This is very bold, still getting small business stuff you, as a small business owner are living in a time, which is very unique in the history of business, the nature of work has totally changed. Because unlike all the previous generations, all your employees don't work in a single office. In fact, you don't see all your employees all the time. Some of them work virtually from home in other parts of the country in other parts of the world. In fact, your company isn't just made up of employees, but it's made up of employees, consultants, freelancers and part timers that make managing this type of workforce much more difficult and much more easily for any small business owner to get unstuck. We really have reached invented work with the internet.

Because now as Chris Brogan says you can work anywhere, any when you're not really tied to a certain place or time, the nature of your workforce has really changed. Think about this. Forrester says that by 2016, there will be 64 million virtual employees. Compare that to just in 2010. There are only 34 million virtual employees. In fact, Jason freed of 37 signals, he has a company have 40 or 50 people that extend across eight time zones.

So it does become much more difficult to manage your folks. You also have all sorts of different kind of resources, as we talked about at the outset of this video. You have employees, you have freelancers, you have contractors, you have vendors. The key question you have to ask yourself is with all these people together, Does one end one really equal three? Or is this really where you're getting stuck? Are you constantly thinking about when I can't see my employees?

What are they actually doing? Are they up home playing some kind of video game? This is really a problem that we have to get past here are really areas where you can get unstuck, to manage your virtual employees much better. First of all, you have to set up goals and objectives. Remember, as we talked about in the last video, people respect what you inspect, you have to give up control have always seen exactly how it's done that you want to see that person that cubicle, quote, unquote, doing their work. You have to rely much more on something called row r o w e, which is results oriented work environment, do they actually get done, what you want them to get done?

Even when you can't see them? Think about what they're doing. metrics really are and how you can actually evaluate them. So for example, there can be metrics in every single job and you need to set them up, for example, in sales. What's the job metric? Well, of course it sales.

How much does that salesperson actually achieved? in customer service? The metrics can be customer satisfaction. Do people are new? What's the whole time on the phone? in product development?

Do they deliver things on time? How many bugs are there? in human resources? Perhaps its speed of resolution and accounts receivable it's gotta be, since we'll talk about later in the get wealthy section, days sales outstanding, how quickly do you collect the money for your company, you've also got to be able to use the right tools in order to get stuck. Not having all of your employees no matter where they are. Having the right things to get their job done, doesn't really work.

Make sure they have a compatible computer, a high speed internet connection camera headphones, smartphones security software, chat software, social media profiles, and and your company has to have a unified company wide phone solution. You have to equip them with the right resources if they're going to get done. You also should have great tools so you can collaborate and work together in project management. You can use tools like Basecamp, or Sage one. For video chat, you can use Skype or Google Plus for collaboration. You can use Dropbox or Google docs for conferencing, you can use bright talk or WebEx.

Number three, make sure that you have daily employee check ins. I know that we all get very busy, and we don't talk to the people that work with every single day. And whether you talk on the phone or you chat with them. You have to make sure that weeks don't go by where you don't actually interact with people. Because think about it. They can get very lonely and very separated from your company by working virtually you've got take time out to connect with them.

And I believe it's important that you get together at least a couple times a year in person. Now I know that this may be expensive, or if you haven't gotten together for a while, it could be uncomfortable. But this is very important to build a team and to have interaction that really will work. Number five, you've got to make sure that you over communicate, people like to communicate in many different ways. Find out how that employee that freelancer, that contractor likes to communicate, and make sure you do it early and often. So there is a lot of clarity.

There's a lot of communication methods, and you've got to ensure that you use the ones that are most effective with your team. Make sure that you build a virtual culture, not just an office culture. This is critical. Everything that happens in the company can't just happen in the physical space where you're at. This becomes especially problematic if half your employees are single. Oh And half of them are virtually, you've got to make sure that there's a common space where everyone can really share culture.

And this could be some kind of chat room out there on the web, or some kind of visual event that happens every week, or every day. Make sure that you think about what fun really looks like for your culture. Now, many small business owners will say, including myself, you know, I'm not, I'm not that much fun. What am I gonna do? Well set your values and your objectives and then ask for help to make sure that it can be fun, that it can be inclusive for all your employees, your contractors, and your vendors. Think about what's the one change that you're going to make, to be able to manage your virtual employees and entire staff that's working with your company better.

Strive for minimal achievement, and you will move your business Forward. This is Barry mold still getting small business and stuff. Have a great day.