Telecommuting has a lot of advantages. Telecommuters save a lot of money on gas. They save money on vehicle maintenance. They save time. People who don’t telecommute benefit because there are fewer cars on the roads. Thus they use less fuel and spend less time driving. Companies need less space for employees to work in, and can either save money on rent/construction or put the surplus space to other uses. Governments benefit by lightening the load on the infrastructure. Money spent repairing a road might be better spent elsewhere. (Or they could lower taxes, but I’d rather have benefits.) The economy benefits because people who have an extra $100 (or $200, or $300…) in their wallets every month are likely to spend it. The environment benefits because there are fewer hydrocarbons being spewed into the air, less leakage that winds up in our waterways and oceans, and other things like tire dust that gets into the eco-system. And then there’s the quality-of-life issue.
But most people don’t have the opportunity to telecommute. I think a big part of it for people whose jobs do not really require them to be in an office is the ‘If we can’t see you, you’re not working’ mentality. Only productivity is easily checked (in my experience – YMMV). Another reason I’ve heard is that ‘synergy’ is lost when people aren’t working in the same building.
But gas is becoming more expensive. I’m guessing Summer 2007 we’ll see $4/gallon. The President says we’re addicted to oil and that we need to do something to ween ourselves off of it. Well, commuting is a big part of people’s addiction. People need to work. So why not telecommute?
I think state and Federal governments should offer incentives to corporations to get them to make the switch from brick-and-mortar office to virtual offices. I can imagine Liberals shouting ‘Corporate welfare!’ and Conservatives complaining about gas stations going out of business or something. But we’re not going to enjoy the benefits of widespread telecommuting until corporations can see instant gratification on the bottom line.
I work in a company that is set up perfectly for telecommuting. I can pull pull down one shortcut and 10 seconds from now and have the exact same services I have at work including big corporate servers and proprietary applications. It works so well that we actually use it at work too so there is no difference between work and home.
I do telecommute plenty but it is mainly after hours overtime. I don’t really want to telecommute although I know it would work. I have a colleague on our team that is married to a Major League baseball player and just travels with him and works just fine.
I am still pretty new to the company and need to get to know people. Much of my expertise is rapid response crisis management and I could do that at home but I like just grabbing people and throwing them into a meeting. It is a nice building too.
My commute is 40 miles one-way and takes an hour. The “synergy” argument sounds terrible as a catch-phrase but I think it is very important if you have any ambition at all.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that telecommuting be mandatory. Individuals would be able to choose based upon their circumstances. Maybe corporations could be awarded incentives based on the percentage of people who take advantage of it?
I telecommute from California for a company just outside of Washington DC. I had worked there for 3 years, and wanted to move to CA to be with my boyfriend who is in the military, so therefore he couldn’t move to be with me. My boss had let several of our employees telecommute (and she so telecommutes 95% of the time), so she let me do it too.
Basically for me and the other telecommuters, my boss had the choice for us to leave the company altogether (because we would have moved anyway) or to keep valuable employees. It’s a win-win for her. However, it brings out the worst in her: she becomes an even worse micromanager than she already was. It can be annoying, but at the same time I was grateful to be able to move to CA and not have to get a new job.
I can do 99% of the stuff I used to do in the office at home. However for me, I have realized after a year of telecommuting that I do better in an office. I just don’t have good enough self-discipline. The temptation is too strong to sleep late, or take a nap, or to slack off (i.e. read the SDMB, etc.) And, many days I never even get dressed, leave the house or see another person besides my boyfriend. So that can be a drag.
Anyway we should be moving back to the DC area soon, so then I will be back in the office for good.
I think telecommuting is very much underused, but at the same time I agree with the “synergy” argument and think it’s important to be onsite. For most jobs done on computers I’d think that part-time telecommuting would be fine. Unfortunately my company doesn’t allow it, and even if I need to be home for emergencies (like waiting for a repairman or taking my wife to outpatient surgery), I have to take PTO to do it. If I get called into solving some problem at the office, then I can count that as work time, but not just doing routine work. And that basically sucks, because if I make a commitment to get something done by a certain date, and then an emergency happens, I essentially end up taking a day off and having to work through part of it.
We actually did used to have approval forms we could fill out for telecommuting, but with some changes in management there has been considerable retrenchment and resistance here.
I can do 90% of my work here remotely, but there would be an additional drain on my productivity that for a lot of the issues I deal with I’d have to wait for an email or a phone call rather than just being able to walk over to the other guy’s cube and ask him my question. So, yes, there are some advantages to telecommuting.
However, it creates a critically ugly precedent. If I can do all my work from home, and bill N dollars per hour, why can’t they pay somebody do to this work from Bangalore, and have that person bill N/4 dollars per hour? The company I’m working at is fairly adamant about people not telecommuting unless it is seriously necessary because if they’re going to be paying for expensive consultants, they’re going to see expensive consultants!
Also, as somebody pointed out here, he asked his boss if he could telecommute, and his boss said, “Hell, we can barely get you to do any work when you’re here…”
The legend here is that a high mucky-muck had an “all-hands” meeting a couple of years ago, and was incensed that someone was telecommuting and didn’t attend the meeting in person. TC was then rapidly banned for this division except in cases where a business need existed.
That’s been eased somewhat - now it’s possible to request a TC day in advance if you need to be home to wait for the furnace repairman or have a doctor appointment near home (and work is an hour away from home)
Synergy is a screwball idea for my department. We’re scattered over three states as it is, and collaboration is already by phone or online messaging. I see my direct manager maybe twice a year as it is.
We’ve got a great remote-access infrastructure already - with a broadband line at home, we can open a tunnel and log in normally to receive literally everything that we can at the office. It’s a shame they don’t let us use it more often.
My division is looking into telecommuting as an alternative for after our lease expires in a couple years.
(Emphasis mine.)
They do. In the SoW, and perhaps elsewhere, it’s called CTR (Commuter Trip Reduction). Companies which can document a reduction in single-occupancy mileage reap some kind of reward, the nature of which is unknown to me, but must be substantial enough to justify several full-time positions. Not to mention the lost productivity of filling out our monthly calendars. . . .
Regardless of how the foregoing may sound, I’m all for it. Under normal conditions, I telework 1-2 days a week; under abnormal conditions such as the last six months (long story), it’s a lifesaver. Literally.
One thing about telecommuting is the lack of social interaction w/ co-workers.
Yeah, like the lack of social interaction we have going on here…
Given some of the cow-orkers described here over the years, I might consider that a plus.