Many thanks to Sean Conrad for today’s guest blog post:

One of the things I hear a lot of managers and even HR folks worry about when it comes to flexible work is how to manage both the quality and volume of work produced by an employee who’s not in the office. How do you really know what they’re doing all day and how many hours they’re actually working?

When I think about it, the problem can also exist for an employee who works “in the office”. Over the years I’ve seen lots of people who work in an office and never seem to get anything done or even work a full work week. But I digress…

I think a part of the problem is that many managers and organizations haven’t adopted best practices for managing employee performance. Here are some examples:

First off, you need to set effective, detailed goals that outline expectations, timelines, deliverables and measurements for success, and are aligned with corporate goals. People often refer to these kinds of goals as SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound). If you set goals properly and monitor the employee’s progress on them, you know if you’re getting value from the employee. But if your employees’ goals are little more than a list of job responsibilities, you have no way of measuring if work is getting done, and done effectively.

Next, if your performance appraisals are still a once a year event, you’re not supporting a good working relationship and an ongoing dialogue about performance between managers and employees. More frequent, ‘mini-reviews’, held once a quarter make it easier for managers and employees to sync up on goals and accomplishments, address performance gaps in a timely way, and deal with development requirements.

But it’s more about the culture you create around performance management. Performance management really should be an everyday thing. Employees and managers need to be in touch regularly and talk about performance. Managers need to monitor progress; and employees need to report on it. Employees need feedback on how they’re doing. You can do all this over the phone or using email, instant messaging, wikis, or performance journals just as effectively as you do in the office. In some ways, flexible work arrangements incent managers and employees to do this more often; they don’t take their physical proximity and coordinated working hours for granted and assume the other knows what’s going on. This kind of cultural focus on performance makes it easy to manage all employees and ensure their focus, commitment and productivity.

And finally, everything you do should really be rooted in employee performance. Development plans, promotions, rewards, compensation – all should be tied to employee performance. That really puts the focus where it should be. Look at the results, not the location or time the work was done.

If your managers adopt these performance management best practices, managing their employees performance and work is easy, whether they have a flexible or a traditional work environment.

Sean Conrad is a Certified Human Capital Strategist and Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of employee evaluation software. He’s passionate about promoting talent management best practices to help employees improve and succeed. For more of his insights, read his posts on the Halogen Software blog.