Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Stella's Favorite Researcher Is Back

Apparently Network World just woke up and found Timothy Golden's highly comprehensive study of one crappily managed telecommuting program at one employer and decided to feature it ... again. Seriously, people have to stop writing about the "dark side of telecommuting" and citing this limited scope study. You'd be much better off looking at the breadth of telecommuting programs that are out there like these folks did.

And please, could people stop interviewing Professor Golden? I know you want to do the balanced journalism thing, and it can't be all sunshine and roses on the telecommuting front (although my roses are starting to bloom!). But balanced journalism doesn't mean that you take the word of any person who has the opposite viewpoint of what the majority of people say -- it's possible that, in fact, telecommuting is generally awesome for business and for workers.

Did you ever think about that?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stella,

I agree that we need more review and honesty around the relative benefits AND shortcomings of current telework thinking. It seems we are stuck in the rut of work from home, work mobile, work from customer site, work from hotel, work from 'anywhere?" - Try a park bench in cleveland in the middle of winter. The truth is that our current remote working models leave most knowledge workers out in the cold. We need a 21st century approach. I am not saying a new approach will be 'one size fits all' but you can't tell me that we have tried everything we could to improve telecommunications options. Check out the www.pocketsnet.com site if you are truely interested in balanced reporting. BTW - OPMs report to Congress last December shows after more than 6 years, daily telecommuting is at about 2% of the entire federal workforce. This seems to suggest our current work from home is pretty limited. Please stop holding the hammer by the head and try to help put a more effective handle on it. Think OUTSIDE the box - REALLY.

Stella Commute said...

Thanks for reading and for the comments, Michael. I agree -- there is a real need for new approaches to remote work because I think it's a trend that we can't ignore.