Working Hours in Virtual Companies

As the CEO of a virtual company, I often think about working hours. There are two reasons that I think about working hours, sort of two sides of the same coin.  First, I want to know that the people I hire are actually working.  I don't actually see them working; so, I just assume.  Second, I want to know that our staff is not working far too many hours.  If our staff is working 80 hours a week on a continuous basis something is wrong.  As the CEO of a virtual company it is one of my responsibilities to ensure everybody is working; but nobody is working too much.

As a growing company, A Pass Educational Group, LLC must earn a profit.  If we are not earning a profit, we should go out of business.  (Fortunately, we are earning a profit.)  Whereas our group of employees and retained contractors represents our largest expense it is imperative that we earn money from the work that this group of laborers is doing.  If we are paying them and they are not working it is not an equitable situation.  

I think that we've put in some pretty good systems to ensure that employees and retained contractors are working.  First, of all, it is their responsibility to ensure that work is turned in to clients on time at a high level of quality. We would certainly know if this was not occurring.  Secondly, it is easy to see who is logged into our intranet at any given time.  I want to stress that I believe that I have a very hard working group of employees and retained contractors.  I'm pretty sure that it is fair to write that most of our employees and contractors work closer to seventy hours a week than forty.  I am confident that it is because of the hard work of these individuals that A Pass is growing.  

One problem that we have is the perception among some employees and retained contractors that they are working too much.  I don't use the word perception lightly.  Perception is reality to the holder.  Truthfully, I probably have the same perception.  There are probably at least two questions that I must ask about this issue.  First, why are employees working so much?  Secondly, how can we ensure that employees work an appropriate amount? 

I do not have all of the answers.  I think it's a little gutsy putting this post on the blog to begin with.  But, I'm hoping that people might have some good ideas.  Are there articles or books that I should read?  Are there strategies for condensing the amount of work that project managers do?    

Another question that I should obviously ask is what are employees doing with their time?  This means, what specific activities take up the majority of their time?  

While I very much hope that people respond to this post, I do want to end on a very uplifting note.  I believe that one reason people are working so hard is because they are continuously looking for freelance associates whom they can place on their projects.  This is one of the most time consuming activities that our management team does.  Well, we have a new HR director starting in the very near future.  Hopefully this individual, who will be introduced in an upcoming post, will significantly ease the burden of our management team in staffing projects.