AT&T Calls Telecommuters Back To the Cubicle

bednarz writes "AT&T is requiring thousands of employees who work from their homes to return to traditional office environments, sources say. 'It is a serious effort to reel in the telework people,' says the Telework Coalition's Chuck Wilsker, who has heard that as many as 10,000 or 12,000 full-time teleworkers may be affected. One AT&T employee says rumors have been circulating since AT&T's merger with SBC that the new upper management is not supportive of teleworking: 'We'd heard rumors to that effect, and all of a sudden we got marching orders to go back to an office.'"

Comments

Shadow Layoff?

[R2.0]

My guess is that ATT is betting that a large percentage of the teleworkers will either resign, or come back with such bad attitudes that they will be fired "for cause" shortly after their return.

The reality is that, in the current business environment, it is better for your career to be mildly competent but in plain sight that extremely competent but hidden at home.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[physicsboy500]

The unfortunate thing is businesses like this don't realize that while teleworkers can be distracted at home easier, many tend to do more and better work because they are comfortable at home and don't have anyone looking over their shoulder. Additionally, they don't have to waste a ton of time commuting and thus have more hours in the day to work. This does depend on the type of person working from home as some are more capable than others and some need the pressure of a boss looking over their shoulder to work, but I bet you're absolutely correct in assuming this is their "simple" way of laying off some of their workers.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[ergo98]

The unfortunate thing is businesses like this don't realize that while teleworkers can be distracted at home easier, many tend to do more and better work because they are comfortable at home and don't have anyone looking over their shoulder.

Every firm would be well served to do 100% telecommuting for a period of time, forcing them to re-evaluate how they judge the contributions of their team.

The sad reality is that many shops judge contribution simply by sacrifice and hours, and lots of face time presence, using that as a surrogate for any meaningful metrics at all. This is the root reason why most shops despise telecommuting, and why it's often a negative career step for a worker to undertake: Telecommute and you have to do double, triple, or more what your coworkers are doing to get the same respect, whereas showing up early each day and staying late is often a blanket immunity from any sort of real responsibilities or deliverables.

With rising energy costs, shops will have to start to become accustomed to telecommuting. As others have said, it's particularly hilarious that a company that is a foundational facilitator of telecommuting is the one going against the trend to decentralize.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[physicsboy500]

The sad reality is that many shops judge contribution simply by sacrifice and hours, and lots of face time presence, using that as a surrogate for any meaningful metrics at all. This is the root reason why most shops despise telecommuting, and why it's often a negative career step for a worker to undertake: Telecommute and you have to do double, triple, or more what your coworkers are doing to get the same respect, whereas showing up early each day and staying late is often a blanket immunity from any sort of real responsibilities or deliverables.

With rising energy costs, shops will have to start to become accustomed to telecommuting. As others have said, it's particularly hilarious that a company that is a foundational facilitator of telecommuting is the one going against the trend to decentralize. Right with you on that one. A worker is much quicker to gain professional and personal relationships by physically going into work. I do think it depends on how fond the business you're working for is of telecommuting regarding how good/bad that is as a career move, but you are VERY correct in pointing out the irony in a telecommunications company suddenly frowning on their own workers telecommuting.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[vertinox]

The unfortunate thing is businesses like this don't realize that while teleworkers can be distracted at home easier, many tend to do more and better work because they are comfortable at home and don't have anyone looking over their shoulder.

I agree.

As a person who receives the phone call when the VPN isn't working, BB isn't communicating, or something else that they need to work from home, I will attest that when you let people work at home they will work all the time and more than they should without proper pay.

I've been tempted to tell people, "Its 6pm on a holiday... Don't you have a family or something. Sheesh! Do you want to call the server admin who is probaly eating with his family right now and tell him to drive into the office to reboot a fax server who no one is using except you? I mean... Your not even the CEO, a VP, a manager, or even their assistant! Is this really going to cause a loss of money to the buisiness? By doing this do you think you'll get a raise? Or even a pat on the back? This is why I have high blood pressure!"

But I don't say it. Anyways...

I've met plenty of people who work great from home and all the damn time. In fact I wish they would work less so I could spent more time not having to work in the office, but that is just me.

It really depends on if the job requires constant supervising, but over all when you work from home you end up at your job 24/7 unlike me who goes home and turns off my phone for the weekend and doesn't check his email (which is why I won't work a telecommuting job).

The ATT suits have it wrong here. If they want to grind as much productivity out of willing slaves, they just need to hand everyone a laptop, blackberry, a Verizon card, and tell them they are working from home from here on with salary as their pay (not hourly) and no sick time and no vacation (hey you are already at home) and there is no esxcuse for having the deadline missed because you have been at work the entire time.

Which is why I will never work from home. Hopefully I didn't give any CEOs some ideas here.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[penguin_dance]

Yeah, cause we know NO ONE goofs off at work to read Slashdot for instance. (oops!)

Not to mention the company saves money on buildings, cubicles (which are NOT cheap), electric, etc. If a worker has actual work to do it's pretty easy to measure their progress. Either the work gets done or it doesn't. If they're just doing "busy work" then it won't matter if they're doing it here or there...it still won't add up to production.

As a former telecommuter (not with the phone company), I found the concept worked very well as I came in the office twice a week. I sat at a "hotelling" station, my phone transferred back to home (I was supplied with an ISDN line for internet/network access and a phone capable of parking my phone number so where ever I was, my work number would reach me.) I could plan to meet around the days I'd be in to assist co-workers, so I wasn't being pulled away every 5 minutes. Also, my commute was around 60 miles roundtrip, so it saved a lot of gas + wear and tear on the car.

In this day and age with our technology and with the traffic congestion of the big cities, it makes no sense to force everyone to drive into a central location when it's not needed. How many people use chat and email to communicate with co-workers even when they're both in the same office? It's probably pretty rare that you actually need to meet face-to-face, so why not just use the same tools at home?

One problem I did find out (I was part of a pilot program) is that upper management can take you for granted--or that they don't really need you--out of sight, out of mind. If your boss or yourself isn't proactive to make sure they are aware of your contributions, you risk being on the cutting block the next time layoffs come around.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[Osiris Ani]

Plus you can't force people to attend useless meetings if they telecommute.

I call shenanigans on that part of the preceding comment. I've been telecommuting for most of the past four years, and in that duration, have attended useless meetings far too often.

However, I generally attend them sans pants, so I win.

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[Stamen]

I'm not sure what he hates, but I'll answer for myself. I hate when people can only look at surface level things, such as the price of one's outfit, and can't take the time to base opinions on a person's abilities, talents, and work ethic. Frankly if someone "above" me looks down on me because I don't wear expensive (I probably make more than them) enough cloths, then I do hope they mention it to me, so I can find another place to work that values my talent; as I actually have talent that won't be hard for me. I tend to notice the more someone works at playing politics, over dressing, etc, the lower the quality of their work is.

As for "IT conform to the 'non-conformist hippy' bit because they have self-esteem problems", that's laughable. I know it's hard to believe, but there is a geek culture, and there are certain ways that we geeks dress, as with every culture. Looking like a sales person does very little to help your career in IT. Personally when I'm hiring (as I'm a geek in a high position; that scares you doesn't it) I dock people if they show up in a suite and tie; I assume they are trying too hard to cover up some lack of skills.

Here is another thing that may surprise you, most "geeks" have no interest in becoming managers, sales people, or executives. This kind of work isn't a good fit for them, and wouldn't make them happy. Just as reading technical documentation and focusing on complex problems without human interaction for 10 hours a day wouldn't be a good fit for a CEO. Geeks don't aspire to be the slick sales person or the football star, as much as those type people would love to think they do.

They say you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I completely agree, thus why I dress like a "non-conformist hippy". I'm sure people like you would love to fire me, but then who would run your world for you?

Re:Shadow Layoff?

[jc42]

So much for AT&T sabotaging their whole "communications can save your business money" angle. Morons.

It might be noted that AT&T's management has a rather long history of failure to understand or cooperate with the integration of telecom with computers.

The poster child for this claim is the fact that unix was developed at Bell Labs, which of course was AT&T's main research division. But even when unix was adopted wholeheartedly by most academic researchers and lots of small companies, AT&T never saw it as a worthwhile product. They were one of the last companies to market a unix computer, and theirs flopped, mostly because its only telecom was modems and the phone system. They completely ignored the Internet, despite the fact that AT&T supplied most of the Internet's original long lines. They eventually abandoned any attempt to market their computers, and sold off the rights to unix, at a time when everyone except Microsoft and Apple had pretty much switched to unix (and there were rumors that Apple was planning to do the same).

As the Internet exploded in the 1990s, AT&T and its children pretty much refused to see it as an investment opportunity. They still view it as something good only for short-term profit, and steadfastly refuse to cooperate with the growing socialization of the Internet as our universal comm system. Just try getting permission to run your own server if your ISP is AT&T or any of the Baby Bells. This story is merely a part of that recalcitrance and obstructionism.

AT&T is stuck in 1927, and is being dragged into the 21st (or late 20th) Century kicking and screaming. A few of their marketers may see the future, but their management doesn't believe it at all.

Not that their offspring such as Verizon are much better.

Less gaming, more working.

[Delusion_]

"Of course it's work-related. I'm farming Primals for my supervisor."

Are they telecommuting over the Internet?

[HTH NE1]

Maybe the company just doesn't want their internal telecommuting communications to be subject to the federal wiretapping they are performing, keeping it all in-house on their LAN.

eating your own dogfood?

[Speare]

You know, if Boeing were to reel in their telecommuters, that is one thing. But this is the freakin' phone and network company saying that a phone and network just don't cut it as the primary ways to communicate professionally. What sort of message is this going to signal to big corporate customers who want to spend tons of cash on promoting and providing telecommuting solutions for their own staffs? Oh, yeah, nothing.

Re:eating your own dogfood?

[Delusion_]

You missed that part of my point because I made it poorly. I apologize.

A big part of the problem isn't _just_ that employees aren't as effective (and let's be honest here, it does take discipline), but that there is a management culture that considers presence as being a very important determiner of effectiveness. Management culture which isn't ready for this sort of change is going to be especially poor at judging how (or if) it works.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the employees are just as (or more) effective telecommuting than not:

Managing takes skill, and managing a telecommuting workforce takes different skills. I would argue that it also takes more skill, because you have to get a lot of old notions out of your head, and you have to understand work differently than the management mindset of 20 years ago. If your managers aren't willing to embrace that, they're also probably a lot more likely to assume the worst of you despite what effective output you have, because you know as well as I do that in some work environments, effectiveness is measured poorly by people who think that a passing familiarity with Excel and Powerpoint is more than enough to whip up some statistics, usually getting the basic assumptions wrong.

That doesn't make management right in this case, but it does mean that there's a lot of corporate inertia to get beyond. Think of the companies who have really led the charge here - software, marketing for print and television, design work. The larger and less creative an organization is, the more inertia there is to get past when it comes to embracing a different way of understanding the work environment... ...and when I think of a "larger and less creative organization", AT&T is definitely in the top hundred.

Personally...

[fallen1]

if I could find another job in short order paying the same or more money AND one that allowed me to telework, I'd tell the new Lord Vader he could go fuck himself and his death star.

Barring that, how about writing up an article and trying to get it into the New York Times (and other large papers) asking the question: Why is AT&T supporting pollution by requiring 10,000 employees to begin commuting to an office once again? Does AT&T _not_ support a green initiative and want to cut down on its carbon footprint in this world? Does AT&T _not_ support cutting down on vehicle emissions by using the very effective telecommute for work? What does AT&T have against saving the planet?

With the wide variety of people focused on green initiatives, carbon footprinting, greenhouse gases, and trying to save the planet surely some bad press thrown AT&T's way making it look bad on the global stage for, basically, FORCING 10,000+ people to begin commuting to work again after years of working from home... Well, even monopolistic giants can be pimp-slapped in the press. Sometimes.

AT&T - Your world. Delivered. To the NSA.

Re:Personally...

[nahdude812]

Thats the average price most pepole pay outside the US, so get used to it and may concider[sic] using your feet/cycle a bit more.

I would if in the US, when living outside of cities, a job that is considered close to home was not 20 miles (32km) away.

I drive 44 miles round trip to my job, and I watched for a job that close to home for 3 years while driving 150 miles round trip. It's either that or move closer to my job and pay twice as much for housing (so far driving the distance and paying for the gas is the more economic alternative) or else move into a high crime neighborhood.

I get the sense that many Europeans don't really grok the scale out here, or more specifically the population density (or lack thereof). The US is something like 2.5x the size of the entire EU, while the EU has like 1.5x the population of the US. You just have way more jobs per square kilometer, and mass transit is a lot more viable for you (there are more routes per capita because of the higher population density). I could take a bus to work, but I'd have drive to the bus stop, and on the other end, I'd have to have a car waiting for me so I could drive the remaining distance. Bus travel time would be 2x-3x as long because it isn't a direct route, and goes some other places I'm not interested in and are out of my way first. Though on nice days I suppose I could carry a bike onto the bus with me.

I guess I'm just lazy, and would rather not spend 4 hours a day commuting to and from work.

Also, at this time of year it's dark when I get to work, and dark when I leave work, so riding a bike is incredibly unsafe (there's not sidewalks unless you're in the city, and I'm not).

Re:I hope they all quit!

[MindStalker]

Thats what AT&T WANTS.
AT&T can't reasonably afford to lay off 10K workers. Thats very expensive.
They know that many of their telecommuting workers have built their lives around telecommuting, meaning they just simply can't start going to work. Many of them might not even have reliable transportation. AT&T knows that of the 12K workers they are telling to come back to work possibly half may just quit. AT&T would love this.

Re:I hope they all quit!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it's funny that the very company that could benefit most from the telecommuting trend won't allow it for their own workers. I expect it to just be politics rather than a decision based on objective data.

Better than telecommuting.

[rice_burners_suck]

I have an idea to be at the office and telecommute at the same time: Invent the holodeck.

The office space would actually be a giant holodeck with holographic cubicles and other holographic office equipment. At each employee's home, a much smaller holodeck would be installed. These holodecks would be designed similarly to the ones in Star Trek, but with one small difference: These holodecks would use a superset of the X11 protocol.

Employees at their home holodeck would feel exactly as though they were at the office. Those who physically commute to the office would feel the same way. The residual self images of all the employees logged in to all the holodecks at any given moment would be mapped onto the big office holodeck as well as onto all the smaller holodecks at all the employees' homes.

Besides saving on gasoline, hours wasted commuting, and traffic jams caused on the nation's highways and streets, this approach would have a few additional benefits as well. For one thing, besides purchasing the holodeck, the employer would not have to buy any other equipment or supplies. All desks, chairs, computer workstations, pens, pencils, post-it notepads, lights, water coolers, vending machines, carpets, and those annoying inspirational posters that say things like Teamwork or Persistence, would all be holographically implemented. This would save big on costs for everyone.

Re:Better than telecommuting.

[Zenaku]

That is a great "idea." I have an even better "idea:" Use magic. If we all used magic to create our food, shelter and amenities, nobody would have to work at all, and we could spend our time playing Quiddich.

impact

[mugnyte]

  Something tells me that the delays in commuting, lost productivity from sick days (most telecommuters work while sick), parking/transportation woes, decreased morale and higher turnover, ATT will slowly report that things probably aren't so bad when a % of workers telecommute.

  In fact, I fully expect to see telecommuting plans as a normal part of government recommendations for business during times of terrorism, epidemic or natural disaster. PUtting it bluntly, SBC simply doesn't know where the world is going.

Re:impact

[skintigh2]

That's one hypothesis. Another is that the decision was based on emotion, not logic, and no amount of consequences will matter or even be noticed. Management will get their bonuses no matter what, and if a devision does suffer enough they will just lay off some workers.

beware of "reconcilling"

[FuzzyDaddy]

He says AT&T is in the process of reconciling the human resources policies

Translation: out of the three companies which are merging, let's pick the policy that takes the most away from the employees.

Telecommuting is good for business.

[Peter Trepan]

As the CEO of a successful chain of churches, I can tell you that our televangelists are much more lucrative than our traditional ones.

Telecommute = Outsourced

[flerchin]

It has occurred to me recently (and probably to many others before this), that if your job can successfully be performed via telecommute, it can probably successfully be performed in India. Granted, this is not the entire set of telecommuting jobs, but a large portion of them. To that end I have always avoided job opportunities that included a telecommuting option, and instead focused on job opportunities closer to home in the first place.

Re:Telecommute = Outsourced

[eln]

If your job doesn't actually require you to physically move or manipulate something that can only exist locally, your job can be outsourced whether you work in an office or not.

One Way to Reduce Headcount

[DrEnter]

I was at HP when they did this. They didn't make much of a secret that it was being done to try and drive people away from the company to reduce headcount. I suppose it worked to some extent, as many of the people that were "recalled" were working at remote locations where it was impossible for them to commute to an office location. Those people were effectively laid-off, and without getting the nice HP severance package normally received for the major lay-offs HP was doing at the time.

All I can say is I'm glad that I am out of there. HP is still doing anything they can to make it a miserable place to work so people will leave. Last I heard they just eliminating almost all year-end vacation roll-over (Merry Christmas, employees).

I suspect AT&T will start doing some of this kind of thing now. It is much cheaper for them if employees quit out of frustration then if they have to give them a lay-off package. I suspect they'll see a few more of these "changes" that don't seem to make sense until you look at it as a headcount reduction method.

Re:I hope they all quit!

[gEvil (beta)]

Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how much that many data lines cost? It's not like AT&T can just get a bulk discount on them or anything...

Re:Oh No!

[truthsearch]

The irony is that this is coming from a company that should be promoting the cutting edge of telecommuting technology. At the very least they should promote telecommuting to sell high speed data links between work and home and video conferencing. I think they've lost sight of their core business.

To telecommute or not to telecommute

[Anonymous Coward]

I am speaking from experience on this, so please hear me out (I also have to post this anonymously):

The honest truth is that only the foolish ones work 40+ hour weeks. If you're smart, you've positioned yourself so that you only do about 15 hours of work but everybody thinks you work 60+ hours (emails sent during nights and weekends help with this illusion). Telecommuting helps you hide this fact although you still need to be in the office on occassion for socializing and general schmoozing. Out of sight is out of mind and we don't want that come bonus and promotion time. And quite honestly, I don't see it as a badge of honor to work my ass off for my company. I want to enjoy life, not slave for someone else's bonus. The sad irony of this little scenario is that the higher up you advance, the less you generally work. I say this as an engineer who recently moved into marketing and who is right this very moment "working from home." I'm actually about to go for a nice bike ride but I'll first send a few emails asking for schedules from the software group. The software guys will give me a date and I'll forward this to the customer. They will go back to work while I will arrange a nice trip to California where we'll go out and party, talk a little business, and generally make all of our strategic decisions in a bar somewhere in San Francisco.

If you are an engineer with any sort of social skills, get the hell out of engineering and go into sales/marketing. Your technical talents will make you a god, you will decide what projects to do, and you will have a life other than coding and WoW. And if the above didn't convince you, I will just say two words: Marketing Chicks!

It's your life. Don't waste it.

AT&T just doesn't get the big picture

[fury88]

AT&T clearly has no clue. My wife works from home for a very large company. In fact they let her move out of state where they don't even have an office. They are letting more and more workers telecommute because her company understands the big picture of retaining employees. In fact they pay for our net connection as well as her business phone, fax, printer, and other expenses. Her boss yelled at her for NOT expensing stuff soon enough because its SOO much cheaper for the company to allow telecommuting than bringing them into the office. This company CLEARLY gets it.