I have just had a meeting with some of our peripatetic staff who are mobile and work in other employer’s offices. The impression I got was: 1. They are feeling left out and not connected to the main base 2. They do not trust their line managers to cascade information properly to their staff 3. If they raised concerned they are worried about being branded troublemakers. 4. If they are based in another organisation’s offices, they feel left out of the host organisations H&S arrangements. In one office they were even prevented from taking part in the fire drill! Our’s is an organisation that thinks of itself as a people organisation and is generally good to it’s staff but that is the perception out in the field. So be careful when launching initiatives that affect the people out there. Make sure that you are not dumping (or seen to be dumping) unnecessary stuff on them. Have a robust system for recording/reporting incidents and in particular near-misses. Try to talk to them, directly if you can. Remember the managers might well tell you what you want to hear not what is actually going on.

Regular team meetings is one thing I've seen done in this situation.

Hi Im with the statement made by RayRapp on this, if you read it carefully & break it down there really is an effective method/procedure in there thats easy to apply with possibly the most or as important, the last part of the jigsaw "feedback" at regular intervals

Clare The organisation I work for have in the last 2 years started to send our staff out to 3rd party premises. Initially they felt very isolated as they did not have IT connectivity and did not see their managers very often. This also caused a lot of hostility among staff who were always working on he same site. We have now started to roll out laptops for all staff and also managers must visit the staff at their locations monthly and has one to one discussions with them. Many locations have instigated monthly team meetings where staff can get together and discuss issues they have come across and also share best practice. IT is not the only solution and in some cases we still have some members of staff who do not have computers at home and only know the very basics so they must also be catered for. This seems to be working at present, but we must not loose sight of the fact that they are part of a team and this may require both staff and managers to receive training on how to work and manage staff remotely. Some of the new staff we have taken on have not worked in our organisation sites and therefore it is very important that they are made to feel part of the the company.