Every business owner I talk to is having a hard time finding good staff at the moment – unemployment is still at very low levels and nearly every industry is talking about “skills shortages”.

The computer industry has been particularly hard hit by skills shortages over the last couple of years, yet during this time we’ve been able to consistently attract, hire and retain outstanding people to work at I.T. on Tap. How have we done it? I’m going to let you in on our secret, and the best news is that isn’t restricted to the computer industry – it’s something that any business, including yours could do very easily. And it doesn’t have to cost you anything – in fact it’s likely to save you money!

With a build up like that, are you ready to hear my big secret? OK, here it is:

“Find out the #1 thing that top performers have on their wish list for a job, and give it to them.”

That may sound pretty basic, but hey: I never said I was any sort of genius – simple approaches work better for me. Hear me out…

So what is the #1 thing that top performers want? That’s easy, it comes through again and again in every employment survey that asks the question:

They want to work from home.

Everywhere you turn, people want out of daily grind that is commuting to work each day. They don’t often get what they want though – even today, very few companies allow their staff to work from home. And that’s your opportunity when it comes to recruiting:

If you want to hire the best staff, then be the best company that they could work for.

If you offer the option for quality employees to work from home, even a couple of days per week, when so few other companies do then you instantly stand out as a more appealing employer.

At I.T. on Tap we do exactly that: nearly all of our team work from home 2 to 4 days per week. Customer-facing roles such as the help desk are still office based for now, but we plan to extend the work from home option to them in the future once we are better able to transparently route incoming phone calls to staff at home.

Everyone reports the same thing: they are far more productive on the days that they work at home, than when they are in the office. The distraction from ringing phones and other people around takes a much bigger toll on concentration and productivity than you’d expect.

Everyone appreciates not having to trek into the office on their work from home days. We’ve found that the team are so responsible that they tend to “give back” most or all of the commuting time that they save by working longer anyway, so the business benefits from their increased output.

Those people with children appreciate the convenience of being able to more easily get them to and from childcare or school, and in some cases they make cost savings by not needing after school care.

Now I’ll be the first to concede that working from home isn’t for every employee – we see it as a privilege to be earned when someone has proven that they’re responsible, able to self manage and can be trusted to get the job done without anyone looking over their shoulder.

Those are all attributes that you’d expect to find in a top performer anyway, so you’re simply offering them the working style that would suit them best, the environment in which they’re most likely to thrive.

Points to watch

Make sure that your normal insurances (e.g. workers compensation, public liability) will cover employees working at home – your insurance broker should be able to provide advice.

Keep team cohesion in mind – schedule meetings that bring groups or all of your employees into the office on the same day, to maintain the sense of common purpose and teamwork.

Make sure you get your technology right. Not only do you need to give your employees effective access to their usual software, email and files from outside the office, you need to make sure that you don’t compromise your security or take any increased risks by doing so. You’ll need an approach that protects your company data against viruses or poor security on home PCs that aren’t managed by your company – or perhaps aren’t managed at all!

It’s always best if you can avoid having any data at all on employee laptops that leave your office premises at night; that way there’s no need to worry about anyone stealing your customer database or sensitive customer information going missing on the hard disk of a lost laptop.

Of course I.T. on Tap customers need have none of the technology concerns above - the nature of the service means these issues simply never arise. The nature of the service inherently supports working securely from any location, including an employees home.