My company is in the process of withdrawing telecommuting privileges from the few to whom it had been granted, and to continue telecommuting, the remaining people have to have a good excuse, such as medical problems making it impossible to sit in a car for long periods of time. There used to be a form to request TC privileges, but not anymore. I understand a lot of companies are similarly retrenching, because TC is seen as a perk and, in a tight job market, employers need not be too generous with perks.
However, I thought TC was a win-win situation. The employee gets to work in his/her bathrobe, and the company saves on the overhead of having the employee on site. I think, in most cases, the employee has to retain an office or workstation onsite, because most telecommuters go into the office at least once a week. So the employer doesn’t save on office space, but they save in other ways, such as lights, and the power to run the PC in the office, and parking.
In my particular situation, if something came up that required me to stay home, I could just email anyone at the office I thought needed to know and say that I was working from home that morning, and my email and cell phone were available. But now that sort of thing is strongly discouraged. The executive VP of my department (IT) firmly believes that you need to be in the office in order to work effectively. Which may be a good thing after all, because if you need to do your job onsite, then maybe also your job needs to be done in America and not in some Asian country by someone else.
So what are your experiences? What moves if any has your employer made with regard to telecommuting? If you’re a manager or executive, please chime in with your perspectives on managing telecommuters.
We can “work from home” unofficially. Generally it is seen as fine where you have sufficient work and need to avoid distraction. The rest of the time we are expected to be more rapidly responsive and contactable.
As for “win-win”, one of the reasons it’s not a formal policy is that there’s a justifiable suspicion that people won’t work as hard, or will use it as an opportunity for sleeping in, watching TV and generally not working quite so hard.
In my former position, as a manager, I allowed people to work at home under certain conditions. We did not have a formal company policy. I saw no reason to force my staff to work in the office when they could do the exact same job at home. For the most part, the staff all recognized they needed to come in most of the time – we had a lot of meetings. If they were under very tight deadlines and needed zero distraction, they had to request so many days in advance. Had to “punch” in and out by sending me an e-mail, and had to be available by e-mail and phone. I had no negative repercussions for allowing such a thing. The work got done, was accurate, on time and under budget. And that’s all I really cared about.
In my new position, I am “field staff” working in the client’s office. My employer is located about 5 states away. Our client happens to be a public employer who will be shutting down the office for the last two weeks in December. That’s all fine and dandy, but my employer does not shut down and I will not allow myself to be forced to take two weeks’ vacation when someone else dictates I can take it. So I talked them all into letting me work at home for the next two weeks.
Contractually, I am limited in what work I can do at home, since some of the material I work on is “secured” (top secret) and can’t leave my office. Until it’s published. :rolleyes:
Point being, I’m looking forward to working at home in the next two weeks. I won’t have to do laundry in January, because I’ll be wearing the same three pairs of flannel jammies. (Not all at once though!)
I’ve been working from home for 3 years after my company said working from the office wasn’t required. They were glad to get people out of the office because of the high cost of floor space. The only requirement they wanted us to get was a broadband non-dialup connection, so either DSL or cable was chosen. They gave us laptops to use from home instead of the desktop PCs. We also have to be able to have 3 way calling. We’ve heard of people that build new houses asking before they build if DSL or cable access is in the neighborhood before they decide.
Advantages:
You don’t have to listen to 8 people on speaker phones scream at each other.
You don’t have to attend any time wasting meetings in person.
You don’t have to drive through 5 inches of show and get up at 4:00 am to beat the traffic.
If you don’t feel so hot when you wake up, you can just plop yourselve down in front of the keyboard and cough and sneeze without infecting anyone.
Spending money on gas drops way down.
You don’t have to dress up and look normal.
Disadvantages:
If your laptop breaks, you just can’t call the tech guy to come and fix it like working from an office. We have to mail it in and get a replacement which sometimes works.
Power failures at home of course make you pack up the laptop and go into the main office.
Not really a disadvantage, but your dishwasher will run twice as much.
My entire group of 28 colleagues is home-office based and I’ve been telecommuting for over four years. I work for a large company that has an office here in town but I’ve never been there. The company saves a lot of money on overhead and I think overall the employees are happier. I still have to see my customers so I’m not afraid of my job moving offshore.
On the plus side:
-I can work at 5 AM if I want.
-I can work at 11 PM if I want.
-If I worked in the office I’d have to pay a 2% income tax.
-Nobody gets upset if I spread documents out on the floor.
-Sick kid, no problem.
-I talk to my boss once a month.
-The company pays for my DSL and I have my personal systems online along with my work PC.
-I get to listen to anything I want on the radio.
On the minus side:
-You can work too much.
-You have to be “self motivated”. This is MOST important. No slackers allowed.
-I sometimes feel isolated and miss the office water cooler chats.
-You can eat all the time.
-During the summer I’m the only adult in the neighborhood during the day and I’ve had to handle a few emergencies for local kids that were left home alone.
-Nobody brings in cookies.
-Nowhere to escape when your spouse gets on your nerves.
-It’s embarrassing when your dog barks during a concall.
I seem to remember that until a few years ago, we had to respond to commuting surveys to see how many people carpooled, used public transit, drove alone, or whatever. I think employers received some sort of brownie points for being able to report that a certain percentage of their workers were carpooling or whatever. Telecommuting at least one day a week was also looked on favorably. But I haven’t seen those forms in a couple of years. Did they go out when the Republicans came into the White House? Maybe that’s another reason for the retrenchment; that employers are no longer encouraged to provide the option.
A few years ago when I was doing more IT project work I used to do it pretty regularly on an informal basis. If for some reason I didn’t want to come in and was working on the reams of project documentation I’d say “I can do this at home see you next week”.
I didn’t do very well out of it, I seemed to work far too hard - longer hours, no breaks, no stopping for a chat and when I got back to work it seemed that extra work was always stockpiled for me. Other people at work were doing it more formally but it is now being discouraged.
I don’t telecommute, but my wife does. She is actually the first person in her department (she works for the IT department at a local hospital) to do so. She usually goes into the office 2 days a week and telecommutes from home the other 3 days.
For the most part, the experience has been positive. The main reason she did this is so that she could stay home with our daughter a few days a week. This means shuffling work schedules around nap times etc…maybe working a bit at night or catchin gup on weekends. She has the kind of job that generally allows her to do this (work a few hours here and there that add up to a full work day).
OTOH, he job requires her to also be “on call” for IT issues one week a month. This sometimes involves late night troubleshooting…although generally the problems can be resolved fairly quickly.
As others said, you really have to be a self motivated worker. In her case, she is a “pilot” project…with even more riding on the line because of that. She does have a very supprotive boss, which is also important.
FWIW, she uses a Citrix client on an iMac to connect over our DSL line to her office servers…generally works pretty well. It’s kind of weird to be running “Windows” apps remotely over an iMac.
