. Keeping your Skype app open throughout the entire workday will take up extra computer resources, but it may be the missing link to making telecommuting work.

One way that an always-on webcam can help is to give employers a better sense that their employees are standing by. In order for the remote workplace to be successful, the employer has to have a high level of trust that their employees are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Earlier this year, the reputation of telecommuting took a hit as Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer discovered that several of her employees were abusing the privilege of working remotely by not being honest about their use of company time. If Mayer would have had the ability to check on every member of her remote team by glancing at Skype, then perhaps her team would be more motivated to be honest.

A webcam monitoring a remote session would also encourage employees to clean up and dress appropriately before logging on to their computer. Dressing up to do office work from home has been proven to be motivating, increase productivity, and it's a best practice, just in case the remote employee receives a message from work that requires an urgent trip to the office. Employees may be bummed out about losing the ability to work in their pajamas, but keep in mind that it's easy to angle the webcam so that only the waste up is viewable.

Working remotely will be unable to completely capture every communication intricacy that makes face-to-face interaction in the office valuable, but taking full advantage of Skype may be the next best thing. For assistance with setting up your network so that your employees can enjoy working from home, along with saving the expense of commuting and travel time, call Computerware at (703) 821-8200.

With our Desktop Virtualization solution, you can have employees remotely access your company's network from anywhere, and we can streamline videoconferencing for the entire office with our affordable VoIP solution. Call Computerware and talk to us about your company's specific communication needs so that we can build you the best telecommuting package for your remote team!