HP To Cut Back On Telecommuting

Makarand writes "Hewlett-Packard, the company that began making flexible work arrangements for its employees starting in 1967, is cutting back on telecommuting arrangements for its IT employees. By August, almost all of HP's IT employees will have to work in one of 25 designated offices during most of the week. Those who don't wish to make this change will be out of work without severance pay. While other companies nationwide are pushing more employees to work from home to cut office costs, HP believes bringing its information-technology employees together in the office will make them swifter and smarter and allow them to be more effective."

Comments

It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not the technology, its the people. We allow all of our developers to work at home, providing them with the equipment (VPN, 2nd computer, etc) and technology (1/2 of broadband expenses) to make it possible. But most developers end up coming into the office. Most of them have found that they either A. Lack the self discipline to keep up the pace when working at home and B. They do not have enough access to their co-workers at home despite access to the technology. A lot of our work is multi-discipline, multi-language (Java, C++, C) and spans everything from drivers to applications, our developers simply need real-time access to their peers in order to do the work.

When we have tried this with other aspects of our business it has had similar results. Most people simply lack the self discipline to make turn the telecommuter opportunity into a reality (for them).

Re:mad force....

[yoder]

I telecommute as well as working in the office. As a Systems Admin I can do most of my job remotely and my bosses use telecommuting as a way to pay for productivity. I know when to work at home and when I'm needed in the office and have gone out of my way to make sure that my productivity has increased since I began telecommuting.

When someone uses the "a few bad apples spoil it for the whole bunch" argument, they don't address the probability that productivity increases as a whole, even with those bad apples. In this particular case, a Wallyworld manager goes to HP and begins treating IT professionals just like they treated the illegal immigrants and sub-minimum wage unskilled workers back at Wallyworld.

Telecommuting isn't for everyone, nor for every job, but taking your lead on this issue from a Wally World manager is like asking a NeoCon for advice on social responsibility in government.