Work at Home Education Center

How can we get corporations to understand that telecommuting is the way?

Especially for certain IT positions and those that don't depend on having a body present.

I think it would help the traffic problems in most major metros and the office spacing issues that plagues most companies.

Public Comments

1. When they think it will save them money, they will do it. That's the beauty of the free market. Many of the benefits do not go to the company (traffic). Unfortunately, we all knwo that many people will take advantage, and there are considerable costs and HR issues that make ti more difficult than it may first appear.

2. It has been tried quite a bit and for a whole host of reasons, it is NOT that much of a benefit (if any at all) to the Company. So much of what is done at work has to be a Team effort and it is hard enough to foster teamwork when worker share a common workspace; doubly difficult when they ahve to depend on electronic communications. Actually, few companies have space problems.

3. The problem is probably testing how much work the person is doing at home. The reason they don't want you to work from home is the reason you want to work from home. They don't want you to have the satisfaction of that much freedom and the cushion of no oversight. If they have to show up there then you do. I'm not an employer but I probably would feel the same way even if logically you could do all the functions of the job at home. Work is about suffering to a certain extent.

4. I know it and I totally agree with you. It's just that most middle-managers want the control of having employees, especially lower-level employees, under their thumbs at all times. But I think that good employees who have proved their merit should be allowed to telecommute at least a day or two a week.

Also, large offices should consider staggered shifts. Instead of everyone starting at 8, they should stagger shifts starting at 7, 7:30, 8 and 8:30, going earlier or later as needed. People who are single would probably love to start later since they could go out at night and not have to get up so early. Some people might like the early start so they can be home when kids come home from school. Otherwise, shifts could be distributed to those with the most seniority as desired. All of the staff would be there between 10 and 2 or 3, allowing for meetings, training, or other events in which all staff are required.

With our 24-hour society, this is completely doable and it would spread out the traffic. People would spend less time idling in traffic, which wastes alot of gas.

5. Arrest the scammers who are selling work from home scams.

6. The company I work for does understand the benefits and actively supports telecommuting for certain IT staff positions. They even went so far as assigning certain functional groups as telecommute only. The total IT staff for the organization is well in excess of 5,000 people.

My thesis (back in the 80's) centered on telecommuting, but many of the benefits and problems weren't predictable then. Probably the most prevalent problem is management's concern that productivity is reduced when staff aren't in a dedicated work environment. With reduced productivity comes reduced profitability. As productivity metrics have been evolved, it has become easier to differentiate between productivity lost due to environment versus skill. It is also a simple matter to track actual time worked through a variety of methods.

Telecommuting will likely continue to grow in the corporate world, but probably only in large corporations where tasks and roles are very structured and limited in scope.