Betsy Soler

Telecommuting > Pay Raise (Well, sort of)

Note to self: Change your contacts more often and don’t study in the dark. 

This morning I woke up with the worst red eye. I don’t think it was an infection but more like a serious irritation. I’ve been really straining my vision lately by wearing my contacts all day and studying at night for my GRE (which is next week). Hopefully I can afford a pair of glasses when my newly elected vision plan kicks in for the new year. B) 

Nonetheless, I worked from home today and got a TON of things off my to-do list. My productivity felt 1000% higher than my usual work day. I wasn’t being interrupted, I wasn’t taking coffee breaks and I was completely focused from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. 

I’ve never understood why telecommuting or even working away from my desk at another part of campus is so frowned upon at my workplace. If rent wasn’t skyrocketing in Miami, I would gladly take 2-3 days telecommuting over a pay raise. And this isn’t just me. It’s been proven that most millennials would take telecommuting over a pay raise. 

There’s a great white paper on telecommuting, Workshifting Benefits: The Bottom Line. 

• 27% increase in productivity on telecommuting days 

Just about every study of telework cites “lack of management buy-in” as the biggest obstacle to acceptance. It’s clear managers fear that left unmonitored, employees will not work as hard as they otherwise would. 

In fact, study after study shows that people who telecommute are more productive than their office counterparts. Contributing factors include: 

• Fewer interruptions: Telecommuters are not distracted by the many time drains that take place in a traditional office— morning chatter, coffee breaks, long lunches, rumor mills, birthday parties, football pools, etc.

• More effective time management: Email and other asynchronous communications can be time-managed  more effectively and are less apt to include non-work digressions.

• Feeling like a trusted employee: A sense of empowerment and commitment is consistently shown to be one of the highest contributors to employee job satisfaction.

• Flexible hours: For those who are able to flex their hours as well as their location, workshifting allows them to work when they are most productive.

I think that most managers, especially those directly supervising young talent, should take the time to skim through the white paper. 

I’m not sitting here making excuses for young folks (including myself) on transiting into responsible adults in the work force. However, I think both employees and managers can strike a balance. At least for your departmental budget’s sake. 

Would you take telecommuting over a pay raise? Let me know. 

Best E-Mail I’ve Gotten All Day

This is from my boss. Love the BTW. 

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CONGRATULATIONS. YOU ARE A FINALIST. Look for an email from Hireright (background check) or Emmanuele from HR .

BTW here are some more airtimes.

Strategic Planning for Visionaries

I think of the big picture first, details later. Personally, it’s hard to follow the old objectives-goals-strategies-tactics plan. Our thought processes don’t function that way. Marketing is part business and part artistry. You have a vision and you go for it. 

The more I started thinking of this, the more it got me wondering if I was the only one struggling with this conventional way of thinking. I asked this question on Twitter and got over 20 responses, mostly from creative directors and C-level executives responsible for the strategic business functions:

One particular answer stood out from the rest:

If you follow Tim Lovitt he is nothing short of humor and insights on making it happen in marketing. I would take his advice seriously. 

And while I have decided to forego the traditional strategic fill-in-the-blanks, I still needed something to guide me ahead from my current state to my ideal end state. Hence, a strategic plan for the rest of us, which entails:

• Draw: What is your ideal image or desired end state?
• See: What is today’s situation? What is the gap from ideal and why?
• Think: What are specific actions that must be taken to close the gap between today and ideal?
• Plan: What resources are required to execute the activities? 

I’m currently carrying around a green composition notebook with the pages folded over four times for each section. I jot down notes here and there as I place together the puzzle pieces for FIU’s digital future. This structured format allows me to start with the bigger picture, keep my focus and leave the details for last.

It also gives me time to work on FIU’s digital infrastructure and streamlining day-to-day functions for maximum efficiency while I think about what data means most to us in meeting our overall business objectives (notice that these are the overall marketing objectives; not social media objectives). 

I’m interested in knowing how do you take your company’s functions from point A to B. What are your thoughts?