October 15, 2007 at 10:49 am
Eric,
Good points and that's interesting. Why isn't it pushed more in terms of tax credits. There are certainly a lot of jobs that could be done remotely.
October 15, 2007 at 11:20 am
Want a telecommuting job? There is at least one that is perfect if you want to telecommute.
Telemarketing.
Must be available to work during everybodys dinner time.:angry:
October 15, 2007 at 11:42 am
Bob, I hope you were just being funny, and not totally unsympathetic to the plight of people who would really like to telecommute for some portion of their work-week.
What I would LIKE to see in this forum are some people who have success stories about what they did to convince thier employers that tele-commuting makes sense. (Consultants don't count - there are plenty of examples there.)
As far as tax-incentives go, it's great that some cities in the country have started doing this. But the company still has to want to do it. I am concerned that a lot of companies would still see it as a lot of trouble to make a handful of employees happy. (Even though it seems it would be easy enough to implement without incentives!!)
As a side note, our department recently interviewed someone for a developer position, and that person was clearly disappointed to hear that we didn't offer the ability to tele-commute. When it comes to filling this position with the best person, we could lose out.
October 15, 2007 at 2:07 pm
The process can work without tax credits. In just about any city where space is at a premium, a company not having to provide/plan for space for 100% of their workforce (since a good portion would be working from home at any given time) alone could provide the financial incentives to do that.
One of the last companies I worked with as a consultant had a system like that. A fairly big portion of the office either worked 4 days a week (4x10), and/or worked one day a week from home. Most of those in that pool would "share desks", and would have something like a "corporate locker" for their stuff/files. You'd then "sign up" for a local desk that day, which of course were all configured the same, with roaming profiles, etc... carrying your config with you. You'd sign in to your phone number which would then forward calls to whatever you designated, etc..
It becomes rather easy to justify it that way: rent + utilities + insurance on 80% of the space you initially needed AND everyone's happier. You could do this much simpler by making 2 people "share" office space - doesn't need to be that extreme.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
October 15, 2007 at 3:09 pm
To Matt's point, a previous employer of mine justified telecommuting based on building rent. They reduced their square footage by 33% and had the displaced workers telecomute. In this case it was justified as a cost savings needed because of poor business prospects, but still there were cost savings even without any tax incentives.
I will add that this solution is much easier to justify in the USA do to the fact that many US homes already have affordable high speed connections in place and the company did not reimburse for this. High speed connections were not as readily available (mainly due to high cost) for some of my European collegues. Affordable high speed may have come to Europe in the last year, but I'll let those currently outside the US comment on this.
October 15, 2007 at 4:32 pm
To Carla: No, I was being more sarcastic then funny. Sometimes it works.
I live in Alaska. This morning the snow made it about 2/3rds of the way down the Mountains which means we could get some soon or at least by the end of the month(traditional-what's Halloween without 6" of snow?). This mornings drive was all about black ice driving conditions due to overnight fog and just barely freezing temperature.
This was a morning clearly made for a telecommute session.
Oddly and somewhat by default, because our State is so large, thinly populated and spread out, even going to an office might mean you are telecommuting to someplace else be it remote session or WAN. How else to you cost effectively tie together branches that are thousands of miles apart? Alaska enjoys multiple fiber lines and satellite backup for most of its telecommunication needs. This is to offer more redundancy as well as capacity.
I know and work with people that do almost all their work this way. Even our own branches remote in. While we have no formal policy, salespeople and managers can be setup to work from home or road as needed. Great for some that are home with a sick child or waiting for a plumber. Not all can do this however because of their job here.
As I recall, once I proved it could be done and made it easy by issuing a couple of floppies (danger - age showing) to the end user that autoloaded the client, telecommuting just happened for us.
Downside is being home, sick in bed and getting the phone call from work wanting you to log on and fix something. Even worse when its after hours and interrupts what you are doing. Just like telemarketers do!
However, that will probably all stop by the end of this year with the new owners. Their system is larger and more robust then ours and is all but set up to do it. But they have a policy...
October 16, 2007 at 8:00 am
Just to clarify - I championed working from home for a former company back in 1990, where I used a 2400 baud modem with an XT-clone!! (showing my age) In 1999, I worked every weekend from home in addition to my normal work week, preparing for Y2K (so I know the downside of telecommuting). As a consultant, I spent 80% of my time working for a company in London, UK (I live in Denver, Colorado [snow 1/2 way down the mountains Sunday night - snow for Halloween is a good bet!])
So I have LOTS of experience with tele-commuting, which is why I find it SO FRUSTRATING now - given that technology really supports it so well today -- high-speed broadband cable, wireless connectivity, email as the dominant form of communication even in an office setting. And our department really just wants the flexibility to work from home one day a week, or a couple hours a day so that an employee can take their children to school and pick them up.
What I see is a "If I can't do it, then neither can you" policy that is not based in logic. I really like working for this institution -- I like being part of an organization that is doing nationally recognized work in patient care and medical research, but I'd like us to be leading-edge in technology and tele-commuting too!
October 5, 2012 at 7:37 am
"The old out-of-sight-not-working attitude of many managers is changing, or should be. Most workers can have their productivity observed by what they get done, not by how many hours they sit in a chair."
True, but it's not about that. It's about "trust" and the truth is most managers I have known in this industry over the 28 years i have been in it, do not 'trust" their workers working remotely. That's just the way it is folks in most cases in this IT industry. i hope it changes, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting on it either. Most managers don't know enough about what we do to quantify how much we get done anyway. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
October 5, 2012 at 12:42 pm
TravisDBA (10/5/2012)
... but it's not about that. It's about "trust" and the truth is most managers I have known in this industry over the 28 years i have been in it, do not 'trust" their workers working remotely. ...
That's what I've seen at some places too but it just illustrates their ignorance because trust is not needed when managers are properly measuring what gets done. Regular status meetings and other basic project management techniques can easily show who's working and who's not. But a lazy and/or ignorant manager would rather have you sit in a chair and do nothing than be productive while telecommuting. :crazy:
October 5, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Dave62 (10/5/2012)
TravisDBA (10/5/2012)
... but it's not about that. It's about "trust" and the truth is most managers I have known in this industry over the 28 years i have been in it, do not 'trust" their workers working remotely. ...But a lazy and/or ignorant manager would rather have you sit in a chair and do nothing than be productive while telecommuting. :crazy:
True story. I never said it was right, I just said that many times that is the way it is.:-D
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
Viewing 10 posts - 16 through 24 (of 24 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply