Who Pays For Setting Up A Home Office?
One question on seemingly everyone's mind is how much and what kind of office equipment and furniture employers generally are providing their telecommuters when they first make the transition from office to home? And what about upgrades later on?
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers because no one has yet identified any widely established patterns.
For example, it is known that some companies are readily reimbursing for extra phone lines for their telecommuters, picking up the tab for their Internet access, and even supplying telecommuters with modems or other communications-related equipment, as needed, to connect with computer systems at the regular office. The likelihood of such largesse seems to be smallest for one-day-a-week telecommuters, but to increase along with the number of days spent telecommuting each week.
It also seems that employers are more willing to pay for transient costs--such as local and long-distance telephone service, subscription fees, and expenses tied to specific usage--than for "durable goods" like desks and chairs and computers that their telecommuters might keep when the telecommuting is over.
In addition, employers seem more willing to provide services and equipment for telecommuting employees when the person is working after hours or during weekends, or when deadlines are tight and cannot be missed without serious consequences to the company.
It's interesting to note that when employers have difficulty supporting people working in a traditional office, telecommuters seem to get little or nothing to help them do their jobs at home. In fact, the growth of telecommuting within an organization sometimes serves to highlight infrastructure problems that would otherwise have continued to go unnoticed.
But no one has yet accumulated enough solid data to paint a detailed picture of what's going on nationally, or what firms "ought" to do for their telecommuters, based on some sort of "common practice." (If readers would like to email me at rmoskowitz@aol.com with their own experiences in this area, I'll gladly compile the results and publish them in this space.)
Nevertheless, it makes sense for newly emerging telecommuters to ask their employers to reimburse them for out-of-pocket expenses like telephones and office supplies, particularly when they are supplying their own computers and office furniture. If office furniture is not readily available, there's no harm in asking to borrow some from an empty office at work, or to be reimbursed at least partly for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in setting up a home office for telecommuting.
Reportedly, Oregon offers tax credits to employers who purchase office equipment for their telecommuters. This not only encourages employers to provide more help to their telecommuters, it promotes telecommuting as an extremely cost-effective way to cut into the damages that physical commuting usually inflicts on the environment and the urban infrastructure. With luck, other states and the federal government will put this relatively simple idea into action.
But don't look for too much governmental support for telecommuting any time soon. Top leaders of course telecommute. Highly valued individuals are usually allowed to do it. But the vast majority of employees are not encouraged to telecommute. The big impetus for the "work at home" movement is more likely to continue coming from individuals on the front-lines of business and government organizations, rather than from the leadership levels. For whatever reasons, organizational leaders seem only marginally interested in spreading the benefits of telecommuting more widely.
Top managers of smaller businesses are generally more flexible on this issue, at least that is one logical conclusion when telecommuting is so widely accepted among organizations with fewer than 100 employees.
Before it can really "break out" and become widely practiced within an organization, telecommuting must first be widely understood and heavily promoted. Surveys repeatedly show that many more employees would like to telecommute than actually do. Many of these would-be telecommuters already perform work that is amenable to telecommuting. Until a spark ignites the national imagination, however, and makes telecommuting as much a part of everyday conversation as nannies and princesses, we'll just have to be content with the same steady growth of telecommuting we've been experiencing for the past two decades.
One of the enduring myths about telecommuting is that managing telecommuters is more difficult than managing conventional commuters. But on closer examination, this myth quickly falls to pieces.
The truth is that conventional commuters are generally managed rather poorly--with little planning, little overall strategic direction, little thought for the effective allocation of resources, and even less for the tight coordination of schedules and efforts. But all these deficiencies tend to be overlooked or ignored because there are no glaring problems that point them out. People accept that it takes an office full of conventional commuters each week to complete a particular project. Hardly anyone recognizes that they could have completed the same work in four days, or even three, through better management techniques.
As for measures of productivity and effectiveness, most managers have a very difficult time measuring anything more detailed than how many hours a person is in the office. They focus on punctuality, attendance, grooming, civility, and so forth. Since little of this can be observed on days a person is telecommuting, there appear to be "no good performance measures" for telecommuters. They exist, of course, but most managers haven't yet learned what they are or how to apply them.
That's why the first round of education about the viability of telecommuting is often an eye-opener, like moving from a Model T to a modern automobile. When properly applied, the tools for managing telecommuters make managing every employee a good deal easier, simpler, and more successful than when a manager relies on a "seat of the pants" or "shoe leather" style.
For proof of this, just read your own job description and those of others in your work group. How many of them itemize even one deliverable, or anything directly related to job performance that can be counted, measured, or otherwise evaluated? All too often, a job description lists responsibilities and authorities without detailing the work to be done or objective bases for performance evaluation.
Those of us who know and appreciate telecommuting sometimes enjoy the naivete of mangers who ask "How can I be sure so-and-so is working when he's out of the office?" It's fun to respond with a surprising rebuttal, something like: "How can you be so sure he's working when he's in the office?"
But this doesn't really meet the manager's need. A better answer is to point out the advantages of agreeing on specific deliverables and deadlines, and then measuring how well the telecommuter meets those standards, regardless of where they sit when they're working.
Many people agree that the issue of "monitoring" telecommuters gets too much attention. The real issues are productivity and delivering what others need on or before the time they need it. For most jobs, we don't need someone watching and listening to make sure we stay on track. With a moderate amount of personal maturity, we can track our own work, measure our own productivity against those agreed-upon standards, and deliver what we've promised without once being monitored by others.
It's like the difference between high school, where teachers monitor every action, track homework, send home notes, and otherwise micro-manage the student's performance, and college, where teachers provide a list of "deliverables" required to pass the course, then say nothing more about them and rely on the students to manage their own performance without any further guidance.
Are you as mature as a teenager in high school, or a college student? How about the other people in your organization, particularly those who'd like to telecommute?
Having to work with telecommuters usually induces managers to become more comfortable with performance-oriented management techniques. Eventually, they begin using them whether a person works at home, in the office, or at some other, third-party site.
Because telecommuter-oriented management techniques work better, telecommuting generally improves the overall management capabilities of those involved with it, and helps boost the performance level of both the telecommuters and those around them.
Telecommuting aids the organization another way, too. It helps identify work that needs to be done, but was previously taken for granted, ignored, or even discouraged. For example, in team settings, it's usually important that people contribute their ideas, experiences, contacts, and opinions to team discussions and problem-solving efforts. Yet in many organizations, little or nothing is done to promote this activity, or to factor an individual's team contributions into his or her overall performance evaluation.
Once team members begin telecommuting, however, it usually becomes obvious that these contributions are a critical element in the team's overall success. That's when top management begins to encourage team sharing and to reward those who do it best.
One enduring difficulty in managing and measuring telecommuters is that many jobs contain both objective and subjective aspects. Deliverables are equivalent to the CEO's quarterly earnings reports. They're important, but too much of a focus on short-term deliverables can lead people to neglect the longer-term practices and investments that underlie and ultimately produce both short-term and long-term successes.
Alan Sherwood, chair of the State of Utah Collaboration Subcommittee Chair, (hsadmin1.asherwoo@state.ut.us), has been asked to help develop a networking strategy (including intranets and extranets) for the State of Utah to use during the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2002. He's interested in finding out about collaboration software that can serve the needs of people working at various combinations of the same times/same places, at different times/different places, and at different times/same places.
He says the Utah freeway system is under extensive re-construction in preparation for the 2002 Winter Olympics and that, in response, people are moving more eagerly toward telecommuting. But, at least in his experience, telecommuting efforts are continually disrupted by the need to attend face-to-face meetings. He would like to reduce these "disruptions" to the flow of telecommuting and electronic collaboration.
Applications that Sherwood is considering include:
According to Sherwood, the main problem is there are a variety of agencies working toward the same goals from different perspectives and starting points, resulting in a "Tower of Babel" effect. He believes those working toward electronic support for the Utah Winter Olympics need a more strategic focus, more standardization, and better understanding of the telecommuting opportunities and trade-offs so they can make better decisions.
Eric Saperstein is currently doing a human factors research project on work tools and technology. In order to understand some of the problems and constraints facing workers, he would like to interview and perhaps even observe you at work. He is primarily interested in studying three different types of telecommuters:
Eric claims his interview and observation process is quite painless. In fact, he's offering to pay $40 for the privilege of interviewing and observing you. He promises it will take no more than two hours, including time spent observing how you interact with different work tools, and more time asking you specific questions.
If you are interested in helping out, and happen to be located in the San Francisco Bay Area or near Silicon Valley, consider contacting Eric, at eric@ideo.com or (415)778-4732, and offering yourself as a test subject.
Separately, Renee Mongo (RMongo9805@aol.com), is part of a group of graduate students in the School of Management, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, who are conducting a study of telecommuters as part of a research project in Organization Behavior. They are using a standardized questionnaire to gather responses regarding telecommuting and its impact on organizations.
Participation in this survey is voluntary and confidential. Responses to the survey will be used strictly for academic purposes. No questions are asked to identify a person or organization.
For the purpose of this survey, the group is defining telecommuting as a means for performing work away from the principal or reporting office one to five days per week. Typically, this is done from home or at a remote location. Telecommuters have no personal contact with co-workers on these days, but communicate electronically via telephone, facsimile, electronic mail, or other means.
If you would like to participate in this survey, please contact the George Mason University Office of Sponsored Programs at (703)993-2295.
Copyright © 1998 by Robert Moskowitz. All rights reserved.