Slashdot Mirror
Building a Case For Telecommuting
Esther Schindler writes "Many of us geeks prefer to work at home without distractions, but a lot of bosses still believe that if they don't see you, you must be lolling about, eating bon-bons and playing Angry Birds. 'There may be many reasons a manager is distrustful of telecommuting but the phenomenon of what Albiero calls "presentism"—that is, only trusting and rewarding the folks you see at their computer is a major factor.' So it may be of some use to read through the research compiled by Diann Daniel that says telecommuting creates happier and more productive employees (which naturally include fewer distractions and better work-life balance), and an accompanying infographic showing the environmental benefits from reduced commuting. She follows it up with suggestions on how managers can mentor and support teleworkers. Some of this is general advice, but some of the tips are more specific: 'It may seem like a lot more work—all this up-front addressing of communication issues that happen far more naturally in the office—but the upside is increased efficiency. Albiero sees this especially in the area of meetings. He speaks of one client who has now instituted a meeting format that is structured to allow for the first five minutes of all meetings to be "small-talk minutes." Thus, everyone knows they needn't call in for those minutes unless they want to join."
Going to work creates a balance by segregating time between work and pleasure. I work at home and the only thing that happens 18 hour days.
All the iron I work on I never get to see anymore, which is fine by me. At least from home I'm not trying to shout over all the fans while either freezing or burning. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
I got lucky and found a job where I can telecommute from Seattle to San Francisco. I go to SF about once a quarter just to get some face time, but I spend my working time here at home. I put very few miles on my car now and I feel great about that. I don't take up office space there in SF and I feel good about that. I'm productive and my bosses are happy about that.
I fully realize this can't work for everybody, but it sure works for me. My superviser and I communicate through Skype and GotoMeeting at least a couple times a day, once for SCRUM and every so often to get some information across to each other. It would be a boost to the economy, I would think, if more places would do this.
Being in a 6 by 6 foot cube surrounded by co-workers who have annoying habits or have extended conversations.
and an accompanying infographic
When this word plateaus, I will bring back synergy.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
No, they think your posting to slashdot.
Classical case of false metrics. For practical business purposes, you should be measured on what you're actually getting done, not on what you might be doing alongside of it. I mean people do that kind of stuff in the office, too, you know. At the end of the day, the question is, did the job get done?
to say "hey bob" rather than text him and hope I can get a response in a reasonable amount of time. We "telecommute" when people have to be on the road, like today where one of the engineers sent me an email at 1P.M., though I had zero reason to even be near my computer until I left at 6 ...yea, that was efficient
I did part time telecommuting for a few years. It saved my an hour a day in commute time and reduce my gas purchases by half. There is one downside to telecommuting that wasn't mention in the article. At times, it can be difficult to separate work and personal time. If the work is engaging, it is easy to lose track of time and work many more hours. When working on tasks that are boring and monotonous, it can become impossible to focus. It is much easier to get into work mode when the environment changes.
You're not using the tools available to you then. Phone. IM, chat rooms, teleconferences available at a moments notice. We have a number of people in our group that work remotely (and the rest of us work from home once or twice a week). We keep a chatroom going with the lot of us (8 of us) in there at all times - mostly it's used for the usual office-type banter, but its great for collaboration etc. We also have loose rules, that if you want to telecommute, you HAVE to make yourself available at a moments notice by phone. Sometimes you step away from the computer, so you miss an IM etc, but if that phone rings, you better be answering it or you're going to lose your telecommuting privs.
Just set the expectations with the group. We have no problems getting stuff done on very short (minutes) notice.
Implicit in the idea of "telecommuting" is the idea of "at a distance," a.k.a. "tele" -- the same root as "telecommunications" and "telephone." If you need to get in touch with your employees quickly, is there a reason you can't just make a phone call? Obviously, if your business is of a kind where employees need to be able to do things hands-on, then probably it's not a good candidate for telecommuting and TFS doesn't really apply to you. Otherwise, I'm not sure I see what the problem is.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Angry Birds?!
Try Battlefield 3 man...
My standing rule for working from home (I spent years as a consultant and often find myself telecommuting with my current job): Get up at the same time you would if you were to go in, get dressed, shower, shave (if that's your thing), brush your teeth, have breakfast/coffee/etc... away from your work space. At the point you would typically leave for work, sit down at your desk. Do so dressed as you would at work.
Keep your desk in the same state you would feel comfortable at your job. If you smoke, go outside for a typical smoke break. If you stop for coffee, do so by walking away from your desk.
Take lunch away from your work space.
Finally, log off VPN at the end of "your shift". Don't fall into the habit of "working late", it's only going to set a habit of allowing your schedule to fluctuate and will make you less productive where it matters.
#SickNotWeak
...you enjoy your job and what you're currently doing. I've telecommuted with a team of 18+ other software engineers for the last 5+ years, and did a stint a while back. When you're engaged in what your doing, and believe in it, working at home is awesome. You focus, you maximize your efficiency by finding the optimal interlacing with the rest of your life. But when the company is jerking you around, or dumps crap work on you, working at home is really hard.
So my word to employers is if you believe in your product and your people, then this really is the best arrangement for you. Otherwise, get our the whips and put 'em in them thar cubies.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
I can see a bit of that. I like walking to people's cubes to talk. If not there then often I'll just go do something else, and only after a few times of being missed then I'll try email. But email is too often a black hole (and it applies both ways I admit). And I never do IM, I just hate that as the worst way to communicate. So it is nice pragmatically just to talk to people.
There's also the advantage of having someone in the office in being able to just chat. Ie, "what are you working on?" or "how's it going?" A lot of work related info can pop up that way, you learn that Bob is working on some feature that you might be able to use, that the source code control system totally sucks, how to work around a problem, etc. Most telecommuters are really only out of the office a short time, but for those telecommuters who spend the vast majority of time at home or away (ie, those on the other side of the country) are often left out of the loop on many things. They know about their own tasks and a few related ones but often seem to miss the big picture of the full project.
For instance I can swivel in my chair and ask "what's the name of the function I need to use to log an event?" and get an answer. If I send email it may take an hour to get a response, and I've already figured out the answer on my own. Even in IM you don't get an instant answer (you can't tell if the person on the other end is busy). Of course some people don't like interruptions like that and maybe they're the sort who do better telecommuting. I can chat with the person in the next cube and say "this code is really nasty" and then learn some backstory on it but I'd never actually email something like that.
Out of sight, out of mind. This does not apply just to the boss but to your coworkers as well. Especially if you're the sort who rarely shows up in person, the coworkers may not be sure just what you do or how you fit into the team or when you need to be consulted with. Team building is minimal.
Telecommunication probably works best when you have a very well defined task, don't mind being isolated, etc. Even if you think IM is great does not mean all your coworkers are going to chatting with it as much as they could and some won't use it at all.
I've been on a team where I was mostly doing my own thing. My boss would say "it's ok, you don't have to come to the status meeting" and things like that. But over time I really felt out of the loop and isolated. People would be using project names I'd never heard of, unfamiliar buzzwords, etc. I just did not feel like a part of a team.
After reading all the relevant sources from the article, there is on peer reviewed research that shows improved productivity when telecommuting.
In fact there is no research at all.
There are opinions from people, but no actual evidence. And most of the opinions could be considered bias because the source is from those already pro-telecommuting.
I think that lack of evidence is telling.
I work for a megacorporation. I can go to any nearby office and get a desk for the day (or a conference room for my team), but I can mostly work from home. I tend to go in and meet my team about once a month for collaboration and socialization. My company was able to close 10 pretty large office buildings in my region, at pretty substantial savings. I am pretty sure they get tax breaks for "green" business practices.
It's a pretty big company and we have a 20% telecommute goal, but it is mostly IT who are eligible, so nearly all of us in software telecommute now.
Everyone I know complains that "you never really leave work" when telecommuting, and most of the people I work with don't even stop for lunch any more. I try to have boundaries, but honestly as a developer you never really leave work anyway... but I can take a shower and eat dinner at home, which is great.
Mostly what they got from me though is loyalty. I have worked there for 8 years, only 2 of them telecommute, and no bonus, raise, or corporate title bought them the loyalty that telecommuting bought them. With this sweet setup, I will never quit... It would have to get pretty bad for me to want to... I am hoping that by the time I have to move on Telecommute will be the norm.
Public speaking classes tell you that over 1/2 of the communication between you and an audience is through non verbal cues including tone and body language, mostly body language. Even regular conversations are better in person because your meeting is better conveyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_language
If you're job can be done without communication then I can send that job to the cheapest place that can read the directions.
I worked on a project about 6 years ago where we actually tracked work for the staff across days. The whole "middle of the bell curve" part of our team did significantly less work on their Friday "work at home days". Less email, fewer source code commits, fewer tickets closed. Someone is going to claim it was because they were more "heads down" but I don't buy it given the size repeatability of the differences.
It's always been about employer risk. Certainly, many telecommuters do good work and do work well. That's not the point. For every ten good ones, there's at least one bad one. That bad one is really bad. And the problem is that it takes a long time, and a lot of effort and money to discover and deal with that one bad one. It's just not worth the risk.
I, as an employer, far prefer the costs associated with the office setup to have ten office employees who are each at 50%, than to have ten telecommuters, save the office expenses, have 9 at 100% and 1 at 20%. That one guys can take down my entire business. I've worked far too hard and risked far too much to let that happen.
And the article is correct. It takes longer to train a telecommuter -- who may not stick around longer enough to matter.
Telecommuting is for already-proven and trusted employees, who want a break and a better life. It's something to be earned.
I did part time telecommuting for a few years. It saved my an hour a day in commute time and reduce my gas purchases by half. There is one downside to telecommuting that wasn't mention in the article. At times, it can be difficult to separate work and personal time. If the work is engaging, it is easy to lose track of time and work many more hours. When working on tasks that are boring and monotonous, it can become impossible to focus. It is much easier to get into work mode when the environment changes.
Different people are different; I don't think one size fits all. For me, I found it much easier to balance work and home life while telecommuting, because of the flexibility it gave me -- not to mention the hours saved in commute time. I telecommuted nearly full time for 10 years, and then a year ago got a new job that requires me to be in the office most of the time, and it's been hard adjusting. I appreciated the ability to easily leave "work" for an hour or two to go to a kid's school production, or to go out for a run, or whatever. I shifted some of my "work" time late into the evening when my family was in bed. All in all, I really preferred it. I love my new job, but I'd love it even more if I could work from home.
I found that it is useful to maintain some separation, though, even when working from home, mainly so that your family can distinguish between your work and non-work time. I did it by designating my home office as my workspace. My kids knew that when Dad was in his office, he was working and not to be disturbed if possible. Though my wife never did grasp the concept, somehow...
That doesn't mean I only worked in my office. Geek that I am, I packed my laptop everywhere, and I didn't see anything wrong with answering a few e-mails while watching a movie with the kids or something. On the other hand, I also didn't see anything wrong with ignoring the e-mail when it wasn't convenient.
Company culture (this was at IBM) had quickly developed some rules of etiquette that really helped. For example, one rule is that you don't call anyone on the phone without first instant messaging them to ask if you can call. So when people aren't working, they shut off their IM client, and that's a signal to everyone else that they aren't to be bothered. Some other rules were that e-mail was not used when quick replies were expected and that background noise (kids, dogs, whatever) was normal and not unprofessional during conference calls.
One thing that really makes a huge difference in your ability to successfully telecommute is the number of your colleagues who telecommute. At IBM it quickly became everyone, so it worked very well. At Google, where I am now, most everyone is in the office and while we have great tools for remote communication (Google+ Hangouts, basically, integrated into calendaring and with high-end audio/video equipment in the conference rooms), if you're not around for the water cooler conversation you miss a lot, and it would be hard to be productive.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I did exactly that for 18 months and it worked well. It took some discipline to achieve, but I felt the benefit of maintaining work/home seperation was worth it.
Hold on, hold on, you're saying people don't actually work at 100% theoretical capacity 100% of their official work time? That they, like, ramp up on Mondays and wind down on Fridays? That they, like, cannot go from 0 to 100 instantly when coming into work and back down to 0 instantly when leaving? That they're, like, humans, not robots?
Woah, woah, stop the presses, this is a mayor breakthrough!
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Agreed.
I'm a 'techie' (software engineer) and effective collaboration is much easier and more productive face to face.
I work for a global company and I won't say that I can't communicate effectively with people I don't share a room with (or haven't even met), because I can. But I wouldn't want to be part of a team that didn't spend a good part of the week together.
Telecommuting is useful for those times when flexibility is required - someone lives remotely and would like not to commute a couple of times a week, the guy is coming to fix the dishwasher and you need to be home... but all the time? Hell no.
We collect stats here too.
Recently an employee left to go overseas and his manager thought it might be interesting to read out some of his stats.
Turns out that most of his commits were on mondays and wednesdays, the 2 days we work from home.
Make of that what you will, but no one here would deny the benefits of working from home.
I would argue, that even if the only benefit was happier workers, the company still wins.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Less email, fewer source code commits, fewer tickets closed.
If what you say is accurate, then simple: identify those whose productivity does not decrease when remote and give them more remote. Take remote away from any who demonstrate insufficient maturity to manage it.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
So how does that work when you are employed by a large corporation that has multiple locations, where the majority of the people in meetings are on the phone from different locations? How does it matter if I'm at one of the other corporate offices rather than my home office?
No co-workers coming up behind me and bothering me.
In my experience telecommuting, I traded that for people who live with me coming up behind me and bothering me, forgetting that I'm on the clock.
At my last job, I had all kinds of distractions: the A/C unit in the ceiling over my desk was horribly loud, cow-orkers constantly coming up behind me and startling me when I was trying to concentrate, people having conversations next to me, etc. And I didn't have any cubicle walls on two sides, only a half-height wall on one side and a full-height wall next to it (which separated workgroups from each other). It was so distracting I never could concentrate very well. My boss insisted we needed this environment for "collaboration". They didn't even have any decent quiet areas to go take a break in; they had one quiet area with chairs downstairs for a while, but then the building ownership told them not to let their employees sit there any more because some other company had rented the space next to it. I ended up walking out without notice one day in sheer frustration.
Then I got a job telecommuting. It has its challenges and problems, but most of them are with myself and my own discipline, rather than other people and outside factors. I don't get in trouble for being a few minutes late to work, I don't have to deal with 25 miles of traffic each way, I can wear whatever I want, I can have my cats keep me company, I can play my music as loud as I want; it's a pretty good deal really. The discipline is a big problem though; you have to constantly exercise self-discipline to get things done and not get distracted (like with Slashdot).
The answer is that those meetings don't work very well. You get people not paying attention, people answering their email, people who are hard to understand over the phone, etc etc etc. Such meetings are very rarely productive. If you are having a lot of them, time to starting looking for another job, because your company is in trouble.
You're right - I work at a very large company with half a dozen locations in the US spread across 3 timezones, plus a major presence in Europe and India.
Face to face meetings aren't possible in a lot of cases, but my company has actually made an effort to consolidate the majority of people on a particular project team into one or two sites, and encourages managers to rotate "off-site" people through by bringing them to the project's main site for a couple weeks at a time. It works well.
Our schedules tend to be very flexible, but we're all encourage to set (and keep!) "office hours" a couple times a week, where we'll commit to being available for in-person meetings at the office, as well as using instant messaging, screen sharing, and voice chat to keep in touch as-needed.
It's not as good and convenient as being able to pop your head over the cubicle wall and ask the guy next door a question, but it is possible to be fairly effective while working "virtually." But it's definitely more effort.
No, they think your posting to slashdot.
Classical case of false metrics. For practical business purposes, you should be measured on what you're actually getting done, not on what you might be doing alongside of it. I mean people do that kind of stuff in the office, too, you know. At the end of the day, the question is, did the job get done?
^^THIS
Most weeks I telecommute two days and go to the office the other three. We have a strong "get the job done, the rest is window dressing" philosophy. One of the things I tell my new hires early on goes something like this:
"I don't need to walk past your desk and see you working non-stop for 8 hours. I don't expect it to happen. If I walk past you and you're checking some news site or playing minesweeper or freecell or whatever it is you do to pass time, I don't care. At the end of the week, I know if you're getting the job done. I know if you've completed all your assignments or have good reasons for not having finished. I know which projects you've asked for more details or clarification about, and that tells me all I need to know. I don't care how or when you're getting it done, so long as you're getting it done."
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
It has benefits for *you*. It has detriments to all of your coworkers and your employer. It's one thing if you need to do it once in a while. Things happen, and it's a nice way to avoid sick days. And if your employer is happy with the amount of work you put out, then it's all perfectly fair. In my next job, I'm hoping to find a place that will let me work from the road a week every month or two so I can do more traveling. But be honest about it- if you're doing it regularly you are lowering the teams output from what it should be. The other forms of communication and collaboration don't come within an order of magnitude of the same effectiveness as face to face.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Home:
I've got no kids home, here. I can tune out the pets. The TV is too hard for the other to figure out, so it's off. I skip personal calls, if I don't have the time.
I will peek at my weather radar from time to time. (I can still peek when I'm in the office on lessor applications.)
Food? Don't have time to eat during the day.
Exercise? Guilty there. I'll keep the cordless on mute and jog around the yard on conference calls that last 10 times longer than they should. (At least I get the exercise.)
In the Office:
My iPod is broken, and the chatter boggles my mind when trying to code (when I'm awake). While I do have a parrot for a pet, he's less of an issue on conference calls.
Since they killed off telecommuting 3 days a week, the 180 mile commute leaves me "dead but dreaming" for the better part of the morning into the afternoon. (Not enough hours in the day, and going through heavy city traffic).
Tiny laptop monitor, vs. self purchased dual screen. Painful chair, vs. ergonomic (purchased). No mouse / trackball / keyboard, but for said company laptop. Bootup time is 1-2 hours, where I can leave it on, working from home.
Yes, working from home is better for some.
--Robert
Also, can I add getting some physical exercise before sitting down to work. Even just a 10-minute walk outside.
Gets the blood flowing or something.
It's a Friday, productivity is going to take a hit no matter which location you are working from.
I am John Hurt.
I think the telecommuting debate can be easily answered by asking a single question-> which location offers the least amount of distractions?
If you have Office Space-style bosses, dropping by every 15 minutes, to see "how you're coming along with that project" then working at home is a godsend. You'll be more productive, and your code will show it.
If you have bosses who know to leave you alone while you're working on something (but they are known themselves for being generally available for when you have questions (you go to them) -> "What does the client want here?" or "Teach me how to Git" or "When you worked at Inuit, how did you guys solve this problem?"), and family life is filled with distractions (the GF is PMSing that week, the kids like to play loud music, the husband is in Marketing and has entered his mid-life crisis) than working at work would potentially be better. Hell, some of the most productive workers in human history are people who stay late at the office because they hate their family life.
And of course, if both home and work are filled with equal levels of annoyance, then you're kind of screwed. You can try working at a Starbucks or a Barnes and Noble, but it's still fairly rough. On the plus side, you do get the social interaction that you miss at both places, the coffee is usually hot, and there are lots of books on various subjects you might need to learn nearby (boss says learn Ruby, wander over to aisle with O'Reilly Ruby book in it).
If I had a choice in life, I'd have two offices -> one to meet with people in, and one to be productive in. The one to meet with people in would have conference chairs, a large Mahogany desk, and perhaps a small putting green next to the Koi pond (the palace at Versaille might be large enough). The one to be productive in would be at an undisclosed location, with a fiber connection & enough food / supplies to last me weeks (a Japanese sleeping tube might be slightly smaller than I'd potentially want here). The only people with knowledge of said undisclosed location would be the catering (for when I don't feel like cooking) and cleaning (for when I leave) staff, and they'd work for cash (no name given). I'd keep a separate email address and cellphone for said place; it's the only way to be productive. If you stumbled across the place, there'd be a pair of swords of the doorways, and a sound recording constantly being played over the outside speakers (said sound consisting of the last few moments of the life of the person who previously disturbed me while I was otherwise engaged in potentially deeper thoughts).
I am John Hurt.
We build a video collaboration tool (VSee) for telecommuters and distributed teams. We're 25+ people spread across the East and West Coast US, Europe and Singapore. Almost everyone works from home. Some things we've learned over the years:
Appropriate mode of communication: :) There isn't a one size fits all. The modes vary in how asynchronous they are (email: asynchronous, video/IM: synchronous), how "lightweight" they feel (video: heavy, IM: light) and how much human communication bandwidth they offer (video: high, IM: low). Knowing when to switch from one to another - and not get stuck in a sub-optimal mode of communication - is key. We've developed a sense for when an email thread or IM conversation has grown past its usefulness, and switch to video e.g. VSee. Used appropriately, video can really reduce conflict, promote understanding and speed up decisions. We usually don't start a conversation right off on video, but on IM.
Email, micro-blogging, IM, IRC, video - we've tried them all
Appropriately designed tools:
Because telecommuting is still in early days, often we've adopted tools which weren't quite designed for the "remote work" use case. E.g. with Skype, one can't do video + screen sharing at the same time, and the screen sharing quality is just not enough for real work e.g. looking at code together. With WebEx, video is sub-par and the UX is optimized for webinars/presentations, not group collaboration. VSee is our (ongoing) attempt to solve many of these problems and package group video + app/screen sharing in a UI that's pleasant to use throughout the telecommute work day. We love feedback on how to make it work even better in the trenches.
Team practices:
It's easy to get out of sync when relying purely on as-needed communication. We've found daily standups/huddles over video to be indispensable, even if brief. The formula we use is each team has its own daily huddle. Tech leads will often attend the huddles of other teams. After huddles, people often break out into smaller groups to discuss issues in more detail. All of this happens quite seamlessly on VSee.
Ambient awareness, team bonding: :) Micro-blogging, IRC and a culture of open sharing helps (e.g. every email list is open to all employees). For team bonding, we get everyone together for fun activities (snow sports, wake-boarding) twice a year, encourage team members close to each other to meet up more often, and in general try to create a family-like and family-friendly environment.
Being remote does take a toll on these aspects. Ambient awareness refers to the random ideas and conversations, things overheard while sitting in an open work area. We haven't fully figured that one out yet
All the best to telecommuters old and new!
Judging by my coworkers, the other 2/3 don't telecommute.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And now for people like me who don't really benefit (quite the opposite) from being able to transport information by body language...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I first started working at home, I missed having co-workers. I missed dressing up for work although I admit I liked not having to commute for work. In terms of productivity, I really needed to discipline myself. I have a child at home so my productivity was definitely affected in the first few weeks. I agree that telecommuting is a great option but I don't think it's something that should be implemented for all. Some groups of people need to be in the same physical space to work. Some are more productive working alone at home.
Public speaking classes tell you that over 1/2 of the communication between you and an audience is through non verbal cues including tone and body language, mostly body language. Even regular conversations are better in person because your meeting is better conveyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_language
I completely agree with that.
If you're job can be done without communication then I can send that job to the cheapest place that can read the directions.
I completely disagree with that.
Communication *is* impaired by a lack of face-to-face contact. This means you need to employ (or train, but that is less reliable) employees that are superb at communication to compensate. Nonetheless, "reading the directions" is probably a very small aspect of most jobs. You need to find the place that produces the most cost effective results and I'm sure that there are many jobs that are ideally suited to telecommuting because you can still communicate when you need to, but you avoid a lot of the frivolous communication you see in office-based environments.
I say that as someone who works from home, and manages employees based in an office and other employees based remotely.
I own a small company that builds computational systems for numerical analysis (hardware and software). I have 18 full time and 10 part time/hourly employees in a 12,000 square foot office/lab/assembly facility.
Distraction is a constant problem, even with as few people as we have. Whether it's walk-up traffic, other people having conversations, Internet time sucking, phone calls, or whatever, it all sucks money out of the bottom line.
We have tried numerous approaches to minimizing distraction and time-off-task, and telecommuting was certainly not one of those that helped. Between spouses and kids and errands and pets and TV and other life responsibilities, there was just too much getting in the way.
We tried office hours - people would set "office hours" during which time they welcomed visitors and interruption for various things, but that didn't work because people did not respect them - there was always something "too important" to delay.
We tried universal quiet hours, and that didn't work because it made it too difficult to meet the needs of our clients.
So, we finally did what America did for decades before modern "office efficiency" practices took over. I moved the company to a rented facility for four weeks and had a construction company come in and bulldoze the cube farm and replace it with offices around the perimeter of our building (it's a 120x100 building), and moved the labs and conference rooms to the center space.
Now, everyone has their own office with natural lighting, a pleasant atmosphere, and individual temperature control (THAT was freakin' expensive). Each of the 24 new staff offices is 140 square feet (14x10) with seating for up to four for small meetings. There are smaller shared offices for the part-time/temporary/hourly/co-op workers. We lost some lab space and a couple of conference rooms, but we're getting by without it just fine.
I had to suspend profit sharing for a while to pay for it, but nobody was the slightest bit upset about it. It was by far the best $350k I ever spent on my employees.
The moral of the story is, employees work best in a comfortable environment that they enjoy being in, because they're not thinking about how much they'd rather be somewhere else, doing something else. Some people like it warmer. Some like it cooler. Everyone likes natural lighting. Everyone likes to be comfortable in their surroundings. Give them a comfortable environment, and they will thrive and prosper.
I've been 80% telecommute for the last 5 years, and just two months ago started a 100% telecommute job. New employer is PST, I'm in Central timezone. On top of the new employer being very good with communication technology, it also just really helps to make telecommuting work when you have an organization of people with effective and complementary work ethics in general.
My previous employer was Eastern. Waking up AFTER your co-workers have already started their workday is annoying and gets old very fast, especially when the people to the east of you are idiots. Many places tend to treat email as a realtime communication tool these days, which breaks down very easily. Almost daily, I would wake up to an "urgent" email thread requesting a ton of last-minute work from me as soon as I "get in." I learned to check (and double-check) whether somebody else had been contacted to do it, because a majority of the time they would have found some other schmuck without telling me or even replying to the thread with a "nevermind."
It's no wonder our General Manager was a diehard "presentist." His constant, unsubtle reminders of how much better it would be when (not if) I relocated to HQ were one of the reasons I jumped ship. He knew I did all my work and then some. He knew first-hand that I performed better when I didn't have a herd of caffeinated New Yorkers drooling on the back of my chair and asking about my non-existent opinion on the recent sportsball encounter. He knew I was underpaid even though the cost of living in my hometown was almost 50% of that in HQ. Yet he still thought it was more important for me to relocate than to recognize and exploit the increased efficiency of keeping Grumpy Goldstein happy and alone in his secluded batcave somewhere out in the midwest.
If your company is always managed by firedrill, with poor planning and project management, it's a safe bet that your telecommuters are going insane. And he was shocked (SHOCKED!) when I left.
The only inherently tough part of working from home that I still struggle with is keeping my family from being too much of a distraction without creating unnecessary distance. I don't like keeping my office door closed unless I'm VERYBUSYDONOTDISTURBFORANYREASONBEWAREOFBEARS, but if I'm honest that's rarely the case. Sure, there are times when undivided focus would be a good idea. I just don't like shutting them out, because, well... They're my family, and I'm quite fond of them and wish them to be happy. I've considered putting some sort of studio light outside my office door: if the light's on, do not enter. But that's probably overkill. Most of the time, my wife will just IM me from the other room anyway, which works most of the time.
Anyway, now that I've gone from several wrong-way-to-do-it telecommuting jobs to one that is modern and good at it, I wonder if there are any decent trade groups for telecommuters. Or, better yet, I'd love to let some coke-bottled researchers observe my habits for some university study on long-term telecommuting.
If you're job can be done without communication then I can send that job to the cheapest place that can read the directions.
Most of the jobs we're talking about aren't the type where the directions are actually written.