Telecommuting -- why it will never work
The home office is not the best use of a company's workforce and seldom helps the bottom line
By Howard Levitt, Postmedia News
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Telecommuting+will+never+work/3716819/story.html
Working from home or, more poignantly, "not" working from home is the biggest boondoggle in the employment marketplace.
Lobbying groups react with outrage to this suggestion. And no wonder, in addition to their inherent conflict of interest, teleworking has become politically correct. Worse, as employers move toward flexible working arrangements to accommodate the participation in the workforce of women, single parents, the disabled and retirees, its usage is increasing.
Yet, when employers analyze their bottom line, they find that teleworking seldom provides value.
That should not come as a surprise for several reasons:
NO CROSS-POLLINATION
Teleworkers are unavailable to exchange ideas with their colleagues at meetings, beside the water cooler or over lunch, let alone integrate with the team. However, the more meaningful relationships you have with co-workers, the more you are relied on for your valuable input. This problem is exacerbated when supervisors and co-workers leave, and you need to develop relationships with new ones.
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
When there is a project to be assigned, managers first consider the person immediately available. In my experience, most teleworkers become under-utilized, in part, because employers stop assigning them meaningful work because they are not in the office. Increasingly, they miss the opportunities their coworkers at the office enjoy.
CORPORATE CULTURE
Increasingly, successful organizations have distinct cultures that enable them to succeed. Employees who seldom are in the office, cannot become familiar with their employer's style and values.
NO INSIGHT
It is difficult to produce good work if you don't understand your company's imperatives. Personal interaction with a supervisor provides the facility to understand the employer's needs, direction and personalities.
UNAVAILABLE
Even diligent teleworkers lack immediacy and reliability when decisions are made and work is assigned. In many cases, I have represented clients who terminated a teleworking arrangement when the employee more than once failed to answer the phone and often did not return urgent business calls for hours.
NO SUPERVISION
Not all employees are self-motivated. Some require monitoring, at least occasionally. In many of my cases, my firm has been able to establish the employees, who were supposed to be working, instead were conducting personal errands, visiting friends, even working elsewhere. I recently had two cases where my client learned, only after terminating the teleworking relationship, that the employee had been working for other employers at the same time -- a deception enabled by the teleworking policy.
NO NEW DUTIES
Many functions cannot be performed from outside the office. When the work being performed at home reduces, it is often difficult to find other work for the teleworker. Once accustomed to the lifestyle of working from the comfort of their own home, these employees invariably resist returning to the office.
DISTRACTION
Before approving a request to work from home or in dealing with an existing arrangement, there are a few things employers should consider:
- Only approve this for employees who work on commission, are paid by piecework or are otherwise remunerated solely based on discernible performance.
- In existing teleworking arrangements, are you obtaining value or has the employee been largely forgotten while receiving the same paycheque?
- Have a contract permitting the employee's reversion to working from the office, at any time in the future, if the employer prefers it.
- In the absence of such a contract, provide working notice of the return to the office. Otherwise, the court might deem the change to be a constructive dismissal.
-- Howard Levitt, counsel to Lang Michener LLP, practises employment law in eight provinces.
MY THOUGHTS
telecommuting is not something that can be implemented without much thought. there are jobs that can be done from home but there are certain positions that need to be at the office. work from home schemes can work with well-thought of procedure and with people who's mature enough to be left on their own.
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