FROM: Dave Fogg, company owner
I am going to explain the reasons why a remote/work from home job can fail and what you can do to try and make sure any jobs you have are positive.
I will compare different jobs like maybe you are an accountant or maybe you are hired to be trained as a recruiter, customer support or maybe a personal assistant to a company owner in USA.
The #1 problem is we explain to American company owners/managers that they should think of you as their employee while we fit in the middle as the human resources and payroll company that makes this happen in the DR. But, sometimes the American owner/manager does not Get It and thinks of you same as if they are getting you from a call center company.
The plan is for the American company to think of you as their employee and you think of them as your employer not as if they are renting you as an extra person from a call center.
Although we clearly explain this there are times when companies sign up and the American owner/manager does not get it and makes the mistake of thinking as if we are like a call center.
You will notice how the American owner/manager thinks with the way they communicate. It is super important over the first 30/60 days to tell us how things are going. It is all good or do you have worries?
1 – Assume I hired you for a job as accountant. I am expecting you will have the experience to do the job. You should not require training on accounting. You may need training on a company computer system but if you are an accountant obviously you would be hired because if this particular education and skill.
But, if I hired you to be my assistant, or customer support or recruiting these jobs are all different from company to company and even two managers in the same company will use an assistant differently.
For a job such as Assistant you must have the basic required skills. Examples can be good English and experience with using documents and spreadsheets. And, having worked in jobs where you have some experience working with office work, internet research etc.
For jobs like recruiting good English is required but because recruiting is mostly about searching resumes and contacting & communicating with people so the outgoing personality becomes very important.
I can teach an outgoing person how to recruit people but I cannot teach a shy person who likes to work alone and is more of a researcher personality how to become an outgoing person.
So, trying to match people with jobs they can actually succeed with is important.
2 – Here are the primary causes for failure with work from home jobs and this is not a Dominican thing, this is anywhere.
A – First, if the job is like an assistant, customer support or recruiting where the owner/manager of the American company must teach you how to do the job, they should create a structured 30/60/90 day training.
An example is break the job down into pieces and teach you one piece at a time.
It you notice the owner/manager does not have structured training and they are figuring it out and maybe juggling their personal job with making up training please let us know.
Think of yourself as a company manager. You must do your normal job and make time to train people you hire. This is not easy to do. But, the more organized your USA client is with training and showing you the job the better it will be for you both.
B - Imagine I hired you to work for me and your desk is close to me in the office. When I wanted to provide you with training or show you work instructions I would ask that you walk over or roll your chair over to sit next to me.
I would SHOW you on my computer.
It would be very smart for me to let you sit and watch me work for a week or two. This is called Shadowing.
This seems to be common sense.
C – However, imagine I am on the 1st floor of a building and you are on the 3rd floor. We are not going to run up and down the stairs to sit next to each other every time I want to teach you something or you have a question.
We could and should use video call with screen sharing such as Zoom or Teams to make it same as if we do sit next to each other.
But, rarely do people use these platforms they way they should.
What often happens is I will type training and send to you. I will type work instructions and send them to you by chat or email.
You will try to read and understand my written information.
You may email questions to me.
You and I fail to see and talk to each other LIVE and we make the mistake of communicating mostly by email or chat.
I am sure you agree, if you send an email to 10 people they will each interpret your email message differently.
Face to face communication is 100x better than typed messages.
You can understand how communicating with you mostly by chat or email unintentionally sets you up to fail.
This also makes sense. If you and I are not seeing each other face to face and our communication is mostly chat and email you cannot possibly learn my training or understand my work instructions as good as if were used video call with screen sharing to make it same as sitting next to each other.
One of the issues is most company owners and managers do not understand this.
When I sign them up as clients I share this same information I am explaining here. But even if I tell a client how to best work with you they often make these types of mistakes.
An example is there are times when I should call my assistant in the DR over video to explain work instructions yet I will send her a message instead. The best idea is for me to send her the message and also CALL her to verbally explain.
My point is even I make the mistake of sending too many messages rather than get on a quick video call to talk to my Dominican Assistant.
What my Dominican Assistant should do is PUSH me to be a better communicator and ask for a quick call to discuss my work instructions just to 100% make sure the assistant understands my details.
So, if you work for a client and they are making this mistake bring this to our attention so we can work with you to figure out how to NICELY cause the client to start using video call with screen sharing more.
And, sometimes YOU must push the owner/manager you work for to be a better communicator by asking them to get on a quick video call to discuss their typed work instructions.
Chriss and Maria work for me in the DR. Most times when I have something important to say I will call them on Zoom so we can see and talk LIVE. I use Zoom to make it same as if Chris and Maria sit next to me. But even I will sometimes make the mistake of sending important details in a message and not verbally explain. My not verbally explaining opens the door for Chriss and Maria to misunderstand my typed instructions.
No client will intentionally set you up to fail but many company owners and managers have never had someone like me teach them what can go wrong when working with home based or remote people.
Now that you better understand you can have more control over the quality of communication with the owner/ manager you work for.
Here is a HUGE problem. Over the past years there were a few people who were fired from clients and afterwards shared many important details with us that they had not shared before.
An example is a person who was having technical problems with the client’s computer system and also did not fully understand the training but did not speak up and say anything because they worried about the client thinking of them as a problem.
If you are experiencing any issues that cause you worry and you may be set up for failure it is HUGE to tell us. We can help figure out solutions and invite the client to video calls so we can discuss and fix problems before they blow up too big.
You can see how this is all common sense but in the real world many company leaders and workers do not use common sense with the way they work together.
If you are hired for a job like accounting, you will have the experience and any training would likely be on the client’s computer system and things like this.
If you are hired for jobs like recruiting here are real examples of problems and what you can do to be in more control over your job.
Let’s use John Smith as owner of ABC Recruiting for this example.
A – John is very busy so he is not making time to properly train you, he is rushing you into recruiting and producing results too fast. Tell Us! He may not realize he is rushing.
Sometimes a company leader thinks their training is easier to understand than it really is.
B – Assume John pays for Indeed.com which contains resumes of people. You can search to find people on Indeed but it does not show their contact info.
You can message people through Indeed.com and IF they login and reply to your message will Indeed unlock their resume to show you their contact information.
This means you cannot control access to email addresses or phone numbers. All you can do is message people and hope they read and reply.
What if John Smith creates daily and weekly activity goals like calls per day and interviewing 10 candidates per week.
How can you control any of this if you do not have access to resumes with contact information?
In this example assume you work hard all day searching and sending messages but hardly anyone is replying.
Or, what if there are not many current and qualified people on Indeed.com for the job you are recruiting for?
How can you achieve John’s call and interview goals if you do not have access to phone numbers or there are not many qualified people on Indeed for the job?
Or, it cost money to buy packages of resume searches and message credits.
Imagine John gives you 3 jobs to recruit for but is also giving you very limited access to using Indeed.
In that example you have limits on the number of resumes you can search and messages you can send in addition to not having the contact information.
Your limited use of Indeed is being split up among 3 different jobs which makes it IMPOSSIBLE to work the numbers game of contacting enough people to find a few who are qualified and interested in any of the jobs.
C – John may be looking at your activity numbers on a computer system and all he sees are your numbers. He cannot see all these other barriers that prevent you from success.
If you do not speak up and show John these challenges he may make the mistake of assuming you are not working hard enough because all see sees are the numbers on the computer system.
Here is what you can do.
Contact John and tell him you are worried about failing to achieve his number goals.
Tell him you are working hard but you cannot control barriers such as not many qualified people on Indeed or you do not have enough search and message credits to cover 3 jobs.
Ask John to get on a Zoom call so you and he can make it like sitting next to each other.
Show John the work you have been doing and then ask him “Please show me how you would recruit for these jobs if you were me”
In other words, push John to be the Leader he is paid to be. Ask John to show you how he would do the job being you feel stuck, like there is nothing more you can do. What would he do more or different?
Maybe he can show you good ideas.
Or, maybe you put him on the spot where he realizes your limitations are real and it is his job as the leader to show you what to do different or buy more search and message credits or realize the jobs are impossible to recruit for and switch you to recruit for other jobs.
You can see my point. These things happen in all jobs. The managers come up with goals, the workers run into problems but do not say anything and the managers assume the workers are not working hard enough.
Now that you understand problems happen in all jobs, you as the worker can demand your manager get on a video call to inspect your work and show you what they would do if they were doing your job.
Never do this as if you are complaining. Always do this as if you want success and are asking your manager for help.
Also, if you are doing work like research and building a list in the first one or two days of the project ask your manager/client to inspect your work to make sure is correct.
You do not want days or weeks to pass where the client finally checks your work and gets angry because there are mistakes that could have been found and fixed at the beginning.
Do not make the mistake of thinking your client will not notice if you are taking long or several breaks during a day. Do not sneak out of your home thinking the client will not notice.
Do not try to fake it by being away from home and using your cell phone to be on video call or reply to emails.
An example is do not go to the store and assume nobody at your client will notice and do not try to use your cell phone to communicate and trick your client to think you are working at home.
Every time a person in DR has done such things the client and even we noticed and they were fired.
An example is a client would call a worker in the DR and rarely did they pick up the phone. They may call back 15 or 20 minutes later. The excuse was always the same. “I was in the bathroom”
The client called me and said nobody can be in the bathroom that often and it was obvious the worker was not at their desk or table at home working like they should be.
I ask that you imagine having 4 people work for you and 3 of them are easy to contact yet 1 person is always difficult to reach. This makes it obvious the 1 person is not at their desk/table working like they should while the other 3 people are.
If you need to leave the house to handle some personal business just be honest and tell your client same as if you worked in an office with them.
In regards to raises and extras above your starting salary it is important to look deep at the company you work with to notice if your work is turning into success or if the company is slow and struggling.
Example: Assume you are a recruiter. Your success is based on finding people who are hired. If the company is very slow and you do not have many job openings or if you are not filling many jobs this would be a very bad time to ask for raises or extras.
If a job is slow or your work does not look to be turning into results it is not a good time to ask for more.
Think of it. If you owned a business and work was slow and money was tight how would you feel about an employee who is asking for a raise?
The best time to ask for more is when your job is busy and the work you are doing clearly turns into results or is benefiting the company.
In other words, if work is slow a company is more likely to lay you off than give a raise.
All I am saying is use common sense when it comes to asking for raises or extras.
American Clients notice if people in DR are really good workers who can be trusted compared to people who do the minimum and are difficult to reach or contact.
If the American Client notices you give 100% and show up early, sometimes work a little bit late, you are easy to contact, you are PROACTIVE at wanting to do a good job rather then wait for the client to push you, the American client is much more likely to treat you well and create a good long term job than if they worry you do the minimum or maybe they do not trust you are working the hours the client is paying for.