Telecommuting * By Robert Moskowitz
The Statistics
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 21 million people
did some work at home as part of their primary job during 1997. But only
a portion of these were true teleworkers.
* The number of actual telecommuters--that is, wage and salary workers who were not being officially compensated for the work they did at home, but who were simply "taking work home from the office" as part of their overall responsibilities--totaled about 11.1 million. These people were overwhelmingly employed in white-collar occupations. The largest number of these teleworkers (6.1 million) were employed by companies in the services sector of the economy, while a much smaller number (1.5 million) were employed in manufacturing firms.
* Classified by industry segment, about 1.6 million wage and salary workers from services industries were doing officially "paid work" at home--roughly 44% of the total 3.6 million; more than half-a-million from manufacturing industries were paid for work at home. All the major industry groups (except mining) had significant numbers of workers doing paid work at home.
* Wage and salary workers who were paid for working at home averaged nearly 15 hours-per-week at home; those who weren't paid specially for working at home clocked about 9 hours-per-week at home; home-based entrepreneurs worked about 23 hours-per-week at home, on average.
* Women and men were about equally likely to work-at-home. The work-at-home rate for married parents was about the same as the rate for married persons without children. Whites were more than twice as likely to be engaged in some form of home-based work as either Blacks or Hispanics.
* Just under 60% of those who worked at home in 1997 used computers. Among wage and salary workers, computer use was about the same for those who were paid for work done at home (63.3%) as for those doing unpaid work at home (61.6%). Paid home workers were more likely to use a modem for their work at home (43.2%) than were unpaid home workers (32.8%). Also, 23.2% of paid home workers used a telephone line that was furnished by their employer. Only 54.4% of self-employed home workers used a computer for work done at home.
Telecommuting has been shown many times to be a great way to cut facilities costs, primarily by reducing the number of square feet needed to support a given number of employees. For example, if only half a company's workforce telecommutes just one day-a-week, the company can instantly trim their office space requirements by 10%! And the savings fall right to the bottom line.
But the stakes in this struggle continue to increase. In New York City, for example, rents that were recently $16.50 per foot per year are now rising past $23--nearly a 50% increase in just two years. In many areas of California, office vacancies are at or near a ten year low, and rents are rising apace. As the cost of occupying office space grows higher, facilities managers are coming to recognize the exciting cost effectiveness of accommodating the growth in office workforces by rearranging cubicles and cutting down on what now seem like overly spacious allocations of footage, rather than by expanding into new offices.
By using such techniques as "hot desking" or "hoteling" (fancy terms for eliminating empty desks through sharing offices and cubicles on an "as needed" basis), in the decade of the 90s companies like Ernst & Young have learned how to cut their per-person requirements for office space almost in half.
And office furniture makers have cooperated in the continuing squeeze, too. They are now pushing design strategies that integrate communal work areas with tiny cubby-holes intended only to accommodate infrequent but unavoidable moments of privacy. They are also using design techniques like personalized office cabinetry and fitted, curving lines to make smaller furniture feel larger. The goal of all this is to make less space feel more comfortable.
But now the process of saving space through telecommuting may also be working the other way: More and more employers are squeezing their employees' office space allotments, trying to save money a little sooner on facilities costs and also providing a not-so-subtle incentive for employees to spend less time in the centralized office and more time telecommuting.For example, according to a continuing survey of almost 300 large corporations conducted by the International Facility Management Association, upper management's allocation of office space has shrunk from an average of 289 sq. ft. in 1994 to an average of 280 sq. ft. in 1997. Senior management has lost a little less, going from 200 sq. ft. to only 193 sq. ft. in those three years. Middle management has been squeezed from 151 sq. ft. to 142 sq. ft. during the period, while senior professionals have lost only 1 sq. ft. on average, down from 115 to 114 sq. ft. between 1994 and 1997.
Even these averages belie the realities at a good many firms. At one Boston financial company, for example, a recent move into a new office building triggered a literal downsizing that left managers and administrators with only 42 sq. ft. of office space, compared with a comparatively wide-open 64 sq. ft. in the previous facility.
It's enough to make one think of the joke about the family who begs their village chieftain for relief, because their house is so incredibly crowded. "Bring in the cows," says the chief, and when the family returns after a week to complain that this remedy has only made the situation far worse, he adds "bring in the goats." After several more weeks of having the obedient but hard-pressed family continually sharing their ever-more-limited living space with their pigs, their chickens, and their rabbits, the village chieftain finally gives the word for them to shoo all their animals back outdoors. "Amazing," crows the family, in pleased disbelief. "We don't know how you did it, but now our house is so large we don't know what to do with all the extra space!"
This is not to suggest, of course, that office-bound workers should start sharing their spaces with farm animals. But it does offer a new perspective on why employers may be cutting back on their facilities expenditures. Not only are they gearing up (or down, in this case) to anticipate the savings that will come with increased use of telecommuting among their workforces, but they are creating an atmosphere that adds one more advantage to working from home compared with working in the traditional office. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate that even the smallest extra bedroom can seem extravagantly spacious when compared with a 42 sq. ft. cubicle.
A recent study by Margaret A. Klayton, M.B.A., Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Business at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA, has found that union involvement in telecommuting is strong, and growing. Nearly half the unions responding to the survey report they are involved in establishing telecommuting programs.
According to Dr. Klayton, unions have traditionally been against home-based work because of the potential for abuse of worker's rights. However, they now appear to be actively supporting telecommuting programs. She writes: "The union attitude expressed appears to have integrated telecommuting into the normal workforce representation model or paradigm. Part of the change in attitude may also be due to most major organizations including unions in the decision process of developing telecommuter programs."
Her survey reveals that:
* Management's most popular methods for controlling and monitoring union members' performance while they are telecommuting include Management by Objectives, submission of periodic reports on progress, and the use of detailed work plans.
* The preferred method of providing a safe home office for telecommuters is to allow for home inspections by company representatives.
* Employers are held responsible for accidents while telecommuters are working at home in the same ways they are held responsible for accidents that happen in centralized offices. Fewer than 15% of the employers who responded to this survey expect work-period accidents in the home to be covered by the employee's own homeowner's or renter's insurance.
Some time ago, I mentioned in this space that the "Women in the Profession" Committee of the Young Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association was trying to learn more about lawyers who telecommute. Their goal was not only to develop a model telecommuting policy for legal employers, but also to create a book that would make it easier for more lawyers to win the right to telecommute, and for more law firms to encourage their lawyers to work without so much physical travel.
Participation in the study exceeded expectations, and the result is now in print. It's called Telecommuting For Lawyers, and it's a 150+ page softcover book put out by the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section. The author, Nicole Belson Goluboff, herself a telecommuting lawyer, covers in plentiful detail ways to overcome all the troubling obstacles and organizational stumbling blocks that might otherwise impede the progress of the nation's law firms down the road toward more telecommuting by more lawyers.
The book details why lawyers and law firms should move toward telecommuting, how they can most easily and most effectively put telecommuting ideas and techniques into practice, and a variety of useful resources, such as telecommuting survey forms and a detailed discussion of what a telecommuting policy ought to cover.
Lawyers who participated will probably want to contact Ms. Goluboff, c/o of the American Bar Association, for feedback on the project. Anyone who wants a copy of the book, priced at $49.95, can order from the ABA at 750 N. Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL 60611. The book can also be ordered through the ABA's Web site at: www.abanet.org/lpm/catalog .
Gil Gordon's annual conference on telecommuting is now scheduled for The Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore, MD, during June 21-24, 1998.
The list of topics includes: New approaches to cost-benefit analysis, managing and avoiding the risks of working at home, breaking through the barriers to corporate culture change, a presentation of Boeing's telecommuting program, using intranets successfully with telecommuters, improving remote-management skills, tools for remote-collaboration, and using telecommuting to ease a staffing crisis.
For more information, check the conference's Web page at: www.telecommuteconference.com , or call 1-800-854-0056.
Copyright © 1998 by Robert Moskowitz. All rights reserved.
Reader Response To Telecommuting Article:
To The Editors of MicroTimes,
I am writing to express my disappointment in an article in your issue of March 27, 1998. This article, referencing my company, VirtualStaff LLC, is incorrect. In addition, no one from your magazine, including the author of the article, Robert Moskowitz, ever contacted myself, or anyone on my staff, regarding the facts of this story.
The article in question, "Telecommuting To A Job Interview," appears on page 50 of the above referenced edition. The article states that my company has a relationship with Cornell University, and that we team with them to conduct online staffing in computer labs all across the country. The facts are VirtualStaff LLC has never had a relationship with Cornell, and we have no program with them covering, "Electronic Staffing," in computer labs.
Several associates and friends who have seen this article counseled me not to take issue with you regarding this, stating that inaccurate publicity is still publicity. I disagree. I believe that good publicity must also be accurate.
Please take the necessary steps to correct these inaccuracies. Thank you.
Truly yours,
Brian Kane
CEO, VirtualStaff LLC
You're absolutely correct. Apparently I confused my notes about VirtualStaff LLC with my notes about another company for another article. I sincerely apologize and hope not to have caused you any difficulties.
This probably won't provide any solace, but I tend to agree with your associates and friends, and would like you to note that at least I spelled your company's name mostly correct.
Good luck to you in the future.
Robert Moskowitz