|
New
to Telecommuting?
(Telecommute America)
Colleagues
may be reluctant to call you at home. This newfound politeness needs to be nipped in the
bud! Stay in contact with your coworkers. If no one is calling you, call them.
Let your office know
your work hours and be sure to answer the phone. If you have to leave your home office,
inform someone at your office and leave an informative message on your machine. Don't
leave without letting someone know where you're going and when you'll be back.
On days you're
telecommuting, answer your home-office phone in a professional manner. If you just pick up
the phone and say "Hello," you'll confuse business callers. A simple "Good
morning" or "Good afternoon," followed by your name, will be fine.
If people in your
office begin to behave as though you're on call 12 hours a day, you'll need to put your
foot down. Gently explain that you'll take care of the problem
tomorrow and ask that they call within your established office hours in the future.
Try to keep
outside errands to a minimum. Let your office know that you'll be unavailable, and
estimate when you'll return.
|
Telecommuting
Tips for Employers...
William R. Pape, VeriFone,
Inc.
1) Make sure your senior
managers operate virtually at least part of the time. There is no management substitute
for keeping one's finger on the pulse, and the best way to do that in a virtual company is
to be virtual.
2) Make sure that employees have a work space that promotes productivity. Companies should
provide written guidelines for home offices. At a minimum, the home office must be a
separate room, with a door that can close.
3) People who work out of
their homes or at customer sites also need to spend some time in an office with
colleagues. Any face-to-face meeting--such as regular status meetings, or annual, sales,
or planning meetings--is an opportunity for cross-fertilization. When you set the agenda,
schedule more time for socializing than a centralized company would.
4) Find ways to compensate
for the loss of daily, face-to-face informal contact. Encourage staff to use
videoconferencing with remote colleagues, rather than just E-mail. Telephone conversations
also encourage more informal interaction.
5) Counteract the sense among remote workers that they're missing out on key business
advances. Send remote workers frequent, even daily updates about what's happening in the
company. It's especially important to show how specific remote workers are affecting
company progress. Working virtually is a relatively new concept, and today's practitioners
are the pioneers for the way I believe most business will be conducted 25 years from now.
Who's
Telecommuting?
In Denver, Colorado,
Bethesda, Maryland and
Charlottesville, Virginia, IBM
has furnished employees with furniture
and equipment to work at home when they are not in the field with customers. On the
occasions this telecommuting workforce requires space or support at the principal
workplace, IBM makes available "shared space."
AT&T has replaced sales offices with shared workstations
for personnel in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts who are now based primarily at
home.
Ernst & Young claims to have reduced space requirements by seven
percent through telecommuting and assigning shared space to employees who primarily work
in the field. The
company expects to eventually shrink its office space requirements nationwide by two
million square feet for a savings of $40 million a year.
Sweden has employed the "office train." This
experiment began in 1986 and involves as many as 20 managers working for half-pay during
an eighty-minute train ride in and out of Stockholm.
In Japan, employees telecommute from a resort setting for two
week periods to recover from fatigue and to rediscover a creative muse. At the Hokkaido
Niseko resort office, workers reported "...improved creative output, fresh
perspectives, and self-discovery."
The Bank of Montreal initiated its first "floating office" in
1991. Employees work out of branch offices, at a client site, or at home using a laptop
computer, remaining available by phone or pager throughout the work day. The effort has
proven successful and has pioneered in transitioning to a results-oriented form of
supervision.
|
Unofficial
Survey of Jobs Held by Telecommuters
The Telecommuter's Advisor, by June Langhoff (Aegis Publishing Group,
1996) |
accountant
actor
actuary
administrator
arbitrageur
architect
artist
astrologer
auditor
booking agent
bookkeeper
budget analyst
career counselor
cartoonist
CEO
city planner
civil servant
claims processor
clinical psychologist
collections agent
columnist
game designer
consultant
controller
copywriter
court transcriber
credit counselor
customer service rep
data entry clerk
database admin
designer
desktop publisher
detective
economist
editor
engineer
environmental analyst
estate planner
estimator
|
event
planner
financial advisor
fundraiser
grant writer
graphic artist
human relations
illustrator
importer
indexer
information broker
instructional designer
insurance agent
claims adjuster
goods forwarder
interpreter
interviewer
journalist
judge
laboratory scientist
lawyer
legal assistant
loan broker
maintenance tech
market analyst
market researcher
medical biller
medical transcriber
museum curator
mutual fund manager
network manager
news reporter
nurse
office support
paralegal
patent searcher
personnel manager
political consultant
poll taker
private investigator |
probation
officer professor
programmer
psychologist
public relations
purchasing agent
radio newscaster
radiologist
real estate agent
record producer
reporter
researcher
reservation agent
risk analyst
salesperson
scriptwriter
secretary
securities analyst
service technician
software engineer
sound engineer
speechwriter
statistician
stockbroker
systems analyst
talent agent
tax preparer
teacher
technical writer
telemarketer
trainer
transcriber
translator
transport analyst
travel agent
urban planner
webmaster
word processor
writer |
|
