Remote work arrangements are the daydreams of many office-based workers. But in a job market where competition is high, what must remote workers do to reduce risk of replacement and keep their professional “edge”?

The latest jobs numbers are in, and the news isn’t good. Instead of dropping below 9 percent as predicted by economists, the U.S. jobless rate increased to 9.1 percent in May. With almost 14 million people now looking for work, employed workers are feeling pressure to maintain their performance and keep their employers happy or risk being replaced by eager job seekers.

For employees who have negotiated remote work arrangements, this pressure can feel even more acute. More and more people are choosing remote work. A 2009 study published in the MIT Sloan Management Review found that 10 percent of U.S. workers do so, a number that tripled from the year 2000.

“Although working from home has come a long way, it is incumbent on you to make sure your boss is comfortable,” said Sandra Mereos, a technical project manager for HP Technology Consulting of Dallas, who works remotely. “You have to consistently deliver the same or better results than your [in-office] peers.”

Yet thanks to instant messaging, video conferencing, and similar connectivity tools, employers show no indication that—in theory—such arrangements negatively affect the perceived value of a remote employee compared to an office-based employee. “An employee is just as valuable and efficient at home as they are in my office,” said Dana Marlowe, principle partner at Accessibility Partners, LLC., an accessibility consulting and professional service. “Because of instant messaging software, I can check on their progress during the day.”

Jay Gibb, founder of CloudSponge.com, an online service that integrates invitations into websites and social media accounts, points out that it all comes down to one thing: trust. “The bottom line is that I need to trust the people who work for me, whether they’re working remotely or not.”

The caveat for remote workers is that it takes more for them to maintain that trust.

“If I leave a voicemail, send an email, SMS, or instant message, and I don’t get a response in a reasonable time frame, it’s a bad indicator. If we have a meeting scheduled and [a remote worker] is late, I lose a little trust in them,” Gibb notes. Conversely, workers who share office space with their boss are typically not at risk for losing as much credibility for being unreachable or a little late for meetings as their remote counterparts.

Yet what many remote workers don’t understand is that maintaining trust goes beyond just responding to emails and being on time. Mereos has kept her professional edge by being engaged beyond completing assigned tasks. “You want to be visible and necessary as often as possible. If you read or follow blogs, find nuggets and share them with your team frequently. Everyone has a niche, find yours and stay in front of your manager with it in a positive way.”

The MIT Sloan Management Review study recommended employers help remote workers prioritize their tasks, promote face-to-face interaction to decrease isolation, and study ways to bring more visibility to remote workers in the real-world organization.

Bill Sterzenbach, cofounder of the e-marketing organization Oxiem Interactive, an Ohio-based company, notes that consistent productivity is how he weighs the professional edge of his remote workforce. “I often hear employers tell me ‘I can’t measure what my employees do from day to day, so I can’t know if they are performing when they’re in the office.’ If your only measurement of your employees’ productivity is the amount of time they occupy a seat, you have larger problems in your business.”