This is sort of a mixed blessing, I’ll admit. The fuzzy black land shark has become seriously over-accustomed to having me around the house more than I used to be. Every now and then I will have to pause a conference call to give him some chin skritchies so he won’t interrupt me by clawing my leg. 
Count your blessings. We have a Rare Fur-Bearing Inland Orca who bitches and moans at the top of his powerful lungs if I don’t dig out his ear wax on (his) schedule. I got to explain about how I’m not abusing him at my project meeting this morning. Also, one of the kittens likes to help edit.
- Does your company allow you to telecommute (assuming you have a position that doesn’t require you to be in the office all day every day)?
No.
- If not, what is the rationale for not allowing workers to telecommute?
**Face-to-face communication is more efficient and more productive than email, IM, video conferencing, and the rest.
Personally, I completely agree.**
My boss goes into the office nearly every day because her dogs annoy her so. They just want their mom to play with them all day long!
- Does your company allow you to telecommute (assuming you have a position that doesn’t require you to be in the office all day every day)?** Yes. We are a global IT company and oodles of us work from home. I don’t have a figure, but it’s a high percentage.**
- If not, what is the rationale for not allowing workers to telecommute? **I worked for a company that didn’t allow it due to distrust. **
- If they do allow telecommuting are there any restrictions they put on it?** It depends on your job. If you need to see the customer a lot, you may just get planted in the customer’s office! If not, you make the call.**
- Do you telecommute more than 2 days a week? If you do, what do you do for a living? I telecommute every day and do not have a “home office site” to go to if I wanted to. I work 70+ hours per week with people in Brazil, India, Mexico, Europe, Asia and Australia.
…and one of my cats is learning to type with her butt.
1. Does your company allow you to telecommute (assuming you have a position that doesn’t require you to be in the office all day every day)?
Yes. I telecommute 3 days/week – more if my babysitter cancels on me. I am one of only 4 people who works in the office at all – one works there daily, one (my boss) is on the same schedule I’m on, and our executive director (the closest thing we have to a CEO) keeps her own totally random hours, so sometimes telecommutes, sometimes is in the office, and is frequently in meetings in all sorts of places.
2. If not, what is the rationale for not allowing workers to telecommute?
N/A
3. If they do allow telecommuting are there any restrictions they put on it?
It’s kind of random… my department is the only one that works in the office at all; everyone else telecommutes full-time. It’s pretty much at the whim of our Executive Director.
4. Do you telecommute more than 2 days a week? If you do, what do you do for a living?
We are a small psycho-educational business – we currently have 13 employees. We run couples’ weekend workshops and we train clinicians in a certain method of couples’ therapy. We also sell books and other products by a well-known marriage researcher. My department trains the clinicians, and my part in that is to help manage the training events, track the clinicians through the training process, and administer our referral network. My boss and I could easily work from home full-time, meeting with each other once a week or so, but the Executive Director really wants us in the office. I find I don’t mind too much, because it’s nice to get away from the baby for a while, and it’s nice to get out of the house!
I agree it’s more efficient, but when you’re in the USA and one of your collaborators is in Asia and another one is in Europe, does it really matter where you do your work?
Ed
No, probably not - but you’re stuck with the inefficiency. At my company, where everyone lives within reasonable commuting distance of the office, we’re not.
I disagree about inefficiency in telecommuting when working globally. I have a terrible time with accents, partly due to kinda lousy hearing. I am fine communicating via email and Sametime, but when I’m on a call, I miss everything that’s being said and have to refer to meeting notes anyway. I would never be able to be as productive as I am if I had to rely on my hearing to get the information.
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Does your company allow you to telecommute (assuming you have a position that doesn’t require you to be in the office all day every day)?
Not as a general rule, but there are a few exceptions. -
If not, what is the rationale for not allowing workers to telecommute?
Distrust, I suppose. -
If they do allow telecommuting are there any restrictions they put on it?
I only know of one person that has been allowed to telecommute a few days a week (in a company of about 500 people). -
Do you telecommute more than 2 days a week? If you do, what do you do for a living?
No.
Right now this doesn’t bother me much, as my office is less than a mile from my home. However, we have been informed that our office is moving to a town about 25 miles away, so it will becoming much more of an issue soon. As a database administrator that works on remote systems anyway, I don’t see where my presence in the office is really all that beneficial to the company.