AVOIDING TIME FRAUD FROM YOUR HOME-BASED EMPLOYEES

for Open-Your-Own-Home-Business.com

“My employees want to work at home but if I allow it, how can I be sure I’m getting what my payroll is paying for? How do I know I won’t be paying my employees to walk their dogs or take a nap?”

Telecommuting Manager’s Rule #1: Don’t pay for TIME. Pay for productivity or pay for results, but don’t pay for time.

Susie, your Medical Billing Specialist, works on an hourly basis with a forty hour week and processes an average of 137 claims per week. Suddenly, she has a baby and decides she wants to work at home. She’s a good employee and you want to let her work at home, but you worry how you’re going to be sure you don’t pay Susie to change diapers to rock her baby to sleep instead of doing what you pay her to do.

Ideal solution: Pay Susie a set fee per claim, with standards of performance and accuracy and consequences for work that falls below the standard.

A less ideal solution: Pay Susie her regular pay per week, but require a minimum number of 137 claims to be processed that week, again, with standards of performance and accuracy and consequences for work that falls below the standard.

Instead of paying employees to be at work placing or taking calls, pay them for each call they take or place. Instead of paying by the hour for transcription, pay by the page. Instead of paying for ANYTHING based on time, find a way, and a system for monitoring, that allows you to pay based on pure production.

Even if your work is not easy to methodically measure, you can still pay your employee ‘by the project’.

Your most responsible employees and most executive level staff members will be able to work at home responsibly without having to measure actual productivity. In fact, in study conducted by AT&T of its own telecommuting program, they found their employees were an average of 20% more productive after they began to work at home.

Your best employees will love it because, if they want to, they can work faster or harder and be finished early. You will love it because you’ll know you’re getting exactly what you pay for.

Then, so what if Susie likes to nap with her baby in the middle of the afternoon? When you allow your employees to work at home and you pay them based on actual productivity, everyone wins, including Susie’s baby.