One of the most common comments (or complaints) from people who aren't telecommuting, but who want to, is: "At my organization, we've never done any telecommuting, and I'm not sure we're ready for it."
Most of the time, that feeling of "unreadiness" is based on a highly subjective judgment that may have been unduly influenced by a variety of secondary factors, such as:
* An unwillingness to push for telecommuting, and/or to be the first telecommuter in the organization;
* A fear that someone working outside the main office will alienate, or create unforeseen problems for, others in the organization;
* Unfamiliarity with the details and practicalities of telecommuting, coupled with some unwillingness to learn more about these matters until you're certain you'll be able to do it.
In the hope of clearing the air about an organization's readiness to support telecommuters and telecommuting, as well as your own personal readiness to participate, here's a simple and more-or-less objective checklist you can apply. Use these four items to help determine whether or not you and the people with whom you work might be able to successfully "handle" the concept and reality of telecommuting.
Other organizations, however, focus their evaluations on how well and how timely individuals have delivered the work products they have previously agreed upon with their managers.
This style of "performance-based" management and evaluations may still require a high degree of cooperation and interaction in order to achieve those work products. But the cooperation and the interaction are not themselves necessary for the boss to know how well each member of his or her team is performing. To know that, one need only check and see how well a person's deliverables measured up to established standards of timeliness, quality, and so forth.
This approach works well in a great many work situations, of course, and is perfectly well-suited for use with telecommuters.
You'll often see the same situation in organizations, but sometimes this is less an actual requirement of the work being done, and more a matter of how the organization happens to be set up.
For example, some types of work may require reference to printed listings that a telecommuter can't easily transport away from the central office. Or important portions of the work may require face-to-face elements like brainstorming sessions or coordination meetings.
In situations like these, the organization won't get much benefit by letting people attempt to do this work from distant locations.
But there are plenty of other types of work that you can accomplish almost anywhere. As I write this, for example, I'm sitting in a Honolulu airport, waiting for a flight that's delayed more than three hours. As you read this, you might be in your home, on a train bound for the office, or on a beach keeping up-to-date during a short vacation.
Organizations that rely on creative teams can easily allow their resident "geniuses" to work at wide-ranging locations, using telecommunications technology to share ideas and work products with great facility. The same holds true wherever the chief productive asset is brainpower, such as for engineering, consulting, legal, brokering, deal-making, planning, and many other kinds of work.
In fact, by increasing the flexibility, motivation, and energy level of those doing the organization's most important work, telecommuting can actually enhance bottom-line productivity.
For example, an organization may hold monthly strategy meetings attended by division heads, and support them with weekly departmental meetings, as well as daily team and project meetings. Sometimes an organization's success depends on impromptu get-togethers called as often as necessary to communicate new plans, new ideas, new decisions, and to generate feedback to pass along up the chain of command.
As soon as one critically important employee falls out of the loop--such as by working at home or at any location away from the others--the communication system begins to break down. Suddenly, communications within the organization feels like a mouth with a missing tooth.
Organizations that rely on such fixed communications patterns can easily suffer from a shift toward telecommuting.
But other organizations are built on a broad matrix of communications channels and patterns that keep individuals' efforts equally well coordinated without limiting the organization's ability to work in different ways.
This matrix might include electronic and voice mail, bulletin boards, a corporate Intranet, and individual "gatekeepers" for project units and for teams. In this situation, individuals can ask questions, get answers, and be informed of new plans, new ideas, and new decisions no matter where they're physically working. In addition, feedback can constantly flow in toward the center and up toward higher levels of the organization.
The result is a far greater degree of flexibility and easier adaptation to changes pushed on the organization, whether initiated from inside--by new ideas or problem-solving task forces--or outside--by market forces and technological innovation.
This is why organizations that utilize a multiplicity of flexible communications channels can adopt to telecommuting most easily.
Nearly every organization contains some opportunities to improve procedures or get work done a little more efficiently. But if an organization clanks along under the burden of too many less-than-perfect procedures, it's probably going to experience daunting difficulties adjusting to telecommuting--or anything else.
On the other hand, many organizations have recognized that doing things the old way is not necessarily the best way. They have therefore developed special procedures and directives designed to regularly update whatever can be improved.
These steadily evolving organizations tend to establish and listen to review committees charged with looking at work methods and procedures, even when they appear to be delivering acceptable results. These organizations also try to keep open channels from everyone who might contribute, so valid ideas for doing work faster, better, or more efficiently can quickly and fairly be put in play.
These organizations generally have little or no trouble making the changes usually required to get the major benefits of telecommuting without the potential problems.
Check yourself and your organization against these four criteria. If you measure up, start experimenting with telecommuting today. If you don't measure up, consider revamping your approach, organizationally or personally, to get in position to benefit from today's more flexible, more effective methods of accomplishing work.
Work At Home Laws Becoming A Reality
If you've been reading these articles, you've long been aware of the conflict between theory and practice with regard to zoning and other "work at home" laws. Until recently, few communities bothered to do much about legalizing the activities of people working at home--whether they're telecommuting or operating a small business out of their spare bedrooms.
But now a new trend appears to be dawning. Los Angeles, always in the forefront of social and cultural trends, is now gearing up to legalize the kind of work already taking place in tens of thousands of private homes and apartments both there and around the world.
In late July, 1996, a proposal was placed before the Los Angeles City Council, aimed at legalizing work at home as never before in L.A., or almost anywhere else.
Under the new law, anyone operating a business or doing gainful employment in a residential area would be asked to register with the city and pay a $25 annual permit fee. They would also come under business license legislation, requiring an additional fee ranging from about 1% to about 6% of gross receipts.
In addition, they would be subject to Los Angeles business regulations, with fines from $250 to $500 per violation, that would prevent them from:
* Altering the external appearance of their residences.
* Disrupting the residential character of their neighborhood, particularly by generating excessive noise, light, dust, fumes, or vibrations.
* Receiving more than one visit per hour from a client or customer, and none at all between 8 PM and 8 AM, or on Sundays.
* Having more than two deliveries or pick-ups per day.
* Utilizing mechanical equipment, other than what one might expect to find in an ordinary home.
* Listing their home address in any advertising materials.
* Storing or using any hazardous substances.
* Renting their home space to others.
* Opening for retail sales.
Naturally, this new regulation is couched entirely in terms of what you can't do, and what you must pay the city government, when working at home. But hidden between the lines is the newly minted idea of what you can do, namely: work at home without violating the law!
Other cities take note: Los Angeles' City Council will have a few more debates on the issue, and probably make a few changes in the law before enacting it. But since there appears to be no serious opposition, there is every chance it will be enacted into law in the very near future.
According to a recent report, in 1995 at least fifteen federal agencies were funding more than two dozen programs that could potentially be used for this purpose.
This included about $13 million for distance-learning and medical linkages to specific rural areas; another $48 million for various multi-state distance-learning projects; and about $6 million to help colleges and universities connect to the Internet.
In addition, nearly $600 million in federal money was offered in long-term loans to telephone companies to promote the installation of advanced telecommunications equipment in rural areas.
Spending all this money makes a certain amount of sense, as Washington has traditionally been an instrument for all sorts of economic development programs from coast to coast. But much more remains to be done.
One of the biggest reasons for the limited extent of telecommuting strategies for rural economic development is that the primary agency through which these programs are funneled is the Department of Agriculture. Other major agency players include the Economic Development Administration within the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Small Business Administration, and various regional organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Clearly, none of these agencies has a finger on the pulse of telecommuting technology or applications, or even on opportunities for using telecommuting to bolster economic development in rural areas.
In an effort to improve these agencies' efforts, a National Rural Development Partnership has been organized. It's a coalition of federal and state "Councils," each of which is charged with promoting collaboration, innovation, and strategic planning among both federal and state agencies involved in rural development.
As a result of increasing federal spending and promotional efforts, the landscape is changing. For example, some rural communities are presently using interactive video to support medical consultations, a growing number of colleges and universities are offering "distance-learning" formats for both non-credit and credit courses, and many large businesses have begun to open branch offices in rural areas--closely connected with headquarters by telecommuting technologies.
While there is much to complain about in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it does contain provisions designed to promote rural economic development through telecommuting programs, and includes a specific doctrine that advanced telecommunications technologies should be made available in all regions of the country.
Naturally, there's room for more and better efforts at rural economic development. According to federal fact-finders in the Government Accounting Office, for example, federal efforts to promote rural economic development through telecommuting could benefit from:
1. Better education of people in the rural communities, with regard to how telecommuting can benefit them.
2. Better integration of telecommuting strategies into long-range economic development plans.
3. Simplified access to the federal programs, and their dollars, for those who are intended to benefit from them.
I'll try to keep an eye on specific rural economic development programs that rely on telecommuting technologies, and in future articles give you the details on the progress they're producing.
Copyright 1996 by Robert Moskowitz and MicroTimes.