St.Louis Business Journal
TELECOMMUTERS: REMEMBER TO CULTIVATE YOUR WORK RELATIONSHIPS

By Anna Navarro
November 2011  

Examples in this column are fictionalized to protect privacy.



In these days of powerful telecommunication devices and extensive telecommuting, it’s tempting to neglect cultivating relationships at work. But whether your goal is to climb the ladder, get a raise, or just make sure your telecommuting job is safe, nurturing your network is likely to be a key element to getting what you want.

Adrianne started her career in Human Resources with a Fortune 500 company that had a plant in a small town in the middle of nowhere. She worked for the Manger of HR, and when he retired, she was promoted to his position.

She was content for a while, but she was ambitious and capable, and the job eventually became routine. She’d topped out at the plant, and there were no other significant HR positions in the area. She also couldn’t relocate because she had kids in junior high and high school, and didn’t want to yank them out of the community where they’d thrived. She couldn’t see a way to move forward.

She contacted me and asked for help getting out of the stuck place she was in. We did all of our work by phone, except for a brief trip to St. Louis at the beginning of our collaboration.

The first question we addressed was whether she should stay in HR, or switch fields, perhaps launching her own business. After going through an assessment, the conclusive answer was that she should stay in HR if at all possible. She really enjoyed all aspects of the work, and was good at it.

Since she already had the best HR job in town, it seemed the only option for growth might be telecommuting, at least until her youngest finished high school.

A Regional HR Coordinator position was open with the company. The job was actually a step down from her current role as Manager of HR for a plant, but it offered some advantages. She could telecommute, she’d be learning a great deal about HR at the corporate level, and she’d have more access to headquarters than she’d had at the plant. If she played her cards well, the job might be parlayed into a higher level post once her kids graduated from high school and she could move. She was overqualified, but she applied and succeeded in talking her way into the job.

To pull off her long term goal of leveraging the job into a significant corporate HR role, she would have to be very proactive. We mapped out a detailed plan for how she was going to scale the mountain.

Though it was stressful given her responsibilities at home, she traveled to headquarters at every opportunity. When she was there, she scheduled breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings to connect personally with people in the company, both in HR and outside the function. She volunteered for task forces and projects that would keep expanding her circle of personal connections.

When she was home, she made a point of initiating at least one phone call a day to chat with people in her network. She’d call and say she was just trying to keep up with events from her remote location, and would ask how they were doing personally, and what was happening in the company. She often had a better sense of what was going on than some people at headquarters.

The strategy paid off handsomely. Four years later, and a few months before her youngest left for college, a corporate Director level job came open. It offered very significant challenges. She and her husband had long since discussed relocation, and he was prepared to move.

She landed the job and has been so successful that she’s now a contender for Corporate VP of HR when the incumbent retires in a few years.

Her career path has been very unusual. Never before has anyone ascended to a Director level role from the relatively low-status Regional Coordinator position, much less become a contender for the Corporate VP role.

Those who think that telecommuting gives them an excuse to skip the cultivation of relationships are often missing important opportunities to get the most out of their work. How you nurture your network is somewhat different when you telecommute, but attending to the care and feeding of your relationships is bound to help you accomplish your goals, whatever they may be.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that works with clients on an individual basis to help them find more satisfaction and fulfillment in their work-lives. She can be reached by phone at (314) 367-0008 and her e-mail address is email@worktransitions.com. For more information visit the worktransitions.com website.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.