Growing Business Finds Retention Gold in Virtual Workforce

Published on: Monday, March 31, 2008       Comments (0)       Category: Human Capital,  Managing, 

When David Manaster, CEO, ERE.net, founded the firm in 1998, he was living with his parents in Brooklyn, NY, and while he had a business concept that was building steam in the marketplace, he didn’t have a lot of office space to spare. ERE, which began as the Electronic Recruiting Exchange, provides an online destination for corporate and third-party recruiters to gather, post their blogs and view the posts of industry recruitment and retention analysts.

The company produces three physical conference events each year that draw upwards of 1,000 international participants each, and the buzz continues online in webcasts, discussion groups and blogs and in print in a quarterly journal or recruiting. And while today there is a small physical office in New York City, for the most part, the key team members are located around the country from Albany to Orlando to Washington state to California and parts in between.

“The first two employees I had wanted to work from their homes,” Manaster recalls, “and from there it became a matter of preference.” ERE operates in an industry well-known for retention problems. Most B2B media companies replace at least a third of their staffs each year. “It’s become a competitive advantage,” Manaster notes. “We’ve had people who wanted to move to new cities for family or lifestyle reasons. If we insisted on a physical location, we’d have lost crucial employees. To be able to keep them and to attract others with special skills, we have a lot more to offer because we don’t insist on relocation.”

You might say Manaster was ahead of his time. In a new ExecuNet study just released, only a third of executives surveyed now think they will accept a move in order to advance their careers and companies are becoming increasingly stingier with relocation packages. Only three years ago, nearly half expected to make a move.

Managing a distributed work force like ERE’s requires CEOs to pay attention to small details and foster communications using both technology and a certain amount of etiquette so that teams can work in a cohesive manner. Manaster’s team has an advantage because its conference events provide built-in times for the teams to meet and work together. They also will hold other face-to-face meetings to foster teamwork.

Other keys to success. Manaster notes are:

1) An “Open Books” policy: Everyone on the team has access to full financial data all the time.

2) Weekly one hour staff conference calls where each manager has 120 seconds to report on key activities and bring up any problems for discussion. Topics that need detailed discussion get aired briefly and follow-ups are scheduled with all the right players.

3) Embracing technology: The team uses email, IM ("Possibly the one tool I couldn’t run the company without,” Mannister says) in addition to the conference calls.

Any pitfalls Manaster has seen: “Since each manager really runs their group with autonomy, they are really engaged,” he reports. “Occasionally someone might be slacking off and it’s a little harder to spot, but the results always speak for themselves and we can remedy the situation if needed.”

“People really don’t need to see each other to get the job done,” Manaster says, “Success is more a function of who they are. There’s a level of person who wants to do well, to excell and they’ll do their best work regardless of the environment.”