Eric Chabrow’s recent article “Most Employers Resist Telecommuting” is an interesting and thought provoking read. ‘According to CIO Insight Research's Mobility Survey, 51 percent of CIOs and other senior IT leaders surveyed said their companies discourage fulltime telecommuting. An equal number of the 237 respondents—24 percent each—said their firms encourage fulltime telecommuting or remain neutral’
The article focuses on Telecommuting as a full-time way of working (which most folks don’t do unless they have moved out of the area). Nevertheless, if 51% of CIOs surveyed (barely most in my book) don’t allow Telecommuting or ‘resist’ and 49% either allow full-time telecommuting or are neutral to it, quite simply – that’s stunning. What a shift from even 5 years ago – and certainly from 10 years ago.
And if that is true for ‘full-time’, imagine the numbers of part-time Telecommuters. As fuel prices rise, and people are increasingly focused on ‘making ends meet’, Telecommuting will in fact be an important part of the business tapestry going forward.
One commenter to the article asked a real question - are there any hard cost savings for companies utilizing Telecommuting? Employees like Telecommuting as it saves them time and $$$. But what’s in it for the company? True, you will be able to attract the millennial crowd. But again, does it save the company hard $$$? If not, what’s in it for them?
This is a great question. People talk about commuter or satellite hotel offices. But let’s be clear, this is more building space, not less. Every building requires the same infrastructure – lighting, office equipment, heating and cooling, phones, etc. So aren’t companies really incurring more expense, not less? And aren’t they paying for high speed access if the person is truly working out of their house?
So the answer is yes, at least now. But what will the business of tomorrow look like? Let’s imagine a new future. Here are some totally non-scientifically generated possibilities:
• Sign up when you want to come into the office. Every cube or office is a commuter cube or office and therefore not personalized.
• Assign each employee a locker – yep, just like school – instead of a cube or office. When you come to the office, you choose a space (first come, first serve) and get what you need from the locker (Cisco already does this in some locations).
• Slow ‘new building’ growth by governing workspace in new ways, new space allocation algorithms. It is no longer 1 employee to 1 cube or office but 1.5 or 2 (or more) employees to a workspace.
• Rethink when you need to be in the office – Perhaps Wednesdays are team collaboration day and everyone is expected to be in the office. Make it clear when F2F is required.
• Produce work schedules for in-office work- some employees come into the office Monday through noon on Wednesday. Others come in Wednesday at Noon and work through Friday. Some work in the office MWF and others Tuesday and Thursday. It may sound cumbersome now but I bet we aren’t that far away from this.
• …….
Years ago, one of my professors said “Technology evolves faster than our culture, our values – the way we work and play.” Periodically a mega event forces some of us to change - Katrina, 9/11, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1917, the Dust Bowl, the Great Plagues, etc. Most changes are slower – we evolve, we work into them – the rise of Christianity, the evolution from agricultural to industrial, from industrial to information, from information to digital anytime, anywhere. It takes time for us to alter our thinking, to assimilate the possibilities associated with the change. Now that my employees can truly work anywhere, what does that allow me to do? What can I rethink? It will take us a while to try on new ideas about what working really means in our new age, to rethink our processes and culture to match the technical capabilities. We have some outside impetus – gas prices, global warming, millennial generation, shrinking resources, living longer – there’s lots going on.
As a manager, full-time Telecommuting requires a change in management practices. My staff is 100% remote. Everyone works at least 100 miles from me. As another commenter to the article said ‘The biggest challenge is building trust.’ As a people person, I have always relied on F2F meetings to build chemistry. I have had to rethink the process. In some ways I have to be looser and in other ways, more stringent. Clear measurable goals and objectives, frequent phone calls, occasional F2F team meetings, a spirit of fun and dedication and ‘basic care and feeding’ of the team. Although I miss the casual F2F talking that happens when you are in the office with employees we are just at the beginning.
What do you think? What are you doing and what is your company doing?
http://blogs.cioinsight.com/parallax_view/content/workplace/most_employers_resist_telecommuting_1.html?kc=CIOMINEPNL06232008