Your article points out one of the major, persistent struggles with changing the location of work. The drivers for change continue to grow in force, yet the adaptability of using 'home' presents a host of shortcomings. Perhaps the time is right to examine alternatives to this 'either-or' thinking. After all, there is nothing that says we can't try something different; especially when current approaches are not providing the results we seek given the magnitude of the challenges we face. I would like to propose a multi-location model that might provide a more comprehensive and effective approach to supporting workers remotely.

Michael Shear, Owner, Pockets
www.pockets.com

Michael,

Please provide an example or two of businesses or government agencies doing what you propose.

I agree with the author.

American culture is very locked into "going someplace" to work, and into collecting all employees into one fixed location.

Times are changing--not everyone can or should work at home.

Companies with multiple locations need to allow staff to work at locations closer to home, particularly those staff where what they do has no real geographic limitations, so long as they have an Internet connection, a phone, and are easily reachable.

I'm dealing with this kind of issues at my work, too.

Perhaps telecommuting from home is not necessarily the issue, but decentralizing the "office environment" is.

Instead of one large office downtown, the firm could have several smaller offices spread throughout the metro area. In our Dallas office, we have people driving in from 25-30 miles away. What would "the numbers" be if we could downsize our large central office by opening several smaller offices throughout the DFW area? Would five small offices that can hold 10-15 people each be more expensive than 1 large office for 75-100 people? Would each office be run "independently" as its own firm? Former employees cited commuting distance as their reason for leaving.

IT would likely have the most difficulty synchronizing our server across multiple locations, or we could make increased use of our VPN software and combine it with remote-desktop solutions and/or Citrix Servers for application support. This way, IT remains centralized in a small physical location, but our personnel have the flexibility of working in the suburb which they live.

Face-to-face meetings would need to be planned out more. If some of the most successful operations can be run without people meeting face-to-face, why can't Americans learn this? (The two lead programmers of Firefox live in different countries and have never met in person.)

Look at MIT's courseware "The World is Flat" on iTunes U. It illustrates how the world's business model is changing and the US is largely ignorant of the changes that need to happen.

I wonder how many of the managers who are reluctant to let American employees work a few miles from the office are gung ho about off shoring work thousands of miles and multiple time zones away?

I have developed and am actively proposing a specific multi-location initiative. I have gained support from several members of congress to review this method but have yet to gain firm commitments to move forward. There are several communities in different parts of the U.S. that also are reviewing this approach. More information may be reviewed at the website. I welcome comments and recommendations. -Michael

Managing offsite employees is different from managing on site employees. When employees are offsite you must manage what they get done with specific projects, goals, and deadlines. When employees are onsite you can manage what they do. You can manage when and how they work so that goals and deadlines aren't as important. In other words, offsite employees must be managed by objectives while you can figuratively whip onsite employees to make them do what you want.

Most companies are familiar with managing by the "kick in the pants" method and find managing by objectives more difficult. It's sad, because whether your employees are onsite or offsite, managing by objectives is much more effective than managing via KITP.

I work for an IT group for a healthcare provider. Their attitude is that, screwy as it may be, that if IT workers work remotely, so do the nurses and medical staff, and that it would not be fair to them.

Warped as logic as it may be, it actually —unfortunately —makes sense. Guess I need to find work closer to home, huh?

Telecommuting has been something a lot of companies currently use. I believe the problem is an issue of trusting that employees will do what they are suppose to.

The fact that we have so many technologies, from Skype phone, AOL IM and various other tools, I can can only see the above mentioned reason for not telelcommuting.

Telecommuting is the way to go and for those who have meetings that need to take place Verizon offers instant meetings so all that is covered its making sure that management has hired truly reliable and trustworthy employees. I have that reliability and trust of my boss sounds like a question of ethics for the rest of the telecommuting society.

There are still a number of "old school" people around my company that have to see people at their desks every day. I am not one of them. I have five employees that work in various locations around the world. They don't go into an office; they work from their home (or on the road).

Allowing people to work remotely enables you to expand the employment base to other parts of the world (and no, no one that works for me is from India). It allows you to go after people that are physically close to customers or regions (like Asia) where there is a lot of key business activities related to your business. It cuts down on my travel and the travel of my employees. We meet face to face, maybe twice a year, other than that communication is by telephone, e-mail, sometimes video conference.

There a couple of things to keep in mind: Working remotely and staying organized is a learned skill; it requires some mentoring, some trust to be built up and a lots of communication between the both of you.

Here is an example of the multi-location model in the federal government:

If you visit the General Services Administration teleworking site for the Washington metro area, you'll find that there are 14 telework centers for federal government personnel to use that are closer to their homes then center-city Washington.

Problem here is that the GSA charges agencies for their workers to use the facilities. And, therein, lies the problem with telework in the private and public sectors; no one has developed a model whereby the employer sees money savings from telework. Sure, it saves on gas for the employee; it helps the country save gas; it might attract some new 'N-Gen' employees to the company; it helps save the environment. But where are the hard-dollar savings for the employer or company that they can post at the end-of-the-year

Although the desired and trends exist, I worry most about the mixed incentives. Rather than make it more convenient to work from home, government and workplace policies tend to make such items more difficult.

I would have hoped that things like IRS disincentives for a home-office or workplace balance to broadband connectivity costs would be revised to alleviate the need between doing what's right vs. addressing the disincentives in the governmental or workplace policies.

This still doesn't address the workplace social and business acceptability issues previously commented. Those require attention as well, though I believe, without policy changes, we're swimming upstream.

Some of my IT team works from home a couple days a week. Their productivity is greater without all the interruptions that occur in the office. Their moral is better and they are more willing to do work "after hours" when needed because of this. The hard-dollar savings for our company comes in keeping good employees and from the increased productivity that has allowed us to operate with fewer IT staff. We cannot go to full time telecommuting as not all of the office staff is ready to conduct business full-time over a phone and Web conferencing.

American business and politics have forgotten that our pocketbooks are not keeping up with these escalating costs, which by the way, are driven by expanding auto markets overseas as opposed to domestic consumption. Rather than fight, they should adopt (telecommuting) because reducing our consumption across the board will reduce costs for those who cannot telecommute.

In addition, having reduced emissions and stress will lower healthcare costs, eliminate millions of pounds of greenhouse gas, free up fuel for other industries like the airlines. The need to telecommute may wane once we have fuel alternatives like cellulosic-based (as opposed to corn-based) ethanol, more domestic supplies from offshore drilling and ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and vastly better fuel-efficient automobiles, which are getting harder to buy because we're spending more of our money on gas. (BTW, it's cheaper to convert your fuel injection system to E85--a mixture of 85 percent denatured ethanol and 15 percent gasoline--than buy new.)

A broadband connection and laptop are the most fuel efficient plug in vehicle around.

We've provided service management solutions to support collaboration through disparate locations for a few years now. While designed for the global model, however, we typically see a greater level of interest outside the U.S., where enterprise remains more open. Given the topic of this article, this is especially poignant if one considers that gas is more expensive anywhere else in the world (it's the guzzling vehicles that people choose to drive without considering all the implications that cause the problem).

What is sad, though, is the unfortunate fact that the majority of U.S. companies are driven solely by the dollar and will not even consider telecommuting without the "what's in it for me" approach (as evidenced by an earlier post). Where costs are the driver, however, then organizations will certainly realize savings through downsizing in areas such as energy requirements (computing power, light, heating and air conditioning, etc.), plus a basic reduction in square feet required to house bodies.

That said, it's simply not always feasible to have employees work from home or more local, convenient locations. The type of job, the location and environment, the customer base: all contribute to what is and is not plausible. My experience has shown that a mixed environment (through part-time telecommuting) tends to keep business processes efficient and productive without the need for micro-management. At the same time, employees appreciate "the break", where a greater flexibility to manage their personal and business lives can often reap dividends for their employer.

Unless there is a physical need for an employee to be present to maintain equipment or to interface with clients, there is no strong argument against telecommuting. It really comes down to supervisors having a perceived lack of control over their staff. If managers are hiring the right people and keeping their folks accountable to their results, then it is very manageable.

That said, there are always some people who simply cannot work at home, either because they are to easily distracted, or they need the social interaction of others. For those individuals, having the office environment remains the best option. I have found that a blended approach works best for my own employees, with many of them working at home 50 percent of the time. I have better morale overall as a result, and the increased flexibility to meet my customers' needs in the off-hours. If used properly, it can improve production rates, employee retention and reduce overall costs to the business.

I have been a telecommuting employee for more than 10 years and could not operate more effectively any other way.

A sound business case exist in hard dollar savings for organizations using telework through a reduction in real-estate expenses for work space, through either 100 percent telework or some sort of part-time with a shared space at work scheme, like 50 percent.
I've estimated the average cost of a work cube in my city to be about $500 a month.

Savings gained through this can be redirected to training and infrastructure/security development, teaching workers and managers how to do the work in this new world effectively. In my opinion worker/management training, performance and technology improvements are a much better investment than cube/office space.

Further benefits will be realized through a change in work culture, values, production ability and business continuity; moving away from physical presence as a measure/means of productivity.

Whether in the office or not, we must start to improve our overall management practice and production ability, applying what Chuck cites for out of office employees to all employees without regard to location "what they get done with specific projects, goals, and deadlines."

Losers in this model will be commercial real-estate holders. Winners will be those companies that can reduce their cost of production while maintaining or improving products and services. Further winners will be companies that offer the technology and services to make telework happen.

Given the cost of energy and real estate and our ability to redirect these resources to improving our productive ability the case is clear, telework is here to stay, is a superior adaptive business practice and will become a norm rather than exception.

Fred Gross' comments regarding multi-location GSA facilities in the greater D.C. area were something we looked at quite carefully.

First, you need to understand that the 16 centers have a combined capacity of about 650 seats. Second, is that the average daily occupancy is less than 50 percent. D.C. has a net daily population change of 425,000 people. The telework centers are about 12 years old. So, the question is why don't they work?

The multi-location model I have proposed is at least a magnitude of scale larger with dedicated offices for each organization. The idea is to retain a cultural and social identity of each organization, have the economies of scale for dedicated infrastructure and onsite support and move the primary work location closer to the residences of employees. I encourage review of the approach on the Pocketsnet website, and to recognize one size does not fit all. Just because we were not as successful with telework centers and work from home, we should not believe there aren't any new approaches.

Of the 1.8 million federal employees, only about 35,000 work remotely on any given day, according to an Office of Personnel Management report to Congress this past December. If a more permanent and methodical approach to workforce deployment is not developed, evacuation may become the first line response to emergencies. Additionally, the Internet should not be assumed to be a credible approach to provide connectivity during a crisis.

There are a lot of reasons to consider a new methodology, not the least of which is we have not yet found solutions to adequately respond to our challenges.

This is a fabulous article and I am struck by how many CIO's actually embrace the idea of full-time Telecommuting. Am I the only person that thinks a 24-percent number is stunning?

If that is for full-time, how many folks are telecommuting part time? On reading this article, I wrote a blog on this and came to the same point that Mike McGarrity came to, which is that over time, as we assimilate and get creative on our new capabilities, the way we work will in fact change and the need to provide an assigned workspace to every employee will change. IBM, Sun, Cisco, and even Boeing have full-time remote workers.

As we rethink the way we work, our real-estate needs will change also, which in turn is most likely good for all of us, for the planet and for the profitability of companies around the world.

I am so glad I had the foresight to buy the domain name nearoffice.com a few weeks ago

I found the comments about healthcare workers to be laughable at best. Most large healthcare providers do have satellite offices already, though.

However, about being fair, that is a joke. Life is not fair and if you find yourself in a trade that is not conducive to telecommuting, change trades by going to school. Americans need to dump the life-owes-me-a-living mindset. Moreover, going back to a localized economy vs. a big-city economy would probably cut crime by huge percentages, and save billions on foreign oil purchases.

Of course, India and the Arab states would need to come up with another way to feed themselves, now wouldn't they?

About time I would say:

Real-World: I rise by about 5:30 a.m., make coffee (my only vice), read the paper, light breakfast and on the keyboard by 6:30am. I am usually there until 6 or 8 p.m., and get paid the same as the bloke who rises the same time, rushes to the train, maybe arrives at his office by 9 a.m. (barring traffic and nature's intervention), works until 5 p.m., and reverses the process. My fossil-fuel consumption is zilch compared to Joe-rush-about, and my health is not consistently impacted negatively by the idiot who won't stay home when he's sick.

Who do you think is more productive? Who is conserving (going green) more do you think.

Do the math.

Diane Davidson asked the question "Am I the only person that thinks 24-percent number is stunning?" regarding CIO's embracing the idea of full time telecommuting.

Upon reflection I say no. CIO's as a group may be more aware of the opportunity and have the management wherewithal to make it happen. So many others do not. Therein lays the challenge and opportunity.

A real opportunity for making a quick and dramatic turnaround in the economic and energy challenges we now face is in getting the macro business case such as the one cited by Telework Exchange into the business, public and policy/political arenas.

Current focus from the political and business leadership realms on the challenge of energy centers on the supply side: development of: more oil, gas, nuclear capacity, regulating the energy futures market, improved fuel cell technology. All of these solutions require huge investments and have decade(s) long times to implementation and risk.

This is the easy way out, requiring much less of us in terms of cultural change.

Who is going to step up to the plate and start pulling our leaders in politics (Obama, McCain, etc.) and business folks (Cisco, IBM, Microsoft), etc. together, educating them on the opportunity and eliciting their input for our next grand mission on this most serious cause for humanity (energy) through the management of demand side leading the cultural change to enable telework on the fast track?

I have seen estimates that as many as 100 million people drive to work and back alone on the daily work day. Let's get 10 percent off the road by 2010. That's a good slogan, "10 percent by 2010." A lot of work to do and things to work through such as business continuation, security, training etc. but well within our capability.

Thanks for the discussion folks, and doing your part to make this world work better.

I have been working from home since 1992. That was before working from home was popular. I have saved money on gas and have significantly reduced emissions.

I am a highly rated employee and am rated higher then most in-the-office workers. I am available 24 / 7 for any issues that arise, yet, I have a complete and perfect balance between my work and personal life. I have seen my kids grow up and am intimately involved in their lives. I never call in sick. I only work 40 hours per week and get 40 hours worth of work done in those 40 hours, not 10 or 20 like the average office worker who "works" 50-60 hours a week. I can multitask on all meetings if necessary since most meetings are on the phone.

Be that as it may, working from home is not for everyone and not for every job. I am an analyst / developer with clients in various locations and countries and my job has allowed me to work from home full or part time over the past 16 years.

The company needs to set policies on working from home, including that the employee must have a dedicated work space. Without that, I would not have been able to get rid of the home distractions. It should be transparent to the customer and the peers that the employee is working from home or the office. There should be no dogs barking in the background, or birds, or screaming kids. And, there should be a dedicated phone line, after all, you don't want your teenage daughter answering the phone when the CIO calls!

Working from home is the wave of the future, not just because of gas prices, but due to the high benefits for both the employer and the employee. The employer benefits by higher productivity, higher availability, less to no sick time, and higher moral. Higher moral leads to less turn over, which costs the company less.

I also believe that all individuals that are against working from home are living in the past. These people have a control problem as they want to control other people. With today's technology, workers can work from anywhere, anytime. We are truly a mobile society and we should take advantage of that.

Some resistance to the work-at-home scenario from employees and employers alike has more to do with the loss of social networking and the isolation. This is magnified when you have an organization that promotes the work-at-home option, but only at cost of giving up your personal office space workstation. It makes total sense from the corporate point of view to maximize floor space, but at what cost. Maybe an option would be 'hotelling' space in the office so that 'work at home' employees still have a 'landing spot' and can retain that social connection.

An effective project manager is not concerned with the location of their resources, their managing effort is more focused on the results of each resource. Time lines in most cases are consistently meet by telecommuters who find their selves working more hours in many cases than they did at the office. Whether at home or in the office, conference calls are the preferred way to meet in many cases. Face-to-face meetings are becoming the thing of the past.

Without the daily distraction from office peers and the fatigue of a long stressful commute of the employee who work from home, a true eight hour day is more realistic.

Think of all the distractions that occur in the office environment each day. The employers in many cases are lucky to get 6½ hours from it staff. How long does it take to prepare for each work day and commute to and from work?

Telecommuting should be optional for those job types that qualify. My past employees that had the need to come into the office each day did so for social reasons mostly. Productivity at best is enough to get by.

This achieved daily across the world. Task ownership and measurable accountability is key to achieving the perfect telecommute opportunity. Micro managers miss out on the opportunity of having very productive working environment with stay at home resources