Workplace
MANAGEMENT
Out of Office
How to lead effectively when you work from home
“YOU’D BE AMAZED at some of the places I’ve opened my laptop,” says Shabir Ladha, a partner at KBH Chartered Accountants in Edmonton. “I’ve even worked in the stands during my daugh- ter’s cheerleading competitions.” When Ladha started with the firm 16
years ago, no one telecommuted. Now, of the nine partners at KBH, all but one work remotely several days a week. “The more senior you get, the more you do it because of the flexibility the job requires, the demands it puts on you and the nature of the work in general,” he says. “Thanks to technology, I can turn any space into an office and work anywhere I need to.” The days of spending nine to five in a traditional office environment are com-
16 | CPA MAGAZINE | MARCH 2016
ing to an end, says Navroz Surani, the Toronto-based director of human resources for Pakistan’s Aga Khan University. What’s more, it’s becoming more commonplace for managers to make hiring decisions without even glancing at their prospective hires’ loca- tions. “With globalization and new tech- nology, businesses increasingly have more virtual teams and employees work- ing in different places.” The problem, Surani says, is that many managers use the same approach they used when they could just poke their head into employ- ees’ offices and engage with them face-to- face. “Most companies haven’t prepared their employees for how to interact virtu- ally. You need to make a conscious effort to keep everyone engaged because it doesn’t happen automatically anymore,” he says. “Remote members need to feel very much a part of the organization.” When Susan Hodkinson was hired as
COO of Crowe Soberman LLP in Toronto nine years ago, there was resistance to telecommuting. “If someone was working out of the office, there was a sense that he or she wasn’t really working,” she says. “It required a shift in management and a change in attitude, but now people work from home all the time and out-of-office messages that say ‘I’m WFH [working from home]’ are just part of the lingo.” Still, Hodkinson says making the transi- tion was a challenge for her firm. “I’m actually working from home right now because I gain two whole hours when I don’t have to commute. But to do that, I needed to build a foundation so people could get to know me and what I do.” Kevin Kelloway, Canada Research
Chair in occupational health psychology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, has been studying virtual leadership for more than a decade. The key thing he’s learned about doing business in a digital envi-
Blair Kelly
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