Slashdot Mirror
Striving to Keep Teleworkers Happy
coondoggie writes "Employees who work from home or in remote branch offices often feel disconnected from corporate life and worry they will be forgotten and bypassed for promotions. Managers and employees have to make a concerted effort to stay in touch, experts say. At IBM, Pelino and others set out to improve corporate culture. The company sparked new life into an old tradition: IBM Club, which brings together employees for intramural sports, picnics, movies and other types of social, cultural and recreational activities."
Don't worry. So do the people who work at the head office.
But if a promotion didn't come, I wouldn't be upset. As a teleworker for a local staffing service, I save enough money on gas alone. I have the comfort of my own bathroom, the comfort of my own house, and the comfort of my World of Warcraft video game on my breaks. I really wouldn't trade that to have to travel to the office every day and interact with people, even if it means never getting promoted.
...which brings together employees for intramural sports, picnics, movies and other types of social, cultural and recreational activities."
;)
So you mean I may have to hang out with all of the peeps in Accounting AND Bookkeeping!?!?
Sounds like a good chance for PFY and I to take care of those numerous denied expenses from my last expense report all in one swoop.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
Yay.. Another opportunity to have the athletic drag the non-athletic of us into 'competitions'. I'm not even fat or out of shape....just tired of Little Leagues that extend into your golden years...
- E
This is one of the reasons I finally left IBM. While I worked in RTP, at an IBM campus, I loved it. Surrounded by IBMer's, there were lots of activities and clubs for us to use. Once I moved to a customer site, all that disappeared. Left in a supply closet, reviled by the customer and IBM alike, we festered. Job satisfaction dropped, and so did that feeling of belonging to IBM. Add into that the drastic cost cutting IBM has implemented, and things generally sucked. We all stopped going into the office because of gas prices, and roving bands of irate customers. IBM made no effort to get the local people together. Now that they are trying to breathe "new life into an old tradition: IBM Club" I predict the same old same old. This "club" in unfunded, ignored, and generally cast aside. IBM needs to start investing again in people, not gimmicks and cheerleading.
...At IBM, Pelino and others set out to improve corporate culture. The company sparked new life into an old tradition: IBM Club, which brings together employees for intramural sports, picnics, movies and other types of social, cultural and recreational activities...
Wouldn't it be ironic that the people it is intended to bring together might not hear about it because the notices for those activites is posted in the lunchroom?
Why yes. I am an optimist. Why do you ask?
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
My manager lives in a different time zone, her manager lives in a different time zone from here, and so on until we find the manager who lives on another continent. See there is no there there.
Nice little spin there by IBM -- its been my experience that 40% of IBM's workforce is now in sales and / or on site constractors. I hardly call being put up in a hotel and working at a client site "telecommuting"
I have grown concerned about the typing rate and want to manage it in an objective way. Is there a software utility that can be run in the background that records peak and average rates of typing, measured in characters per second? The utility should be able to record the total number of typed characters and to be switched on and off (so that I can measure only the characters that I type for the project).
I am thinking of presenting the measurements to the manager (to prove that I am exceeding reasonable expectations of effort on the project) and to a physician. I am getting close to a point when I may need to see a physician. The symptoms are becoming worse by the day.
As someone that was an IBM employee and still knows people that work at IBM I can tell you that this is mostly spin. Moving people to work from home is all about the mighty dollar. IBM saves quite a bit in expenses by having people work from home. Also, IBM doesn't really care that much about it's U.S. workforce as it is primarily interested in moving jobs to India. The last announced goal for the workforce in India is 40,000 employees. Little hiring is being done at all in the U.S. by IBM while attrition continually reduces the U.S. numbers.
"4)I have not partied with Andy Dick" -- Matt, Salon.com 11/23/99 "I Anakin"
That's exactly why I freelance instead of work for a corporation.
I live in the mountains and can go skiing, paragliding, mountain biking, climbing etc whenever the weather permits and fit my work (about two days a week is enough to pay the rent/bar tab) around my play. Sure, I don't have a lot of money but if I worked full time in London I'd spend it all on going to the mountains on holidays.
And often that is horribly inefficient. Unclear instructions left for you in the morning (your time) may have to wait until the next day to be clarified. Unless it is standard practice to drag people out of bed at all hours of the night.
A basic problem with "telework" is that promotion within the company is unlikely. But job changing is easier.
>Employees who work from home or in remote branch offices often feel disconnected from corporate life
I thought that was the PRIMARY benefit! What more could you want? Do yer job, do it right, do it in your PJs.
Shadus
Beat the shit out of the managers that make teleworkers have to justify that we are really doing our jobs away from the office.
It never fails, it seems every quarter some moron in Finance or some new manager in some department questions the value of teleworkers and other stupid comments or questions about the people they dont see daily.
When you have to defend yourself in SPITE of your work quality and quantity on a regular basis it kind of makes us really pissy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sometimes being a part of office culture can open opportunities for conflict, and teleworkers may have the best longevity because they are spared the indignities of office noise and too much closeness.
You haven't meet the efficency of the BlackBerry/cellphone combo!!! The IBM CEs I work with don't have offices... probably don't even sit at a desk... between the blackberry/cellphone and laptop, they "go to work" at their first customer of the day and are "done when they're done". Everything is remote... orders, calls, parts ordering, callouts... It's quite slick... but they keep those guys brutally busy.
So....now besides going to work 9 to 5 monday to friday and beyond...you go on company branded organised excursions with your fellow employees and their families...at which you all bond and the company tries to let you know about how much they care about you? I'm sorry, but this for me (and I'm sure quite a number of my generation) is pretty much what's putrid about western corporate culture today....when it suits companies, they want to have 'a positive one on one relationship with someone'[personifying probably the least personifiable construct on the planet] whether it be customer or employee, that 'lets them know they care'. When it doesn't and a companies execs want to put the boot in its 'not personal, just business'.[my fellow programmer incidentally reckons the only way to deal with that line is to make it personal]. Western business culture today seems in practice at least to either use the company as a vehicle for overtly oily and condescending overtures to customers or employees, or as a shield to hide behind when extremely irresponible decisions have been made. Its why, if I cn help it, I never want to work for a large company in my life. Once the damn things pass a certain size, they take on a personality all of their own, and it's generally not nice.
Isn't the point of working from home to be "disconnected from corporate life"?
IBM Club.... not a widely adopted, nor invested in approach. Now it is "IBM Spirit" to supplement the short comings of IBM Club. Most remote people don't have access to either. If you are in a few key large cities then you are okay, but what about the other 70% of the employee base? Not addressed. If you take that for granted, that you will lose all corporate/group dynamics and you like to work on your own, then, the new IBM is just fine. Yes, a lot of it comes across as Cheerleading. The real issues are much different. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Look over here at the shining lights! The real issues are more in the area of manpower management. Our Personnel Development Managers have 50-60-70 people reporting to them. They can't be effective at that rate. They are relegated to process people. That does little for personnel retention.
Here come the "corporate culture" wonks, yet again. I love how an entire industry of HR consultants and managers have bought into, and actively promote, this notion of corporate culture as something that can be "improved" or changed. Generally it only goes downhill over the long run once these kinds of initiatives are enacted, because most people see it to be what it really is: a feeble attempt at controlling employees emotions and psychology to make them feel personally accountable for business success or failure. Let me know how that works out and how you feel after the next round of layoffs...
and the comfort of my World of Warcraft video game on my breaks
Aiiiiieeee. Give your eyes a break once in a while!
If it is a promotion you want and are not getting here is what you do. Call the boss on the phone or
run into the office to talk to him. Tell him you would like to be promoted to such and such whatever that may be. One of three things will likely happen, he will either say no, say yes or try to passify you with some BS which is the most likely course of action. Now if he says no or throws you some BS you have two courses of action.
1. Sit at home for the rest of your life and do your job like a good little boy or
2. Find somebody else willing to give you that promotion and more money to boot.
If you suck then you are best off sticking with number 1. If you have skills that should be rewarded and are valued then number 2 is your course of action.
You are in charge of where you want to go with your career, nobody is gonna look out for you except
yourself.
I have found myself in a similar situation a manager that want's to keep me in my current position
forever since I am the best at it and it would be hard to fill that position. Well guess what, his desires are not my desires so it is obviously time to rid myself of the relationship. Took me a whole two days to find somebody to step up and give me both the position and the money I want.
I work full time from home in a senior development position and can relate very much to the disconnected feeling that is discussed in the article, but the solutions that are discussed are addressing the wrong problem in my opinion. The problem is communication but it is professional communication, not social communication that is often lacking.
:)
We have found that short and sweet daily "stand-up" meetings in the morning with only the immediate team members (others of whom work from home as well) are far more helpful than weekly or monthly all-staffs or get togethers. In my experience it is rare that more than 2-3 people actually speak on an all-staff conference call of more than 10 people - how can that help improve communication? Get togethers at a restaurant or park, what have you, are fun and allow for familiarization but they are outside of work and do nothing to improve the day to day communication of the issues at hand.
We have also found webcams to be unhelpful, the concensus being that without eye contact it's just TV. Screen sharing tools like VNC or webex paired with a speaker phone are far more effective when extended collaboration has to happen, while IM takes care of the rest.
As far as the promotions go if the team you're on isn't communicating professionally and producing crap code you have no chance of getting promoted - no matter how many funny jokes you tell at the IBM "Lunch 'n Bowl"
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Whoever it was that said this was spin was completely accurate. I work in Pelino's old region-- and have been a telecommuter 15 years-- and he was gone before anyone tried to breath life back into the IBM Club. 'Back in the day' it was ok because, having worked in the office, you knew all the folks who showed up at the events. Now with "professional hires" and the for-hire talent coming in and out you can go to these things and not know a soul there. So, most of us don't go anymore. Pelino himself, when he was 'spearheading' this initiative was a complete cipher. He had some big time title and reported into HQ, but he had zero local responsibilities. However long he was in the region, I layed eyes on the guy one time. He was a big difference maker. Not. In fact, one of IBM's biggest problems in terms of morale is the pathetic notion that this sort of pointless garbage raises anyone's spirits. I have reported to someone who lived within 200 miles of me exactly 17 months in the last 15 years. And having this odd idea that managers ought to manage-- which includes sampling activites and results, coaching and directing-- and since IBM managers haven't done any of that in at least 10 years, I'm constantly at odds with this stream of placeholders who've been signing my timecard. Sign me counting the days to retirement ...
you do not talk about IBM Club.
The second rule of IMB Club is. YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT IBM CLUB.
Don't judge IBM too harshly. It's hard to get people excited about working for the most boring company in the world.
...if you're not a full time employee, you are shit. If you have a yellow stripe on your badge (contractor) you can't participate in most of these activities.
In North America anyway, most of the front line people that get the real work done are contractors. Employees are just team leads to allow first line managers to have the responsibilities of a second or third line manager.
Am I the only one that actually likes telecommuting?
Seriously, there's a lot of things to not like about IBM, but telecommuting certainly rocks. For one, I get to skip an hour of traffic coming and going and save up on the money. My job as a sysadmin is very lax and easygoing, and I'm studying Computer Science simultaneously, which means that the free time that I'd spend in the office I can spend home studying or, God forbid, working naked in my bedroom, or outside in the backyard(you CAN take the laptop outside).
Socializing? You just coordinate your time telecommuting so that you have 2 days in the office so you can spend time with your team (assuming that your team is worth spending time with). I'd tell you, in a day with little stuff to do I'd rather do my own socializing inviting a friend over than spending in with a random coworker.
And sleep. Man, there is nothing better for your health than getting to sleep an extra hour because of not having to deal with the bullshit of getting dressed and driving. Better yet, you can get out and run or do exercise before tunring the machine on.
People who dislike telecommuting are simply not creative enough to know how to deal with it. A couple of weekly meetings in person with the rest of the staff suffices to kill the feeling of disconnection. The rest of the free time and benefits you get by being home are absolutely amazing if you use them right. I get to cook, watch TV, or read whatever I want. Yes, it does take personal discipline to lose the distractions when there's work to be done, but it's damn well worth it.
Cosas de un sysadmin argentino: http://aosinski.phpnet.us/
When I was 100% telecommute I was always terrified I would be promoted and given responsibilities that required me to travel, or else, forced to relocate to a main office.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
This is pretty interesting. Having worked in an office environment, and *wanting* to wortk from home, i'm sure i couls get thing done just as well, like when i did contracting work. But this gives me someting to think about. Would i miss the camaraderie? Would it actually help? After, say, a year or two, would i still enjoy being "out of the loop"?
I have no idea, and i probably would love to find out. Regardless, it is something to think about.
Have you read my journal today?
You're both right. Work that's mobile, task and work order based is very efficient this way. Work that's more collaborative, more project oriented is a lot harder. I have never met any of my last 5 managers in person. I think it's a disadvantge to me personally, careerwise. The upside is that no one really cares the hours I keep.
The problem is that in su*burp*ia, you often don't see a lot of faces outside the company since everyone's working different hours, taking care of kids, whatever, and in most suburbs, people don't even walk on the street that much. So it isn't a matter of disconnection from the company as from life in general. If more people lived in cities and smaller towns rather than in uptightass developments, maybe we'll make some progress there.
-b.
> "Employees who work from home or in remote branch offices often feel disconnected from corporate life"
But that's what Slashdot is for! We can trade gossip, bitch about the boss (Hi Bill) and lament about the next piece of crapware we'll be forced to use (Hi Again, Bill!) I love you guys, and the time we spend together; the jeering, the rasperberries we blow each other, the flames; I somehow feel close to you guys. GROUP HUG!
PS. As for that first post, there should be a Megatroll Mod. I don't mind the a nit of clever or informative flamebait, but that first one was plain nasty.
I'm a full time Office guy. I ALWAYS come into the office (because that is where my job is - You can't repair the computers when you're at home).
Just today, one of our Account Management Reps (who usually works from home, but comes into the office 1-2 days a month) came in and brought Soup, Cake, and christmas cards for everyone in the office.
She loves to cook, and she loves working at home, and the people who work in the office get positive reinforcement for working in the office.
Of course, there are the occasional remote users who never bring munchies, and only call to bitch that comcast sucks.... but screw them.... No soup for you!
I've gotten alot more respect (and a recent promotion) at work because I've told off people a lot higher up than I have by doing what I'm told and working really hard... in the end this makes sense... you're working on stuff thats super-complicated and only the guy with his hands deep in the work really understands all the intricate problems that exist... would you rather have an unthinking automaton drive happily off a cliff, or someone who says "hey, shit-for-brains... thats a bad idea, maybe we should do something else" if you have a good boss they'll realize that a little backbone is a good thing.
I've worked several companies that not only encourage telework, they require it. Most people call it "tech support", and making yourself available in that capacity is not a bad thing for the career. It just means you spend your life carrying pagers and cell phones, contractually guaranteeing response times that tie you close to home and network.
But face time is important. If no one sees you or knows what you do, you don't exist. Come budget time, neither does your paycheque.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I've only worked for IBM a short period of time, but I can tell you this. IBM Club is a joke. It's cool as long as you do something ordained by IBM. Fellow IBMers, I challenge you to try and start a motorcycle club....
While at IBM, I've managed to have, bar none, the WORST consulting experience I have EVER had in terms of organization and leadership. I've been consulting for 8 years now and have been on with IBM less than a year. I've also met some of the least efficient managers I've ever met.
That being said, I've also met some of the most talented people I've ever met. The people doing the perform here are very talented indeed.
My $0.02.
Little hiring is being done at all in the U.S. by IBM while attrition continually reduces the U.S. numbers.
That's disgusting, don't they know I.B.M. stands for American Business Machines?! It's not supposed to be an international company!
Yes. That is spot on. Because of telecommuting, I didn't have to put my child in daycare for the first year and a half of his life, letting someone else raise him. And now that my wife is recently laid off, he isn't in day care any more. This means that when lunch time hits, I simply walk out of my office, and sit down to have lunch with my wife and son just about every day. My days are 8 hours long instead of 11, which means more time with my family. Yeah, yeah, I know that not everybody wants that, but for me it is awesome.
Heaven forbid that anything like this is used as the official "informal" company communications system.
And often that is horribly inefficient. Unclear instructions left for you in the morning (your time) may have to wait until the next day to be clarified. Unless it is standard practice to drag people out of bed at all hours of the night.
Oh no you don't get off that lucky. Because the unclear instructions contain an unclear deadline that is hours away if that (a time is given without a time zone...) and the wiseass that sent said instructions is asleep on the other side of the world, and is your boss. Best make do with what you can come up with because if you wait until they are up again to ask you will be too late to keep your job. On the bright side you'll have plenty of time to find a new job then.
I live more than is easy to drive every day, which is my primary reason to telecommute. Other reasons: better lifestyle. Less interruption and cube noise means better productivity, which means I look worthy of promotiion. Phones & internet keep me as well connected as I need to be. I have an easy excuse to duck out of meetings I want to avoid. I can conf call in and still do something useful, or maybe sit in the sun while the rest of the participants sit in a stuffy room.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If senior management only looks for people that can play silly games, and don't have the ability to identify real talents that make their company work.... well that company is going to be pretty fucked.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If I was founding a new, startup company nowadays, I would base it almost completely on telecommuting workforce. Therefore there would be no disadvantage for any of the employees compared to any other one.
There are numerous savings for employer due to such business decision:
First, lower rent (or real estate price) for office (and parking) space.
Second, lower electricity and water bills, as well as no need for too many janitors, security personnel, etc.
Third, I can find workforce that will accept lower pays: people have lower expenses, they don't have to commute to work, they don't have to eat out, they don't have to pay other people to day care their babies and little kids, they can even have another parallel job, as long as it doesn't interfere with their job in my hypothetic company. The savings on expenses they would have can balance the lower pay I would offer them.
Fourth, I could, without additional costs to maintain , hire people who have troubles finding jobs because people write them out on a number of excuses but mainly because of prejudice: handicapped people, single (and not only single) mothers who still brestfeed their babies or care for their toddlers, scarred or ugly people, people who can't or have difficulties to communicate verbally, racial, ethnic or sexual minorities encumbered by others' prejudices, etc. It is rotten, unethical thing to say, but some of those people are likely to work for less money because in practice, their options are quite limited. However, you can always do the right thing and offer them decent wage. OTOH, you don't really need to know about any aspect of your employees' lives except how good is their work. Just make offer you want and don't inquire their reasons for accepting it.
Fifth, smaller probability of litigations for various interpersonal faults. People much more easily tolerate each other when they are separated by communication channel.
Sixth, I can employ people from anywhere in the world, who will work our "after hours" in their normal working hours. I don't have to care about relocation, visas, or anything.
Seventh, as company HQ itself is quite "small footprint", I could easily establish it in some "tax paradise" country.
Now, how you make a cohesive, vibrant company out of tele-present people? Well, look at internet communities, MMO games, forums, Slashdot included! It is obvious that there is much action going on there, people helping people, brainstorms are frequent, lots of ideas are transferred, assessed, refined...
Allow employees with message board or IRC channels on company's VPN. Don't monitor their conversations unless where necessary - in "public" message boards - "conference room". Allow them to make emotional bonds of friendship, to feel like if they work next to each other and get to know each other well. However, perhaps you should bill their time spent on work unrelated (non-monitored) chats. For work related communication, they should use monitored and logged message boards (On the second thought, it should be mandatory even in companies that work with physically present employees, for other good reasons).
I've been working remote for four years now. Originally with a small consulting company and in the last couple of years with a tech company that bought us out (one you've all heard of - it's been on slashdot many many times). I'm under no delusions that my job is nothing more than a job, not a career. I've reached my limit in promotions - anything above where my current position is is management positions, but who would I manage? The guy that sells me corn dogs at the Circle K? That said, I'm completely happy with where I'm at...
Back when I was at a company with a lot of telecommuters, we did a few things. We had an IRC channel for idle chatter, and a mailing list or two.
The biggest improvement, I think, was the introduction of the "Watercooler Call". Every Friday at a particular time (it was around 1PM my time, I think), there was an hour long conference call to which all the engineering sorts were invited. There was a firm policy that work not be discussed during this call.
It really did help.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Personally, I hate the corporate life and all the attached B.S. but still, like everyone, need money. I thought the entire reason for wanting to work from home was to be able to earn money without having to put up with the, sometimes difficult, office situation (not to mention family needs). I would love a job which would allow me to work from home. The benefits are many.
Your perspective seems bizarrely binary between the two positions "cares about person" and "cares about business". You set these against each other, saying that you feel companies hypocritically sometimes claim that one is important to them, while other times showing that the other, and so not being consistent.
This black and white thinking ignores the real world: People are, for the most part (both in forprofit and nonprofit companies) motivated by (Gasp, shock, horror, brain explode) both of them. I care about people, but I also care about working for my company. I care about people not having a horrible time, and I care about the company not doing horribly.
If you found yourself fired for business reasons, then it was probably because the business reasons trumped the personal ones. Not that "one exists, the other (QED) does not".
These strange theoretical constructs of human motivation sometimes just seem to overwhelm people.
I telecommute 4 days a week. This spares me from what is usually a 3-hour round trip. Every time I am about to start bitching about my job I remember:
1. No longer having to keep two cars, which saves me a ton of money in insurance, maintenance, personal property taxes, etc.
2. No longer blowing $10/day on lunch, or having to worry about packing a lunch.
3. Not having to put up with overpriced coffee, or crappy company-provided coffee. At my previous job I had to resort to bringing my own pod brewer and keep a supply of pods at my desk. At home I just drink my pods whenever I damn please, and I don't have to share it like at my old job. NOT YOURS.
4. Those 3 extra hours a day translate in at least one more hour of sleep and one hour of leisure reading. As a norm telecommuters work a little longer than in-office, so that eats the third hour.
5. We have an IRC server for our telecommuters, so we are talking to each other all day long, including during phone conferences with the boss, who doesn't use IRC. This mean we can basically talk behind his back while he is running the meeting.
6. We are on flex time. As long as deadlines are met, nobody cares what you do. Too stressed out and want to go out for a run? Or read for half an hour? Fire up the xbox? Nobody cares as long as the work gets done. We have two basic rules: get the work done on time, and stay in touch.
If somebody can't handle the idea of sitting on his ass at home while the company mails him checks, tough shit. There's got to be a dozen qualified people willing to sell their mothers just for the chance to have a job like that.
At a previous job I had a team of a dozen or so programmers, almost all of them at the very least part-time telecommuters. We fixed the social isolation part by giving them a telecommuter's lounge, first come basis. They were welcome to come to the office, pick an empty spot at the lounge, program their extension and make that their office for the day. It worked great. Even if the telecommuters did not come to the office, there was bound to be one or two visiting people that needed a place to park a laptop, so the lounge was always in good use.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I hope they bring back the sing alongs from the IBM Song Book.
That is all.
How to keep them happy? How about who cares?!?! These lucky bastards are working from home (running errands as well, NO DOUBT) and not putting up with the germ-infested, cube monkeys who are constantly babbling junior's soccer games, or their husbands ED issues.
Keeping them happy?!? Dude, they are working from the comfort of home, sitting around all day in their underwear... how much more content could they possibly be???
unfortunately with mobile work the hours you keep end up being MOST of them...