Meredith Levinson writes in CIO magazine about a company that closed their offices, and now everyone will work at home

“…to save money and spare employees the hassle and rising cost of commuting and … can continue to serve customers while simultaneously saving $400,000 a year simply by closing its 15,000 square feet of office space.”

The company, Chorus, provides clinical, practice management and financial software for health care providers learned a few things along the way. You need:

• the right infrastructure to support a virtual, telecommuting set of employees.

• work policies designed to maintain employee productivity and customer service levels,

• desktop support and identify software tools to make employee workloads more transparent for managers

• to phase in the work at home plan,

• periodic meet ups and daily conference calls

Did it work? Levinson writes “CEO Schreiber…says the client services group’s key performance indicators have been ’stellar’ and that the company as a whole is more productive.”

Read the three part series for all the details. It’s good stuff.

Part 1: Chorus’s technology infrastructure
Part 2: Chorus establishes work-at-home policies and figures out how to provide remote tech support.
Part 3: Chorus‘ managers and staff adjust to telecommuting and share their keys to success