When I co-founded Perkline, my discount-oriented business, in 2006, I was living in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, and my business partner and CIO was working from Orange County, California, USA. From the very beginning, our daily operation was predicated solely on a virtual infrastructure. Everything from business transactions to scheduling occurred on an online basis.
While this was an intriguing approach to business, we gradually began to face problems similar to that of our clients. Specifically, we wondered how to successfully recruit, retain and communicate with our people, and also how to keep them excited and happy about work.
Recruiting great people to work in our virtual offices was tough. Because we operate on a virtual level, we had to factor in the logistics behind hiring. We managed to resolve this need by focusing on a simple approach: Look for people who are looking for you. To help us achieve the desired hiring results and identify the right places to look for the right people, we came up with a few questions:
- What skill level is required to fill this role?
- Who has the required resources to meet the needs of our virtual operation?
- How do we ensure that we find people of integrity?
The What question qualifies our candidate, the Who question defines our audience and the How question shows us where to get started. Once we had the answers to these questions, we were able to hire the right people for our virtual business. The only remaining challenge was to ensure sufficient communication between our virtual workforces.
In order to do this effectively, we had to align our technology. Some of the resources we used when communicating with other offices included MacBook Pro laptops with built-in video conferencing technology. This let us share a common environment and even one another’s computer screens. I could literally view our CIO’s computer screen in California and work directly from his laptop in real time.
Other things we’ve done to align ourselves include using instant messaging as a time clock and keeping regular status updates through the Mac’s iChat feature. We also maintain an e-mail account for the support of our 60,000+ members through one IMAP connection. This keeps all of our team in the loop with daily e-mail requests from our members. In addition, we conduct regular “virtual huddles” through two-way and three-way video conferencing— whatever it takes to stay connected.
Since our inception, we’ve made significant investments in equipment and the alignment of our technology has made everyday tasks and communication easy to maintain virtually. It can be tough running a virtual business, but with the proper procedures and the latest technology, it can be as simple as saying “yes” to a lucrative client contract.