Federal Telework Act Passes

The good news is that the federal telework act finally passed the house last week. Since the senate had already passed it, all it needs is a little signature from the President, and then all your federal teleworking dreams will come true.

Release the unicorns.

Okay, maybe it's not quite that glorious yet, but the federal telework act does provide some incentives for government agencies to promote and support telecommuting. And sometimes just saying it's okay is a big step forward.

Filling Your Talent Gaps with Telecommuters

We all know that there are a lot of unemployed people in this country. Tons of qualified folks are actively looking for work and would be really grateful to get a job. But there are also lots of jobs in places that go unfilled. Maybe you have somewhat lower-level programming jobs in a big expensive metropolitan area - those kinds of jobs typically don't come with relocation reimbursement, so after you've hired all the entry level programmers around you, what can you as an employer do to fill your talent gap?

Maybe you need to open your mind to telecommuting. Once you give up on the idea that all your little worker bees have to actually be in your hive, you suddenly have an enormous pool of talent to choose from. This article from the New York Times goes into more detail, but don't make your people commute between two cities or choose between their families and their jobs. Telecommuting lets you hire outside your metro area and not destroy people's lives by making them relocate.

You already have your remote working systems in place, so why not harness them to get the best talent you can, irrespective of where that talent might have a hard-to-sell house that's underwater on its mortgage.

Now That's What I'm Talking About

You can read that title as, "Now that's what I'm talking about!" or "Now that's what I'm talking about!" but either way, you're capturing my enthusiasm. There is apparently a book called Hacking Work and it looks pretty good. But what caught my eye was this excerpt on Fast Company. A person who wanted to telecommute started telecommuting, but on his own time. He documented how awesome it was and then when he was ready to make his telecommuting proposal, he had proof that it (and he) could work!

Genius.

Simply put: if you show that remote working is already working already, it makes it hard to use the common arguments against such arrangements. You'll be distracted, you'll sleep all day, you won't have access to the tools and systems you need. Um no, actually, I did fine, I worked *more* than I would have otherwise, and I delivered the project on time at no additional cost to the company.

Getting Beyond Pitfalls

Telecommuting is pretty much like regular work in most ways - if you goof off, people will notice, you can be unresponsive and annoy your coworkers just as easily from home as you can from the cubicle down the hall. But there are some particular issues that you'll notice when you work from afar most of the time. This piece from Read Write Web has some good ideas for dealing with some of the most common issues you might see.

How Far Away Could You Be?

All airfare and needing to be onsite aside (which explains in part why Stella didn't post much last week) here's the question: once you make the break to working from pretty far away, how far away could you actually be? Is there a limit?

This article from InfoWorld says: why not half a world away? I will say that the time difference could get confusing, but if you're really just a contractor and working through project work with a set need to meet with people or otherwise be available, why not just say Phuket?

If I didn't have children to educate, I'd be working from a little beach town in Mexico or the U.S. Virgin Islands so fast it would make your head spin. Just sayin'.

Apocalyptic Guidance for Telecommuting Managers

Stella can't resist articles that refer to the apocalypse in daily life so I was drawn to this little item from a summary of news about federal telecommuting programs. Four simple points (or horsemen if you will) about managing telework, and they really ring true.

If you perform knowledge work, you can telecommute at least part of the time. If you drive for forty five minutes and then log into a computer and begin working with things that exist on a network, you can telecommute. If your manager only sees you once or twice a week at meetings, and the rest of the time you're just cranking out work, you can do this.

Real Advice About FLSA from Lawyers

Stella is not a lawyer. Not even close. But I recognize when lawyers are a good idea, and one area is around human resources, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and who gets paid for what when. Seriously, if you're managing a telecommuting program, you need to be thinking about this stuff. Most telecommuters are exempt staff (e.g. we work til the job is done, or our brains are fried, whichever comes first).

But there are lots of jobs where you might could use telecommuting to manage people that would be non-exempt: data entry, transcription, inbound phone operations, and so on. And in those cases, you need to craft a telecommuting agreement that is quite clear on what time is compensated and what time isn't.

This article from law.com has some other good questions you should be asking your counsel about. I strongly urge you to do so, so as to stay out of hot water.

Some Blogs You Might Like

I'll be adding these to the "Links Stella Likes" section, but I just wanted to give a little bit of a shout out to a couple of useful and active telecommuting blogs that could be of interest:

• Telecommuting Journal: Articles about telecommuting, and also some good links to leads on jobs that have a telecommuting aspect (and that aren't MLM or scams)
• Chief Home Officer: A freelance writer who blogs about the tools and quandaries of running a business out of a home office.

Both these blogs are actively maintained, and had a lot of good information. I'm always looking for more to read and understand about telecommuting, so if you know of a good blog, feel free to post it in the comments.

Making the Case for Telecommuting: A Simple Approach

As Stella has mentioned, she's been traveling a lot to different on-site things, conferences, and other things. Everywhere I go, I have to explain to people how it is that I work for an institution in upstate New York but live in Albuquerque, and everyone I explain it to asks immediately, "How did you manage that?"

I try to counter by asking them: do you ever log in from home on Saturday to do a quick task?

If the answer is "Yes," then you have a fundamental case for experimenting with telecommuting at least some of the time. Because dig it: if you can log in from home on your time, why can't you do the same thing on their time and be just as effective? If that kind of access is good enough for an emergency, then it should be good enough for a regular work day as well.

I just don't understand what is hard about this. If you're feverishly working in the evenings and weekends on stuff when you're on business travel, or god forbid working while on vacation, you should be able to extend this style of working to the regular work day as well. It's a benefit that costs the employer very little -- once they've put in place the basic infrastructure you need to have safe remote access to systems, it's really pretty easy to just let people use it all the time.

So let them. And you, the employees: Ask For It At Work.

This Just In: People Who Are Able to Work More Easily Work More

Stella has long held that one reason for telecommuters' increased productivity is that they're able to work more hours without really feeling much of a pinch. If I need to crank out some project or another in the evening or for a couple of hours on Saturday, it's no big deal. I already have all the equipment and access I need to be just as efficient and productive at home as I would be in the Real Office.

But now researchers at Brigham Young have confirmed this. As reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, researchers found that people who had flexibility in their schedule, from telecommuting to being able to set their own hours, worked more hours per week before getting cranky about it. And so if having people working a lot and working happy is important to you, telecommuting seems like a good way to get to that end.

Sarbanes Telecommuting Bill Killed

The federal government is one of the biggest promoters of telecommuting, overall. Many federal agencies actively encourage telecommuting because they're based in Washington, DC and traffic is utterly hellish there. Telecommuting makes for a workforce that doesn't get caught up in snowstorms, that can continue to serve through pandemics and other disasters, and that is as efficient as you can imagine.

This is not to say that it doesn't require some effort -- you've got to equip people with laptops, administer VPNs, and get webcams and stuff. But really, it is short sighted to focus on the cost rather than the savings and benefits.

Unfortunately, the Sarbanes bill was used as an object lesson in penny wise-pound foolishness. Sigh. Maybe next time, eh?

Nice Move, New Jersey

Taking a page from the crazypants tax laws of their neighbors in New York, the State of New Jersey has (incredibly) decided it can require a company who has a single telecommuting employee residing in the state to file a corporate tax return. Seriously. The tax court of New Jersey feels that one person with a laptop comprises a significant presence in their state, never mind that the bulk of this person's output (in this case, software) is not tangibly present in New Jersey.

Oy, has anyone in the NJ state office of taxation ever driven there? Do they really want to discourage people driving less and telecommuting more? I didn't think so. Hey, here's an idea: how about structuring tax laws in such a way as to not double tax telecommuters? Or eliminating the complexity and punishment clauses that make it hard for businesses to administer their telecommuting programs. That would be nice.

An Object Lesson in Availability

I've said it before and I'll say it again - working from home means you can work from anywhere. I can see where this would be a problem for those who are over-utilized to start with, or for those who must work all the time to keep the freelance fires going. If you are relying on your billable hours and work all the time, then you should set boundaries and try to be more in your real life when you can.

But for a Real Office employee like Stella, in an environment where people are still grudgingly getting used to the idea that you can, in fact, be a Real Office employee, you should remove boundaries and be as responsive as is humanly possible.

I received an ASAP request for data this evening on the cell, and was able to fulfill it within an hour. That's not the kind of responsiveness you'll get from a person who might have to go into the office to do a thing; that's what you get when you have people and tools that work from wherever they are.

Even if that's two thousand miles away.

4 Tips for Tackling Telecommuting Skeptics

Stella is an unbridled telecommuting enthusiast. I think that telecommuters are more efficient, more available, and more productive than other knowledge workers, in large part because we get to structure our days in the ways that work best for our habits and proclivities.

And we get to wear slippers. Or flip flops in the summer.

But how do you address hardcore telecommuting skeptics in the workplace? There are (I know, perish the thought, but it's true) people who truly believe that telecommuters are less available and less useful than people who are sitting in the office. I work with some of these people now, and I'm really trying to think strategically about what I can do to make them feel more comfortable with working with me. I've got a few ideas about what I'm going to try:

1. Relentless responsiveness. No matter when these key opinion leaders (and telecommuting skeptics) call or email, I want to get back to them immediately. I tend to anyway, but particular aggression in problem areas is key.

2. Technology streamlining. I want to be easy to be in touch with, so reducing the complexity of working with the tools that let you get to me is key. This may mean using the cellphone instead of the Skype, just because cellphones dropping calls is "normal", and Skype doing something weird is "on the computer and therefore something weird I have to do to be in touch with this one difficult person." It means taking time at the start of every web session to go over how to use the online meeting tools and make sure everyone can see and hear okay.

3. Clear availability. I make a point of telling everyone, "Oh, don't you worry about what time it is where I am. I always work east coast hours, so if you guys are in the office, I'm in my office, too, and available for a quick conversation anytime. Just stop by!" I am also going to work on getting the casual contact tools we use (Skype for the most part) on more desks because it helps people to see that I'm online, available, and pop-in-upon-able.

4. Aggressively communicated results. If you got a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it. I am the guy who gets things done, and I need to not only do that, but communicate that one of the reasons that I'm able to kick out productive work so fast (and often in an urgent situation) is that I can work from wherever I am. Telecommuting means that I'm never not in the office because wherever I am is where the office is. At. I just need to make sure that the skeptics know that things are getting done because I'm not there, not in spite of the fact I'm not there.

Four simple steps. I'm doing all of this, plus going on site a lot more. What the heck, I like to fly, and Rochester is a beautiful city. We'll see how it works.

Office or No Office, Goofing Off Is a Risk

So apparently there was some sort of summit where people were asked whether the whole notion of an office, of work being a place you go, was obsolete. And a lot of people who were there thought yeah, there isn't any reason if you are in a knowledge-based business to have a single physical space that is where your employees work.

Stella certainly subscribes to this theory.

But then there is always some person in the audience who is all, "But how do I know people are working? What if they're watching NCAA tourneys all day?" Um, dude? If they're going to watch NCAA tourneys all day, they can do that at work on the internet. Have you heard of the internet? They have it on the computer now.

You can't nannygoat your employees all the time. Goof offs will goof off no matter where they are. You need to have real work for people to do, and you need to manage them to make sure they're doing their work -- are they writing the code, making the sales calls, delivering the proposals, hitting the milestones. This is the stuff that your business is made of, not staring blankly at a spreadsheet for hours on end because they are having an in-cube sabbatical and are merely fulfilling their face time requirements.

How Does Stella Get This Gig?

Yes, telecommuters tend to be better employees -- they're not distracted by the Real Office crap, they don't waste time in their cars. So says Jayna Wallace, who somehow managed to get to SXSW this year. Dudes, I've been telling you exactly this for years now.

How do I start getting invited on paid junkets to talk about how telecommuting is the bomb.com? I gotta figure this one out.

Wait, Most Telecommuters Are Men?

I was surprised to read this analysis of a couple of studies of trends in telecommuting. Most telecommuters are 40 year men. Huh. That kind of belies those stereotypes of mommies putting in laundry and sitting there computing with babies on their laps. I hate those stereotypes -- maybe I'm a bad mom but if my children are in my office for too long I start feeling like my head is going to explode. And I have exemplary children, behavior-wise. So.

Otherwise, this article points out all the things that cause HR people to wring their hands when people telecommute. What if I slip on a grape in my own kitchen while on the clock? What if my home office consists of me perching on top of an extension ladder with my laptop actually on my lap, leading to a repetitive stress injury and weird marks on my behind? Whose time is it when I travel into the Real Office?

On all of these questions I don't have good answers. But here are my tendencies (bearing in mind that I'm not a lawyer, nor an HR person, and I really don't know much at all, actually)

• I have homeowners insurance, and it covers me for stuff that happens in my house. So if I slip on a grape in the kitchen, it's my problem. Likewise if someone steals all my work gear out of my home office, that's a claim on my homeowners' insurance.
• I pay for my own high speed internet. All of it. Because I'd pay for it anyway, and I'm not about nickel-and-diming my poor employer to death. Seriously, would you not have the high speed interwebs coming into your house but for that pesky telecommuting gig? Really? Really. Dial-up it is then, kids. Have fun on the intertubes.
• I am an exempt employee so I travel on my own time. It would be different if I traveled all the time and that was a key component of my work. But I figure it all comes out in the wash. This ties into the fact that my manager treats me with respect as concerns my time management and tends to not wig out about the little bits here and there. As long as I'm gittin-r-done, it's all cool. So I give that right back. Also, I don't get reimbursed for the food I eat while I'm there, or for the gas I use. I am an employee, just like everyone else. Nobody is paying for my colleagues' breakfsts, lunches, dinners, brunches, snacks, second breakfasts, teatimes, or gas to and from work, and so I don't expect that either.
• If I were non-exempt, I would expect to be paid for the time I was logged in doing productive work, and I would expect to have my work logged or monitored to assure that I was processing claims or transcribing or whatever it is during the times I was scheduled to work. I would also expect the same logging or monitoring to go on with all employees doing my kind of work in whatever setting -- after all unless you're really going bananas with the firewall, espn.com works just as well on a computer sitting in a cubicle as it does on one sitting in my spare bedroom. And even the most deranged micro-manager can't be lurking over the shoulder of all his employees all at once.

So that's the Stella position on things. If you don't have a written telecommuting policy even for ad hoc once in a while telecommuters that addresses things like this, you should probably write up guidelines that give you some way of keeping the absolute deadwood from going home to watch Judge Judy all day and not work. But other than that, you might should trust your employees a little bit too.

Snowpocalypse? Or Snowtopia?

You know, it's really up to you whether or not your employees are able to get stuff done during adverse weather. Those employers with good remote working tools in the hands of their employees (stuff like a real VPN and training on how to install and log into it, webcams on laptops, virtual machines, and all that good stuff, along with people who are able to use it) are able to do a little work today in DC and Baltimore.

Just forward your phones to your cell, fire up the laptop and get rolling. And suddenly it's a Snowtopia!

Simple Criteria to Evaluate Your Telecommuting Readiness

From the IT Dark Side, a quick list of characteristics that might preclude you from doing well as a telecommuter. Honestly, Stella can't see anything to add. Oh, wait. Yes I can.

The most important skill for a telecommuter is a willingness to deal with the messy technical details of handling your own IT life. You need to be able to plug in a new camera, mess around with your home network, install new VPN utilities and so on without hand-holding from IT. I can't tell you the number of people who have a hard time getting to the stuff they need to do their work because they can't work around small technical hiccups.

Your manager probably needs some of those skills, too, because you're both going to need to do a little somethin somethin to make it all work well together.

You can do it!

Do You Live Here?

Well, in one of these terrible traffic places? One of the best ways to avoid nasty traffic situations is (surprise surprise) telecommuting. So many good things about it. You can use telecommuting to start your work day early, and then hit the road to the Real Office at ten in the morning so as to avoid the hellishness. Or leave at two in the afternoon, score your kids at school and get them settled in on homework, then flex your time from home from four til seven to get things done that you would have in the afternoon time you missed.

Or anticipate that traffic will be painful if there is weather, a ball game, the Olympics, or some other drive-disrupting deterrent, and stay home on those days with work that you can do from anywhere. For goodness sake, get out of your cars, though, people. More drivers isn't going to make that better, so get off the road!