Australian Businesswomen’s Network member and CEO of The Copy Collective, Dominique Antarakis, has been featured in a special on teleworking, with the company asserting there are no set backs to not seeing your employees face-to-face.
Featured in News.com.au on 22 November, The Copy Collective is based in Chippendale, Sydney. The business employs five Australian-based employees, including the company’s two directors, and utilises 83 independent contractors across six other countries. That’s a lot of time zones to keep an eye on.
But COO Maureen Shelly told News.com.au that successful teleworking involves close monitoring, but also recognising that people are human:
“Not only is there complete transparency [about what everyone is working on], there is digital monitoring and people can’t escape that.”
“Literally I know what my people do minute by minute. If wanted to spend all my life watching them I could. But you do have to trust them to get along with the job and do it.”
Telework is now an initiative encouraged by the Australian Government, with a website detailing the benefits for both employers and employees. On defining what telework is, the site says:
“Telework is working regularly from a place other than the office, in most cases from a home office. It utilises information and communications technology to stay connected to colleagues and work systems…the telework goal is to double Australia’s level of telework by 2020, so that at least 12 per cent of Australian employees report having a telework arrangement with their employers.”
As most innovations The Copy Collective started as a small idea, and grew to its international presence through perseverance and a dedication to the teleworking model. Their copywriters provide content for fundraising, marketing and online copywriting, corporate and government writing, feature writing, speech writing, editing and more.
