Challenges in Telecommuting? Our guide helps telecommuters negotiate some of the most common potholes.

If you’re a pessimist, there’s plenty to worry about right now: fallout from the US financial crisis is affecting world markets, oil prices are rising, and climate change concerns us more each day.

In metropolitan areas in cities the world over, skyrocketing office rentals and overcrowded transport routes leave many commuters questioning the sanity of spending two hours or more each day in traffic, only to sit in an office where their main communication with the outside world is by phone and email.

Telecommuting is one work strategy promising to address all these issues with a shift in the world-view of businesses, but though it requires a relatively simple change, it seems a much-neglected and feared work option.

A Term Coined by a Rocket Scientist

It’s over thirty-five years since former US rocket scientist Jack Nilles coined the term “telecommuting” to describe the process where an employee works remotely, using telecommunication links (phone, email and web) to replace a physical commute to a central workplace.

Over subsequent decades, despite support from various Federal and State authorities in the US and Europe, huge advances in the telecommuting-enabling technology, enthusiasm from workers, buy-in from visionary corporates and hype from Silicon Valley, telecommuters remain a minority if not an oddity in mainstream workplaces.

But telecommuting may be an idea whose time has come.

Higher Productivity and Improved Work Quality

In 2003, the two-year “SusTel” study involving workers in five European countries reported that more than 60 percent of teleworkers claimed higher productivity and improved work quality, with other benefits including reduced fatigue, less absenteeism and less stress.

Best-selling author Tim Ferris gave telecommuting a boost recently, when he lauded it as the first step for workers keen to adopt his Four Hour Work Week philosophy.

A study published in June 2008 by the US-based Telework Exchange revealed that 92 percent of American white-collar employees surveyed believed they could do their jobs from home. However, only 34 percent were currently telecommuters.

The Telework Exchange study also estimated that if everyone who had the potential to work from home did, the US would save around 37 billion litres of oil a year, with significant positive impacts on pollution, overconsumption and associated climate change.

The attractions of telecommuting, apart from the obvious convenience and efficiency for workers, include reducing marginalisation by opening up former city-based workplaces to employees who live in remote locations, or who have disabilities or career obligations that make commuting difficult.

In a recent survey, recruitment firm Robert Half International reports that 33% of surveyed professional employees considered telecommuting the best recruitment incentive available. Another survey conducted in June 2008 by Californian staffing service OfficeTeam revealed however that 48 percent of workers thought their jobs would be more difficult if their manager didn’t work in the same location.

It´s All about Project Management and Trust

Anecdotal evidence supports that unless the project is managed well, many telecommuters report feeling lonely, out of touch with their fellow workers, and unmotivated and overlooked for promotions, special projects and overall work opportunities. “The reason companies have fixed hours is that they can’t measure productivity,” argued visionary web developer Paul Graham in a 2005 convention address. “If you could measure what people really did, you wouldn’t care when people worked.”

That gets to the heart of the main problem for many telecommuters: remote workers can’t be evaluated by their time (although some jobs do require a clock-in system) or by their presence. It’s not just their co-workers and managers who refuse to take them seriously though; many telecommuters report that for some neighbours, relatives and housemates, “working from home” translates to available for interruption.
When it’s not the neighbours interrupting, it’s the domestic duties, with many admitting that hanging the washing on the line or cleaning the kitchen often becomes a procrastinating tool when a particularly dull work task awaits. And surprisingly, weight-gain is another common pitfall, with some claiming that lack of exercise from walking to transport hubs paired with the constant temptation of the fridge can wreak havoc on a telecommuter’s waistline.

The key to a successful telecommuting setup is trust and communication, says Bob Fortier, president of the Canadian Telework Association, who identifies mistrust as the number one barrier to telecommuting. But managers who can’t trust an employee to work when they’re at home don’t know how to manage without constantly observing their workers and probably need some training.

In Australia, at least 25 percent of employees work at least some hours from home, with around 8 percent working mainly from home. Bevis England, who heads up the government-funded advisory centre Telework Australia, says that it’s critical for telecommuters to identify a discreet workspace. “One of the important things for individuals when they are working from home is to be able to close the door on their work,” he says. “It’s always been best practice to recommend that teleworkers have a discrete home office space; the alternatives don’t work very well, when you start trying to use the dining room table, it’s unsafe, you lose papers and spill things on them.”

Management should be based on output, not input and telecommuting consultant Gil Gordon suggests that telecommuters start with a one-day a week trial, which assesses the advantage to the company, not just to the telecommuter. Telecommuters are assessed by performance, not presence, Gordon argues; and as such, they are a vanguard of efficient management practice.

If you enjoyed the article "Telecommuters Survival Guide " - why don't you read more about the Whakate Way.