Thursday, June 3, 2010

expanding employment and living options

When I meet people and they ask me where I am from I proudly say that Denver Colorado is home. Of all of the wonderful and beautiful places that I have been so fortunate to visit, I have yet to come across another place that I can imagine ever calling home. Perhaps someday I will find myself living somewhere else, but right now, Colorado is the perfect place for me to live. From the endless recreational possibilities that are available through the beautiful landscape and the changing seasons to the culture and the people, I have countless reasons for my uncompromising desire to live here. This place that I have called home for so long and all of the people within is huge part of my livelihood. A former co-worker of mine who lives in Colorado just recently accepted a new job that is going to require her to move to Ft Lauderdale, Florida.

The company that she is going to is great and will offer her a lot of opportunities to develop and grow her career. She is really excited for the opportunity to change locations as the move fits well into her lifestyle and desire to experience new places. For her, it seems that all of the right pieces have fallen into place – a good job with a good company, and her flexibility, willingness, and desire to leave behind the place that she currently calls home. It was clearly a win-win situation for both her and the company. In her case, this situation worked out well because she was really looking forward to a new place to call home – particularly near a beach. However, for many others that are looking at moving for work, it doesn’t always work out so magically.

There are a lot of factors to weigh in on in these types of decisions: family, friends, homes, lifestyles, comfort and ease, and the cost of moving. It is all quite overwhelming. All I can say when I think about this scenario that the location better be a serious upgrade, or it had better be a dream job. With the economy and the job market where it is today, I hear of a lot of people looking for work outside of their current geographic regions and thinking about the possibility of moving a little bit differently than how they may have in the past. Many are willing up uproot themselves and their families and move to where the work is because they can’t find the opportunities that are right for them where they are at. These tough times certainly call for tough and often drastic measures, and you can’t argue with that… Unless it really doesn’t need to be that way.

Many organizations are shifting their mindset from finding talent that is located within a finite mileage radius from the office and are casting a much broader net to try and catch the very best that is available no matter where they live. And they are doing this without the huge price tag associated with relocating the employee and their family to within that circle around the office, and instead allowing them to work from home. The challenge in this is that it is not always the perfect fit between the company and the employee in this environment. The company must be committed to cultivating a culture that supports employees working remotely, and the employees need to be independent, mature, and driven to be able to succeed within the remote environment.

Often times, these factors do not line up, and results are less than favorable for either party. Our mission at virtualwirks is to help make the remote working model a success for the all parties involved. We look at factors that span across an entire organization and how all of the subtle and unique differences will fit into the existing business functions so that everything meshes well cross-functionally within and meets the needs of the employees as they drive the company towards its goals and objectives from their homes. We take pride in the work that we have done with organizations to help make working from home a reality and a success for employees and companies around the globe. While it may seem like as simple concept at the surface, when you pull back the cover and get into the thick of it, you can see that there are tremendous challenges and differences to making it work well and to achieve the optimum and desired outcomes. We see the results and the return on investment that the model provides to organization through increased productivity, profit margins, and employee satisfaction – those things are easy to measure. Find anyone who has successfully made working from home part of their daily lives, and they will likely tell you that it has made an immeasurable difference in their life and their ability to live not only where they want, but how they want.

–Tadd

1. Mark Mitton says:

   June 24, 2010 at 5:20 am

   Great post. I moved around quite a bit in my earlier career but finally decided Colorado was home and that I am not moving from it. This place rocks. And, because your company is making Virtual Work work, I will never have to move anyway. I will just plug into the vortex will climbing a 14er or rafting down a river.