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.

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.

Good Advice on Managing an Emergent Telecommuting Program

This quick post from the Washington Post has excellent tips on starting to manage a telecommuting program. If more managers would just focus on RESULTS -- e.g. what you are actually doing and accomplishing -- rather than how much time you spend wandering around the office with your coffee cup in hand, the better everyone's lives would be. Even workers who are physically in the same office shouldn't be measured by time elapsed, but rather on whether they're fishing or cutting bait.

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?

Guess What? *

I work on an online thing that has security, and it includes a feature where our users store answers to questions like: What street did you grow up on? or What was your first school?

That's kind of lame.

Because frankly, anyone who knows a person fairly well (or even one who is relatively casually acquainted with a person on Facebook) could probably figure out the answer to those questions. That's why the free form question where you provide the question and the answer are so great. And these questions and answers? Epic win.

*Chicken butt.

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.

Not Quite, At Least Not for Me

see more Funny Graphs

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.

Being Virtual Means Never Having to Say, "I can't make it in today"

The east coast is still a hot (cold?) mess with the snow. People who live in Rochester, where Stella's Real Office is located, can't understand how it is so hard to get rid of the snow. After all, 30 inches is a lot of snow at once, but they get feet upon feet of the stuff every winter. What's the big deal?

Well, in cities where snow isn't a way of life there are a huge number of impediments to getting it cleared away. For example, in Baltimore, people don't have driveways as a general rule, so the streets are lined with parked cars that make it hard to plow. There are also no ditches -- it's all street to the curb where the sidewalk starts. So when you plow, there's no place for the snow to go. And there are just so many people packed into a small surface area that it's hard to move them all around.

What does this mean for you, the east coast employer? Your people may be snowed into their apartment complexes and side streets for quite a while more. It stinks. But you, the east coast employer with a robust telecommuting program? You know that your people can still work from wherever they are because you've given them the tools to do so. Awesome.

But as Eve Tahmincioglu notes, you miss out on the fun excitement of SNOWDAY!!! Because it's just another work day for you. Ah well, suck it up, little slipper wearer, you are lucky to have a job at all. Get back to work.

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!

The Key Is In Your Data

I know Stella has said that face-to-face visits are the gold standard of development work, and that's true. But the information about whom to visit and what to talk with them about is all in your database. I love databases and people who know how to look for things in them will rule the world.

People who know how to find lists of entities that have key attributes in common will rule the world even more. This post from the Tom Donovan in the Harvard Business Review blog goes through why and how this is so. These are good insights about data use. My favorite:

Everybody who makes observations has to collaborate in entering the data.

Saints preserve me from development databases where the gift officers don't enter their own data or who aren't capable of pulling their own reports. I know you're busy folks, but you cannot be too important to take control of the nuts and bolts of your business.

You Can Say What You Want...

...but overall people seem like they're very honest around here. I know I was joking earlier about how I like going to the Real Office so I can read the notes about how people are stealing food from the fridge. But I must tell you that even though there are occasional bouts of food going missing, the two-thirds of a six pack of Diet Dr. Pepper I left there in October was still there. So either nobody in the office likes Diet Dr. Pepper, or they're really good people.

I'm leaning toward thinking they're really good people.

This Is Not Something I Advocate

Stella does advocate getting dressed every day. I even advocate wearing power shoes when you have a difficult conversation to have virtually, because they make you feel, well, powerful. So it should not be a surprise to regular StellaCommute readers that I unequivocally reject this. Don't be fooled just because it's belted (and belts are a great way to keep track of your girth so you don't have my aforementioned Real Office Costume Crisis (TM) ).

Friends: just because it has a belt does not mean that you should wear it anywhere where people who aren't required to accept you "as-is" by marital law and custom and/or who related to you by blood might see you. And this includes your home office, because you never know when your videophone is going to go off and you'll need to be presentable.

No business-casual snuggies or slankets. For the love of god.

Like Stella Said

One of the most frustrating things about being a key decision maker or trying to get a meeting with key decision makers is that they're often booked from now until the next fiscal year. Getting time with people is almost impossible.

Now note how Google does it: office hours. Marissa Mayer of Google has time every day where people can line up outside her door and come in on an ad hoc basis. I have long held that this kind of "free to meet" time is essential to a smooth operation. Much like a pediatrician has time every day to see emergently sick children, having time available daily (or even weekly) that isn't already booked that can be used for issues that are arising is a good idea.

Is Flying About to Become a Royal Pain?

Stella is ramping up for a post-holiday trip to her fine employer. I find that nothing says, "I really like working here," quite like showing up at the Real Office in Rochester, NY in January. But naturally I'll need to fly there, and given all the news lately, it seems like that's going to be a bigger pain than it might have been before this week.

That's okay. I can dig the need to make everyone feel safe. But I don't feel excited about the idea of not being able to do anything except sit quietly with my thoughts for the last hour of my flight. And I'm with Bruce Schneier on this:

I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.

A Potential Tax Break for Virginia Telecommuters

A bill has been introduced in Virginia to offer people who telecommute more than 75 days a year a tax break on home office equipment, furniture, and the like. This is a great idea in an area where the traffic is truly awful, and where telecommuting can make a big impact on the quality of life. Encourage people to do what you'd like them to do with incentives like these. I love it!

When Worlds Collide

If you're like me, you figure that people should know that even though you work awfully hard and are really professional when it matters, that you're not a robot and you may occasionally enjoy an adult beverage in the company of friends and family.

But maybe you'd rather your colleagues and business contacts don't browse those snaps of you playing beer pong when you were twenty (or last week, but nobody's judging you). These tips from Web Worker Daily are about the best advice I've seen on segmenting your Facebook life from different aspects of your real life.

Pictures of you dancing at a wedding can be safely sequestered from your Vice President's browsing. And that's a good thing. Because it's important to network and connect with folks, but you don't need all your business out in the wild. Right?

Photo from Sorry I Missed Your Party - a site that is frequently not safe for work, but always hard to look away from.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

To be a telecommuter, that is. Yes, Hannukah and Christmas are a bundle of laughs, family, lights, food and so on. And Stella is planning to take some time off to spend with her family -- the kids don't have school for two weeks and so it would be hard to work here anyway.

But it's also the busiest time of year for non-profit fundraising. And this is where telecommuting really works out for me. Because even though I'm technically taking vacation days, I still will come into work every single day of the break to run data, monitor the health of the online giving systems, respond to email, and the like. Having the flexibility to mostly be "out of the office" while still being just as in the office at a moment's notice is critical.

There are lots of times when having the tools to be in the office wherever you are would be helpful. Nothing is worse than getting the panicky call from the Real Office whilst on vacation and not really being able to do anything about the situation. If everyone has access to the telecommuting tools and the basics of how to use them, everyone is able to pitch in when absolutely needed.

Not that employers should abuse this privilege. But it can come in handy.

Double Your Employees' Output?

That's what one company did. Rather than just plunge into a telecommuting program without knowing what impact it would have on their business, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System did a controlled experiment. The claims processors who worked from home more than doubled the number of claims they processed.

To which I say, nice work, guys!

I think that this outcome is probably caused by a few factors. First, people who are allowed to work from home tend to really appreciate the privilege and work really hard to not mess it up for those who would follow them. People selected for these kinds of pilot programs tend to be the A players, people who have a lot of initiative and who have built up a lot of trust with their managers and co-workers.

And of course, when you're working at home, you don't get interrupted by coffee runs, chatty Cathy Colleagues, and all the other distractions and folderol that Real Offices can throw at you. The distractions of television, housework, and family are largely overrated. Seriously, have you watched "Divorce Court"? It will make you want to gouge your eyes out. I would much rather process insurance claims, frankly.

How much could your business gain by having your workers focused, calm, and uninterrupted for a few hours?

Always Good Advice

There are a lot of reasons your employees might all need to telecommute for some period of time. I know you're getting sick of me harping on swine flu and other epidemiological events, but consider bad weather, problems with heating/water/air conditioning in your facilities, major traffic disruptions, or the Olympics. That's what employers in Vancouver, BC are facing as they look toward the 2010 Winter Olympics. Needless to say between security, visitors, and all the rest, getting workers to offices in many parts of the city will probably be a challenge.

That's why the Vancouver Observer's tips for the basics of setting up a telecommuting environment at home available here are useful for Vancouverites. But they're also good for anyone looking for the details of setting up the home office.