Even before gas prices started hitting new highs, telecommuting made sense. Benefits for employer and employee are magnified in today’s volatile economy, and many business owners across the nation who had not considered it before are considering it now.

Obviously, some positions do not lend themselves to an at-home situation, but for those that do, whether an employee works one or five days a week from a home office, benefits can outweigh pitfalls if problems are considered ahead of time.

Three potential stumbling blocks include:

Distractions: the dog’s barking, there’s a kid selling candy at the door — what’s an employee to do? And how can an employer be certain the job is getting done?

Diligence (lack of): when the boss isn’t just down the hall anymore, what are some ways to encourage conscientiousness and timely completion of work assigned?

Detachment: telecommuters often don’t feel part of the team — how does a manager help them stay connected?

Here are eight secrets to avoid problems and realize success for at-home employees:

Secret 1:The right employee for the right job. Seems simple enough, right? Well, we’ve all seen that theory unravel in the workplace when certain key factors were not taken into consideration prior to the hire. The same is true for telecommuting. It has to be a good fit.

Some questions to consider:

Here, the company benefits when the employee is allowed to do his job with fewer interruptions; thus, his output may be higher (home interruptions are addressed below).

Secret 2:Extend the work-at-home option as a privilege for employees who have a proven track record. When the honor of trust is given to top employees whose work history illustrates they will be productive working from home, even if the budget is tight and raises are not possible, the opportunity to have a more flexible schedule or reduced time burning gasoline in traffic can be seen as a great bonus.

When this is treated as an honor — perhaps announced at a staff meeting as an award for those whose work history warrants it, complete with criteria for earning said honor — others may wish to raise their own personal bar to meet that criteria. It also makes it clear to employees who might otherwise feel slighted what it will take to be considered.

Secret 3:Write down and discuss openly any and all questions or concerns before a decision is made. Address supply issues, logistics, legalities and tax concerns of your individual state ahead of time. Put in writing what the employer will supply and do, and what is expected of the employee. Similarly, discuss the benefits of working from home. Some individuals thrive in a community and others do well when left on their own.

For example, one concern for most telecommuters is the fact that working from home is not without its distractions.

Suggestions might include:

It is up to the employee to limit distractions in his/her environment, but a good manager manages, and will help each employee find success.

Secret 4:Communicate early, often, and clearly. Communication is key to the success of a telecommuting situation. It is easy for an at-home employee to feel set adrift and disconnected from the company unless managers make communication a top priority — and not just one-on-one communication, either.

Encourage other staff members to include all at-home employees in all-office communication as well as more formal company-wide communication like E-mail blasts and staff announcements. Nothing spells ‘disconnect’ more clearly than an employee who finds out about the all-staff luncheon after the fact.

Secret 5:Structure presented with respect. Some employees will need a great deal of structure to make this situation work, and some will not. Even so, as a manager, you may wish for every at-home employee to submit daily information on work completed.

First decide the outline (or template) for the workday schedule, and again, put it in writing. You may wish for this list to be submitted to her or his immediate supervisor before the start of every work day (this allows home employees to type it up at midnight and send it off if they like).

Secret 6:Regular and irregular check-in points. Some employees get little done unless they have tangible accountability to a person or a self-imposed deadline. The level of professionalism the employee exhibits and her productivity will determine whether or not you need this step, or how long it should continue once begun.

Again, each situation will be different. Communication ahead of time will clarify whether or not supervisors will need to contact employees at irregular intervals to check in with them. Unless you have worked out an open-ended, work-by-project situation, accountability keeps productivity up, and the temptation of distractions are held at bay.

Secret 7:On-site meetings and staff meetings. It is important that an at-home employee have regular and not-so-regular face-to-face meetings at the office in order to feel part of the team. Communication is vital for those who work at home, as is a little office camaraderie.

For this reason, and when possible, at-home employees should be expected to attend all staff-wide meetings and/or training sessions, and will hopefully be invited to informal gatherings for birthdays or celebrations as well.

Secret 8:Recognition and appreciation. While this is an entire topic all on its own, it is important to include at-home employees in every aspect of working as a team, and this includes extending honor when they have done a stellar job.

No employee should be overlooked and ignored if they are part of the working community. All too often, when someone is not seen on a daily basis, they tend to be forgotten or omitted from normal, everyday courtesy and things like thank-you lists. Often, their work is never recognized at all. This leads to discouragement, which leads to resentment and resentment can lead to resignations.

It’s important, then, as a manager, to keep the lines of communication open, to encourage other staff members to do the same, and to include everyone as equitably as possible, especially when praise and recognition are concerned.

Lindy Batdorf is a consultant, speaker, and freelance writer who specializes in the art and heart of communication. She is author of “Stop and Smell the Asphalt,” and her E-zine, “Light at Home,” has helped enhance life at home for 30,000 subscribers around the world;www.lindybatdorf.com

Dwight Eisenhower, when contemplating the Herculean effort to plan for Operation Overlord (the code name for the invasion of Normandy and northwest Europe during WWII) said, “plans are nothing. Planning is everything.”

His considered view was that, while both are necessary, plans by their very nature are nothing but static documents, yet planning is a responsive and dynamic action that brings focus to uncertainty.

Consider a pilot flying a 747 from Los Angeles to Japan. The plan is to land at the Narita International Airport. Once airborne, though, unexpected winds, other aircraft traffic, mid-ocean storms, even solar flare activity affect and alter the airplane’s course. Unmanaged, the pilot would just as likely land the plane in Seoul rather than in Tokyo. The flight plan sets an initial course and a final destination, but the process of planning ensures that the pilot takes the appropriate corrective action to get the airplane where it needs to go.

In business, planning is just as vital, especially when things are rapidly changing and the economy seems to be in constant flux. With the market in less-than-perfect shape and so much uncertainty in the air, many business leaders forego the discipline of establishing a business plan under the assumption that it is a waste of time. This is a mistake. The most essential reason to write a business plan isn’t to set a course of action, but to provide a management tool to use in the present, as well as the future.

Business planning is fraught with misconceptions; the biggest is assuming that the planning process needs to be complicated and burdensome. A sound business plan needs to address only four questions:

1. Where are we?

The plan should clearly define the financial, environmental, and market realities facing the business. This should not be addressed in the overly technical language of an MBA, but rather with straightforward words that uncompromisingly define the business’ health and competitive position. It is imperative that the plan has its foundation in what is real, not something once assumed or hoped for. Someone reading this section of the plan should, with clarity, understand the strengths and weaknesses of the business, and have a sense of the company’s potential given the current reality.

Hint: The best way to lose any enthusiasm in your business plan is to make this section a complex, statistical death-by-numbers dissertation. Readers care nothing about your plunging ROI, but care intensely about what that means to your business. Use only those financial matrices — pick three to five — that truly explain how your business is performing.

2. Where are we going?

The plan should spell out the intentions for the business in the coming years; what does the organization want to accomplish? This section of the plan is a statement of business aspiration, balanced by the reality set forth in section one of the plan. This creates a reasonable prediction of the momentum needed to achieve the business’ future goals. It is folly, for example, to state an aspiration that is no more than a pipe dream. Blind hope is an irresponsible strategy; aspirations need to be tied to reality. This section of the plan allows the reader to understand the potential of the business in three ways:

Hint: Abstract vision statements are as credible as Britney Spears speaking at a parenting conference. The best plans are insightful because they balance bold market aspirations with common-sense business acumen.

3. How will we get there?

The plan should set forth the imperatives of the business: the tasks that are absolutely non-negotiable in terms of achieving success. By definition, this section not only defines a critical path for the business, but also identifies the important but non-essential objectives. By doing this, leaders define where they are willing to fail in order to secure the critical path. The plan sets a context for decision-making around competing goals — for example, delaying an important product launch in order to ensure an imperative goal of achieving bottom-line results. After reading this section of the plan, the reader should know not only what keeps the leaders of the business up at night (i.e. achieving their imperatives), but also what lengths they are willing to go to for a good night’s sleep.

Hint: Want to break down organizational silos? Make sure each employee knows where his or her job fits within the critical path outlined in this section. If not, he or she is not fully a part of the team.

4. Are we on track?

The plan needs to define what success looks like and how it is measured. The plan should clearly define who is accountable for which measure, when measurements will be taken (i.e. monthly, quarterly, etc.), and the corrective actions to be taken in the event of a deviation from the plan. A sure way to add frustration to your life is to create a business plan that sits on the shelf unopened, with an expiration date of one year. The best business plans are evergreen; they are constantly referenced and regularly amended. You should understand how success is defined and measured.

Hint: This section should flow directly into the formulation of team and individual goal documents. It provides a uniform template that ensures that everyone has goals and measures aligned to organizational vitality.

During uncertain times, key business constituencies — clients, prospects, shareholders, and employees — need to receive heightened levels of information. The business plan provides an excellent communication tool. It sets forth a clear path of action that can be referred to — almost as a company’s Rosetta Stone — in unclear circumstances. This, in turn, generates comfort and confidence in the business, its leaders, and the planning that has been engaged in.

John Baker is author of the newly released book, ‘READY Thinking — Primed For Change.’ As a leadership expert, speaker, and founder of READY Thinking, LLC, Baker has helped hundreds of organizations achieve success by adopting a practical framework of thinking during times of change and opportunity. He has more than 20 years of experience as a senior executive with companies including American Express and Ameriprise Financial, specializing in sales, client loyalty, and customer service;www.readythinking.com

Communication skills are at the crosshairs of success. Whether your communication is done verbally or virtually, your ability to do it effectively, and with influence, will determine your success or failure. Research shows that 80% of people feel that they could achieve better results if they were able to communicate better. Millions of companies, small and large, experience communication problems on a regular basis, but in most cases, a simple shift in focus does the trick.

If you find that your communication is no longer influential, and it’s often missing its intended target, the solution is simple: It’s called the LASER model, which is unique because its focus is internal. The starting point for effective communication is within us. What happens if you initially focus externally rather than internally? Well, it’s like operating your business without a business plan; achieving anything — even nothing — is acceptable. In order to truly achieve influential communication, you must focus internally first, pointing the LASER at yourself. Here’s how.

Listen. Listen to the environment you are in, and listen to your own thoughts. Is it so noisy that you can’t hear yourself think? The key to successful internal communication starts with peace and quiet. Shut your office door, find an empty cubicle, take that walk around the building, and locate a place where you can hear yourself think. You want to be able to hear your best thoughts.

Ask questions. Ask yourself the questions that count for the conversation you are going to have. What do you want the end result to be? What will it look like? How will you feel when you accomplish it? These are the easy questions to ask and answer. However, in order to be truly influential, you need to ask the difficult ones by aiming dead center. What will it look like if my communication is ineffective and we don’t realize the end result? Where might we come up short of our goal? What will it look like then? How will you feel when you don’t accomplish it? Get uncomfortable when you ask these tough questions. The more uncomfortable you feel, the better the results will be.

Enjoy the silence. Yes, that’s right; the third step is to sit in silence and listen to the answers that come to you. Don’t interject your opinions on the results you receive. This will be difficult. Instead, just be quiet and listen to the results as they flow forth from asking those difficult questions. Make certain that you write them down; they’ll come to you fast and furious, so keep track of them. Use shorthand if necessary. You’ll need to recall them when you are done.

Erase the past. There is a reason why the rear-view mirror is smaller than the windshield in a car; it’s crucial that you see more of where you’re going than where you’ve been. We steer toward where we look, or aim, our focus. Unfortunately with communication, we let our thoughts of how things went in the past dictate how things will go in the future. If we are always focusing on where we’ve been, rather than where we are going, we’re liable to encounter some obstacles head on, making future successful communication either unlikely or impossible. The past has a way of clouding our vision, making our current communications not the best that they could be. Instead, we need to future-focus on what we want to occur.

Realize the future. You have yourself in position to listen without the noise and clutter that usually surrounds each of us. You’ve made yourself uncomfortable by asking questions that dug deep into what you are trying to accomplish. You’ve moved out of your own way and answered those uncomfortable questions. You’re future-focused on the target ahead. Lastly, determine who needs to hear what it is you have to say, and lay out how you will say it. The time, place, or medium in which you choose to communicate may change, but the message will not. In order to realize the future, you must be strategic with not only what you say, but also to whom you say it.

What results will you achieve when you use the influential communication LASER model? You’ll have an influential edge in becoming the best leader you can be, making your best decisions and achieving your best results. However, implementing only the internal communication habits will still cause you to miss your target. Why? The influential leader combines these internal communication habits with the external communication discipline necessary in order to achieve truly influential communication.

So the next time you communicate, remember to first focus internally before communicating externally. As a result, you will achieve success.

Sam Palazzolo authored ‘The Influential Leader: 10 Critical Skills You MUST Possess For Success.’ As president and chief influence officer at Pathos Leader-ship Group LLC, he conducts keynotes, workshops, Webinars, and one-on-one coaching;www.pathosleadershipgroup.com