Working Hints for a New Telecommuter?

McPierce asks: "This week I accepted an offer to work for a company in a different state (I'm located in NC, USA, and the company's located in NY,USA). As part of my employment, the company's going to give me a laptop, a PDA (Blackberry 6510) for email/development and will fly me to NY every 6-8 weeks for meetings. My question is to those who telecommute for a living and who have families at home. How do you do your work at home? Do you go out (bookstore/library/coffee shop) to get things done, or do you have a home office and boundaries setup with your family to keep them from distracting your during working hours? How about accepting phone calls from your employer? In my case, I'm concerned about getting calls outside of the normal business hours (8am-6pm) since the philosophy might be 'we'll call when we need to since you're working remotely'? Any ideas or suggestions?"

Comments

my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a family but I work from home. I have a definite line between "work" and "non-work", including a different computer in a different room. This is good for tax purposes (I'm also self-employed). If you're like most computer folks you *need* to keep the "mind spaces" separate.

I also NEVER answer the phone. My clients quickly get the point and use email which I much prefer. I also don't own a cell but I do carry a wireless PDA. So email is more accessible than phone and I usually answer right away.

You'll figure out a routine after a while. If you feel disoriented at first, just set off one room in the house as your "office" and pretend that you have to show up at a certain time, and once you cross the door you are in a workplace and can't just get up and fix yourself a sandwich whenever you feel like, etc. I.e. impose some discipline on yourself.

The calls may not be an issue

[mdielmann]

If I'm correct, you're in the same time zone, so it becomes more of a culture issue than a telecommute issue. If they expect you to work outside of 8am - 6pm, then you can expect calls outside that time range, too. If not, who else would typically be working those hours, anyway? If you are worried, maybe you should get a second phone line (for business calls) and turn off the ringer when you're not working, or have the ringer turned down so you can't hear it outside of your office.

Get a second phone line

[jbarr]

By all means, get a second phone line or use your Cell phone exclusivly for work. I know HR will require your home phone number, but your work number is all they should have to contact you for work. It is important that you make that clear up front. If you are on call 24x7, then they should contact you using a work line. Of course, the responsibility also falls on your shoulders to be responsible ablut answering and handling the calls. I know that this may be "pie-in-the-sky" thinking, but you are in the driver's seat and can set some boundries early on. What you do with the boundries after that is up to you.

Based on experience...

[Fished]

I've been a full-time telecommuter for almost three years now. A few tips.

1. Definitely get a separate line. In my case, I got a cell phone and that number is the only number I make available in the company directory. (Sometimes, I use our land line for dialing in to phone conferences etc., but I only accept calls on the cell.
2. Definitely try to find somewhere to work other than home. I've found that, after a while "these four walls" get depressing -- I need a change of pace. This is part of why I use a cell phone for everything. The biggest challenge is remote Internet access - my work more or less requires me to be constantly connected. Currently, I have access to the Internet at my church. Libraries are also good.
3. Your success in this will depend greatly on finding someone "local" at your employer who will make sure you stay connected. I've had the best luck getting help with this from managers/team leads. However, it can be a coworker. This person needs to be someone who will take an interest in making sure you know what you need to know to stay productive.
4. Make sure you have more than one way to get remote access to your company. Employers tend to be unsympathetic when you don't work all day because the VPN server was down.

Number 3 is the most important criteria. The rest is just technical details.

I work from home

[sreilly]

I do research and software development from home, while travelling to the main office (about 130 miles away) about once a week for meetings.

Some simple advice:

• Keep an office in your house that is distinctly separate from your "living space". Don't leave it during working hours, and don't go there during non-working hours.
  
• shut the door. Even if there isn't anyone else around, it still helps limit distractions.
  
• Install a second phone line, just for work.
  

Telecommuting is great as long as the distractions are kept to a minimum. There's nothing better than playing my music as loud as I like while coding. I think it makes me much more productive.

Five Suggestions Based on Experience

[philosophyandrew]

I am a faculty member at an online University who works from home. I also take care of our six-month-old baby during the day, so I have some good experience about juggling familial and professional roles!

Here are some things that I do that help me work more effectively; they may or may not be useful to you.

I) GET A TOLL FREE VOICEMAIL/FAX NUMBER:

I have a toll-free voicemail/fax number from www.ureach.com. This is the number that I publish in the main directory and provide to my students; only the colleagues I work the most closely with have my direct home number.

The uReach account is highly flexible. When a message or fax comes in, I automatically receive an instant messaging notification via instant messaging and the message/fax itself is immediately e-mailed to me. I can also set it up so that voice messages "ring through" to my cell or home phone -- this can be useful when I expect a call from a student.

Using this service as my main source of voice contact means that I am interrupted by few voice calls.

II) USE E-MAIL TOOLS TO HELP YOU STAY ORGANIZED

Since e-mail is likely to be one your primary sources of contact with your employers, you want to be sure that you have the tools you need to use e-mail efficiently. Our institution uses Outlook, so I've got to live with that. There are quite a few utilities that make this easier; the best, by far, is the messaging database program NEO: Nelson Email Organizer (http://www.caelo.com/).

III) DON'T OVERLOOK THE BENEFITS OF INSTANT MESSAGING SOFTWARE

I used to have no patience for the idea of online messaging. However, I've found that it is a great complement to e-mail that allows me to "build community at a distance" with students and colleagues. Students know that they can contact me via IM and get a answer to a question with no e-mail delays. I also frequently use IM to interact professionally with colleagues at work, and I've also gained a lot from informal discussions with colleagues via IM -- it is a way to stay connected, to maintain some sort of "presence" even though you are in a remote location, and, when used properly, can be an efficient way to communicate with work mates. Your employer's "corporate culture" may or may not promote the use of IM, but if it does do not overlook the possibilities of this communication tool.

IV)INVEST IN A HIGH-QUALITY SPEAKERPHONE

At my workplace, we have frequent teleconference calls. A speaker phone makes life easier, but you will be miserable unless you invest in a high-quality unit. You can grab a high-end unit on Ebay for under $100. This will make your life easier and help you to present a more professional face when you interact with colleagues by phone.

V) MAKE USE OF THE FLEXIBILITY THAT WORKING FROM HOME PROVIDES

To the extent that you are allowed to set your own hours and tasks, etc. do so. Instead of reflexively working to imitate an inflexible traditional work schedule, reflect on how you might be able to benefit from the flexibility of working from homes. Doing this might also allow you to navigate conflicts with family responsibilities, etc. more gracefully than by, say, declaring your home office "strictly off limits" while you are "at work" -- that sort of rigid schedule isn't realistic in most cases, I predict.

Comments from a Teleworker

[Joel Rowbottom]

I've been working from home for almost the past two years now, with two days 'in the office' every week. I'll say now, It's difficult. I note that someone's posted "lucky bastard" earlier, but it's not all sweetness-and-light.

1. Firstly, you should note that it gets increasingly hard to separate work and play. I've got a separate office room I use for working, and it helps because I can at least close the door - however there are evenings when I just 'pop in' to check email or fix something which has been nagging on my mind. Having a door to close helps, having a separate work computer helps more, having a wife to kick you up the arse helps best. The door also helps with setting a boundary between family and work during the day - if the door's closed, I'm not to be disturbed.

2. On a related theme, for a while I used to "go to work" - this involved just walking to the shop to buy the paper, or taking a brief walk round the block. I left home, and I arrived at work. It worked for a while.

3. Get ready for the cow-orker backlash. You'll find that most of your peers, if they're not teleworkers, automatically assume you take the piss and hardly work at all - when in actual fact you probably work harder than your office-based counterparts. The way around this is to be visible, at least online - my staff are on IM systems, IRC or MUDs, and we do use it to collaborate, but it also has a nice side-effect in that you can say "morning!" to people.

4. Don't take the piss with timekeeping. Seriously. Bosses can tell if you're out at the local store shopping for socks instead of grafting hard at your computer. It might get really tempting to quickly hoover up or watch Jerry Springer for a while, but don't - one bad step and you can really, really fall into bad habits.

5. That said, telecommuting has a great advantage in that if you're using a laptop and don't actually need the 'Net, you can go and work anywhere. I've sat in the middle of the park on a sunny day, spent the afternoon nursing the biggest latt Starbucks will sell me, and slobbed in my mother's front room while reading RFCs. A change of scenery can be really beneficial to the ol' psyche.

6. You mentioned about getting called out-of-hours. This happens, although a lot of bosses are quite reasonable about it. If it gets out-of-hand, simply unplug the phone at 6pm, and plug it back in at 8am. When we moved into this house we bought a small Lucent PBX which automatically shuts off the office phone at 8pm, and reactivates it at 8am. Works a treat.

I realise I've probably given conflicting advice here - it's a bit of a braindump, and I've just got back from my two days of away-graft (which usually involves evening work too).

Good luck!