Telecommuting * By Robert Moskowitz
To find out how good a candidate you might be for success in telecommuting, consider how much you agree or disagree with each of the statements in the following "Telecommuter Index." If you agree strongly with a statement, score three points. If you don't agree at all, score zero points. If you're somewhere in between, score either one or two points. After you complete the test, see how to interpret your total point score.
If you disagreed with every statement, you could score a "0" on the entire Telecommuter Index. If you agreed strongly with every statement, you could score a maximum of "99."
A score of 80-99 indicates that you're a prime candidate to become a successful telecommuter, or you're already telecommuting and very satisfied with this new mode of working.
A score of 60-79 indicates that you have a good chance to become a successful telecommuter. Take some training, or talk to some successful telecommuters about their experiences. Ask about your own telecommuting-related anxieties, concerns, or fears. You'll increase your chances for success as a telecommuter if you concentrate some of your energy on overcoming these problems before they compromise your performance.
A score of 40-59 indicates that you are an average candidate for telecommuting. Before you begin working this way, you must be sure to take the appropriate training, and to make a conscious effort while you're telecommuting to practice the particular communications, planning, and motivational techniques the training recommends.
A score of 20-39 indicates that success at telecommuting will require a special effort not only to learn and practice new techniques, but to overcome your current tendencies and habits of thought that make telecommuting more difficult. Before you start telecommuting, make sure you understand exactly what benefits you're hoping to obtain from working this new and different way. Then focus and refocus on these benefits to keep yourself motivated as you encounter the inevitable telecommuting difficulties and obstacles during the first six months.
A score of 0-19 indicates that telecommuting may not be your cup of tea. If you feel strongly that you'd like to succeed as a telecommuter, work with your supervisor, with successful telecommuters you know, with trainers of telecommuters, or even with books on how to telecommute until you feel more comfortable with the skills and working styles associated with this approach to work.
By far the biggest hurdle still remaining between the present rate of growth in telecommuting and a much higher "take off" rate that will quickly bring telecommuting to the vast majority of workers in this country (and around the world), is the difficulty of many managers to find the tasks that the average person can appropriately and effectively complete from a distance.
It's perfectly understandable that this hurdle must still be jumped, because not all work is easily adaptable to telecommuting. Plumbers, for example, and surgeons, for another, are hard-pressed to get much done as telecommuters. We just don't have the remote manipulators and wide bandwidth "telepresence" that would be needed to stop a leak or resect a bowel from twenty miles away. At least, not yet!
Many service jobs, too, require a person's physical presence at the site where they're going to be flipping and serving hamburgers, receiving clothes for dry cleaning, guiding a tour or driving a taxi. But despite the difficulties in doing some tasks as a telecommuter, there are plenty more that lend themselves very well to this new way of working.
At our present state of the art, telecommuting is most effective when applied to tasks that can be done alone or in small groups, in just about any location. The more expensive, heavy equipment the work requires, the more immovable resources, and the more people who must be involved to accomplish the work, the easier it remains to gather all the people around the necessary resources and equipment--which is the current "industrial" style of working--and have them go at it. That's why farmers, printers, fish catchers, and thousands of other workers have not yet been converted to telecommuters.
But jobs that are resistant to telecommuting are becoming a smaller and smaller segment of the overall economy. As the U.S. dominance in manufacturing, raw material extraction and processing, and similar "heavy industries" continues to wane, we're developing whole new categories of jobs that include more and more work easily done as a telecommuter.
Let's take a quick look at some of the tasks that already make sense for telecommuters:
Analyzing--Whether you're looking at financials, performance contracts, business plans, or anything else, the essence of analysis is one person thinking. This can work just as well when you're at home as it does when you're in the office--and sometimes better!
Auditing--Concentration is critical when you're trying to understand and validate a flow of cash, a value for specific goods and services, a paper trail of transactions, and any of the rest that auditors do. Interruptions and distractions make this job harder, not easier, to do.
Comparing, Contrasting, Creating--These are mental processes that don't require much of anything outside the individual's own intelligence and resources. Sometimes working in groups makes for better results, to be sure. But not always. And not always in person.
Planning--One of the most important aspects of all work, planning can be done anywhere, from a bathroom "throne" to behind the wheel of an automobile. The number of people involved and the equipment requirements--usually computers and software--generally grow larger with the complexity of the task to be planned. Yet planning essentially involves remembering the past, seeing into the future, and making realistic guesses or judgments. That's why a good planner with a pencil and paper can almost always produce better results than an army of bad planners using the latest gadgetry.
Problem solving--This is the prototypical work of the white collar employee. While there may be a physical, location-oriented component to some of it--identifying an "out of tolerance" condition on production equipment, for example, or gathering information from people on scene--a good deal of effective problem solving takes place inside the brain, regardless of its geographical location.
Computer work--Whether you're keypunching account numbers, programming in C++, or responding to email, nearly everything you do with a computer can be done anywhere on the planet--provided the proper infrastructure exists. Finding a way to do computer work as a telecommuter is generally a slam dunk.
Contract preparation or analysis--Just a highly specialized form of reading and writing, contract work is very often easy to transport out to a teleworker. The biggest obstacle is when large quantities of reference materials are available only on paper, and only in a centralized office. But since reference materials that require constant updating are generally cheaper and more effective when kept on computers rather than in print, this obstacle is rapidly disappearing.
Correspondence, and filling in or processing forms--As with contract work, the reading and writing involved here are far less important than the content of what is read and written, filled in or processed. If a correspondent is answering letters, or a forms processor is examining complex documents, making the necessary documents or information available at the telecommuting location can be a little cumbersome. However, generating new materials is usually fairly easy, since the information can be typed into a computer located almost anywhere just as easily as in the office. In fact, data can be typed into a computer at one location, then printed out on a form at another. It's far easier to move the work than the worker.
Designing--This varies from high-tech engineering work that requires expensive and highly specialized computerized systems to tasks like graphic design, clothing design, and home decorating, all of which can be supported by off-the-shelf computers costing less than $3,000 or $4,000. Even a specialized printer, if you need one, doesn't drive the cost beyond the reach of the average employer and its average teleworker. For this reason, most design work can be done by teleworkers as easily as by conventional commuters traveling daily from home to office and back again.
Meetings--For decades, time-management and other efficiency experts have been writing about the expense, the inefficiencies, and the stultifying effects (on most people who attend them) of most meetings. But all this blather has reduced the number of meetings, or in some organizations the average length of meetings, by less than 5%. That people might become unavailable for time-honored meetings is one big reason why so many managers have been reluctant to sanction "working at home." But the proof is readily available for anyone willing to see--well over 80% of meetings can be handled as well as, or better than, face-to-face interactions through email, telephone, fax, and various forms of conferencing. When necessary, it's easy to reschedule a particular meeting to accommodate the non-travel schedules of the organization's telecommuters.
Numerical or financial calculations--Another mainstay of most organizations, calculations are rarely done collaboratively. Most people charged with this work devote solitary hours and days to it. Oh, they may coordinate with others, divide a mountain of work among team members, and compare or compile their results to complete the overall project. But the central aspect of their mental and physical work can easily be done as a telecommuter.
Project analysis or management--Much of project management work certainly involves face-to-face contact with the project team. But there are other tasks--the planning, record-keeping, and reporting, as well as the tracking of resources and progress--that don't require the presence of others and, in fact, go better with fewer interruptions. Solution: send the work out to be done by a telecommuter.
Sales or contact work--Traveling salespeople are well-respected for staying out of the central office. But many other kinds of sales and customer contacts can also be handled from home or a telecommuting work center. Doing this work without physically traveling to the office offers many important advantages, too, such as the enhanced flexibility to make contact with people in different time zones.
With all these examples on display, it should be obvious that job titles don't tell you much about whether or not a person can effectively accomplish his or her work as a telecommuter. What really matters is whether or not the individual engages in work that can be handled at a distance from the main office. The answer is almost always "yes." That's because almost every position today involves some tasks that are perfectly appropriate for telecommuting.
The trick is simply to re-organize each job so the telecommuting-appropriate tasks are gathered together to fill one or more days of the week. Then it can make sense for the person doing that job to telecommute on those days, and continue to come into the office the other days.
Copyright © 1997 by Robert Moskowitz. All rights reserved.