Six Questions To Ask Before Telecommuting 320
Lucas123 writes "With gas prices 30% higher this summer over last, telecommuting is back on everyone's radar. According to a Computerworld story, however, IT and telecommuting don't have a great record of success. For example, citing negative impacts on productivity, HP ended its telecommuting policy for hundreds of workers two years ago, and this year, Intel began requiring more than half the teleworkers in its IT group to report to the office at least four days a week. So before leaping, some questions you should ask as a manager if you're considering telework include: How will you define and measure performance? Will creativity suffer? What about employees stuck in the office?"
The most important question is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you reboot it remotely. If you physically need to press a button, or change media, you won't be telecommuting.
Re:The most important question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
check out bay technologies [baytech.net], they have some very useful stuff there for remote management. I've used their RPCs (think powerstrip with an ethernet port) for several years. Reboot anything that can power-on-after-power-fail, and you're set.
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:5, Interesting)
I sometimes wonder how much gets done even when people are physically present, there is a lot of solitaire and web surfing going on in many offices. Perhaps with a rise in telecommuting we can switch to getting paid for generating x amount of work done instead of x hours in the workplace. It would lead to huge efficiency improvements, and it seems the only practical way to quantify "a days work" telecommuting.
Anecdotes (Score:5, Interesting)
A while ago, I was finishing my degree while maintaining a full-time job. I reached a point where I needed to take time off in order to concentrate on one of my classes - so I did. In those two weeks, it immediately became apparent to me that I could not get things done at home (too many distractions), nor at the library (I have to pack up everything in order to use the restroom?).
So I made the 45 minute trek into work (each way - 1.5 hours round trip) in order to have a productive place to concentrate on The Code. While this is my own experience, I do realize that others can be productive in the middle of the Sahara or in a dimly lit basement. I'm just trying to provide some contrast to this panacea that everyone is painting with telecommuting.
It doesn't work for everyone.
Wow....I'm actually about to do this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. I actually just made a journal entry regarding this. I work for a gov't agency that does not have a clear telecommuting policy and we're about to actually find out how well it will work.
Unfortunately, a concrete schedule hasn't been decided on so it will be played by ear till we figure out if the arrangement is going to work or not. I'm pretty sure I'm the first worker that is actually going to telecommute the majority of the time.
I think the biggest problem with non-software companies is to determine what requires face-to-face time and what doesn't. I know I'm going to be pretty dejected if I show up to work and end up spending a week behind a monitor instead of meetings with Finance, etc.
You can tell if I'm getting work done by issues being resolved. No "If I'm doing it right, you'' see nothing at all." job here. I feel if they allow me to do this, I'm going to have prove them right in letting me work offsite.
Another question is why they simply don't replace me. Our two recent hires left much to be desired, so I'm guess the market here is pretty bad or they are looking for talent in the wrong places.
If it doesn't work, I'll at least say I gave it a shot. And no, I'm not saying which agency.
I have done this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Carpool (Score:2, Interesting)
Carpool [dawnofthegeeks.com] is a simple Google Maps based app I wrote.
Your employer (or you) can create an account for your place of work. All the employees can then create an account and join the account created for the workplace. Just send your coworkers the username and public password for the place of business so they can join the group. The public password can't be used to log into the account. It's just to help maintain your privacy.
You can then see (or have the site tell you an approximation of) who would be best to carpool with.
Even though I live 50 miles out of town I always seem to find at least one coworker to carpool with which cuts my gas bill in half.
For the curious, I'd have to drive 1 million miles at $4 a gallon before I spend as much money in gas as I save on my mortgage.
Re:Yuck. 4 click throughs. (Score:2, Interesting)
And since I have the mod points, Ill ask the karma-killing question.
Where did the "Nintendo Gets sued for patent violations in Wiimote" go?
Re:so you can make $0 while you wait for other peo (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the problem I would worry about. I know I've had to wait for others to do their job (due to their own procrastination, etc) so I could get something done that was due already. Heck, anyone who has done a team assignment in middle school has had that experience.
I have a simple solution to this: every moment I'm working on your project, including waiting on you (and subordinates) because you didn't do what you said you would, I charge you. I'll bill 3 people at once while I wait around. If we pre-arrange that I won't be working during a specific time (because you're busy or whatever) that's fine. But if I am supposed to be fixing your project and I can't because of you, you're still paying.
Of course, you have to be really really good at your job to be able to get terms like that. That's why pretty much no one would be willing to accept those terms. I know I wouldn't hire someone else with those terms unless I really trusted them. And I wouldn't trust them that much without working with them, which I wouldn't do without....
I'm with you. The "let's all bill based on actual work and not just 40 hours a week thing" is great in theory but unless you're the guy everyone else is always forced to wait on it won't work out.
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the exact opposite. I work for a medical transcription company, managing a team of voice recognition editors/transcriptionists. I work at home, complete telecommute, and I get lots done. I put in a good day's work, I look for and call out problems, and keep tabs on the store basically.
I have the option of working out on the deck in my yard in summers. If I need to travel for vacation or whatever, I just take my laptop and other gear with me and still catch lines while I'm gone, if I'm really good and bored. Try it, you might like it. To me, work is Slack. Or kill me.
Praise "Bob"!
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is how do you quantify productivity. In some jobs it's easy, but for most creative work it probably isn't. Not to mention dealing with collaboration, and people who contribute most as morale boosters or brainstormers (for lack of a better term).
telecomute advice from a pro (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:so you can make $0 while you wait for other peo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anecdotes (Score:2, Interesting)
There are a growing number of "coworking" spaces being established just to solve this issue. Most towns with any major tech focus have plans. Check out the Coworking wiki [pbwiki.com] for more info.
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, and I'm up front with it. Last productivity meeting with the new bosses I sat there and said... I work 2 hours a day, the other 6 I screw off. They know what I do, I laid out a nice huge list at their feet and also mentioned that they would have to hire 2 people at my rate to replace me. I'm arrogant about time because micromanagers are worthless (I said that as well) and when I am needed I work with a vengeance. If you give me useless busywork, I'll do it crappy or not at all.
I did this the last 5 times I had a productivity meeting with new owners and always end up promoted. Just be up front with them and hold no punches, managers worth working for understand it.
Re:so you can make $0 while you wait for other peo (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there are definitely working environments were telecommuting makes sense.
Re:offshore jobs but won't allow telecommuting (Score:3, Interesting)
I did, anyway.
Though it was more of a raise - I got offered a job with a 10% raise, my employer practically begged me to stay, but they would only give me a 5% raise (above the regular end-of-the-year raise). They asked me what would keep me there, and I asked for one day a week working at home. I stayed because it saves me over three hours commute on that day. And I find I usually get more productive work done on that day than when I'm in the office.
I am in a very collaborative business, though, (consulting mechanical engineer in construction, mostly HVAC) so I couldn't get away with working at home full time. Heck, even when I'm in the office, I tend to spend about 25% of the time out of the office at clients offices, construction sites, etc.
Re:offshore jobs but won't allow telecommuting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at home 3 days a week for about a year. I didn't have a problem getting down to work and the type of work I did--working on the internal web site--either it got done or not so it would be easy enough to determine if someone was goofing off. On the plus side, it saved me a 60-mile round trip commute on those days. I was also able to organize my in-office duties of helping people and meetings so I didn't get constantly interrupted. I was the only technical person in our group so there was no one I was leaving behind to get jealous because my duties were so different from everyone else. My job was ideal for telecommuting. However, I wonder if telecommuting help lead to my eventual layoff. We changed managers...the main problem became, I think, that he thought I was a shared resource. IOW that the monies that paid my salary were shared by the other regional managers who used me to keep their web pages up. Then he found out I came out of his budget. Even though I did work for several regions/sections in my group, this manager's idea of a web page was just uploading documents and putting up a link. It wasn't promoted or to be used to help people--more like a file storage. There was no one else to take over my work, but this manager just didn't care that it got done or left other regions in the lurch. So if you telecommute, beware this: Be sure you 'toot your own horn' and make sure upper management knows all the important work you're doing and your contributions. Otherwise it can be "out of site, out of mind" and when cutbacks come up, if they don't value your work and they don't see you, they might just feel cutting you won't hurt the workload.
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:3, Interesting)
Hallelujah. The only jobs I've had that were really metric driven were graveyard-shift-convenience-store-clerk and calc-tutor (how many hours did you work - thankfully nobody has ever counted my lines of code or my correct forecasts per data). Since then, it's been tasks & deliverables, but very hard to metric. But, back when I did technical work (I've been drafted (kicking and screaming) into PM and am looking for other employment), work came home all the time. That was acceptable - Staying up late because I had some uncrackable correlation or an unsolvable hurdle was my obsession, not really the company's fault. Now that I'm in PM, I'm allowed to telecommute but hate it. It's all stress and extra work and I don't want to impose it on my family, but am expected to... It hurts me and them. If I was a bachelor or didn't care about my job, I might feel differently...
Re:Carpool (Score:2, Interesting)
My other life is as a musician. I simply *must* live within an easy drive, and preferably a short walk, of the cultural center of a town that has a healthy independent arts scene. This is not negotiable, and if it means I am exposed to what some consider staggeringly high costs of living, or if it means I must compromise (as I have) and accept a third or less of the typical salary in my field, so be it. I've tried in the past to budge on this requirement, being advised that perhaps I should "outgrow" this aspect of my life, and it almost killed me, literally. I'd rather be alive and poor and able to express myself in my artistic medium.
For some who were raised in cities, the semi-rural life seems to be of some appeal, and I respect that. For me, who grew up on a farm and who struggled for so many years just to be *in* a city that had some interesting culture, I ask for respect for my choices and needs also.
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the exact opposite.
When I am at home, co-workers can't waddle by my desk and start talking about the weather, or a football game, or what they're going to do that weekend, or some other thing that is wasting my time. And let's not get started with the pointless meetings.
I grew up with a good work ethic; I suppose that I'm lucky. I work from home three days a week. Those are the three days that I actually get things done. I can start working, get into a groove, and pump out large amounts of good code, or get testing done, or debug problems.
The two days in the office are a complete waste for me.
Re:How likely are your employees likely to slack o (Score:3, Interesting)
I am just the opposite. I work from home about half the time and travel the other half. I get far more work done when at home than when at the remote (for me) office. Too many interruptions and distractions.
It takes a certain mindset and some discipline to telecommute, but for those of us who can do so it's a godsend.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Telecommuting FTW (Score:1, Interesting)
I've had mixed feeelings whether I should travel to the office each day, or spend the day at home and get (more) work done.
Working from home, I get to save 80 minutes a day by not commuting. Downside is the lack of social interaction with your colleagues. IM and VoIP really don't provide the same level of "getting to know them"-factor.
Then again working from the office has upsides too - no need to build a home office. No need to open my laptop when I'm at home. No need to be on-call, ever, when not at the office.
For now it seems I enjoy more waking up in the morning and working from home, and occasionally (once a week) visit the office.
Re:to me, it's all a management problem (Score:2, Interesting)
So true.
We had a system crash that took our company down for 3 hours and rather than "What happened" we got "Who's fault was it" and "How can you ensure me this will never happen again"
They were more focused on finding who to blame for the issue than finding how to truly fix the issue, and more focused on finding the person who messed something up rather than realize sometimes things just get bugged out.
They also wern't to happy when I told them that it was an error with the last IIS patch that dropped it so if they are looking for someone to blame with the "Whos fault is it" question then they can blame microsoft.
Re:to me, it's all a management problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always thought that if someone is a crappy worker, it will out in some way, even if the job is a hard thing to supervise or measure.
From what I've seen people who are lazy or slow tend to exhibit that behavior everywhere, and often don't even think that they're lazy and slow. So they're not apologetic about their work habits even when they ARE being supervised.
Re:so you can make $0 while you wait for other peo (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been telecommuting for the last 2 years (only going to the office when there is a meeting or to oversee hardware deployments) and I can second what you're saying. Not only takes it discipline to get yourself working, it also takes discipline to make yourself *stop* working even when something is not finished, yet.
That can be harder than it may sound but it's absolutely critical in order to maintain a sustainable work/life-balance.
I never really had a problem with the "pressure" you mention but that's probably because I don't normally get assigned tasks that take under a day to finish. My stuff normally takes at least 2-3 days and, well, in case of emergency everybody is expected to work "anytime" anyways.