Managing your employees

[The Pioneer]

I'm curious, how do most of you manage your employees? Are they all inhouse or remote? If they are inhouse, are they on-call and what sort of pay do you get for responding to an on-call issue? If your employees are remote, how do you keep communication with them and monitor their work hours?

 

[iblive]

I have had experience with both in-house and remote workers. It really depends on the tasks being performed. There is definitely no replacement for face-to-face discussions and teamwork at an office loaction. On the other hand, there are numerous technical issues that can be solved by remote employees.

For remote employees, unless your customers are paying by call, there would be no need to pay someone per call. I have usually setup pay based on experience and tasks that are performed. If a remote employee is not accomplishing the tasks they need to, then there is a problem. But babysitting to make sure their hours of work are completed will not work with higher level people.

 

[HostKookster]

All in house wherever possible.

I would only do remote on projects that didn't have the employee in direct contact with my clients (phone, ticket, email support etc...) And I would only pay on a presigned contract, per project basis.
Paying on a hourly basis for an employee that you cannot monitor is asking for trouble. I wish I could trust people to do their work while I wasn't watching from the corner of my eye, but unfortunately the internet just offers too many ways to waste time.

 

[TheOrbit]

Definetly in-house. I like the idea of creating a family inside of the company and customers appeal to the idea as well. In house also gives a more professional look towards the customers. Paying hourly also makes the employees more satisfied to work for the company since they don't have to worry about how many tickets they can get and instead work on the quality of each ticket.