Ann All of IT Business Edge recently reported on how small and medium size businesses (SMB’s) are less likely to have employees telecommute than are larger companies. According to a recent survey by Citrix Online, 40 percent of SMB’s allow employees to work from home, compared to 76% of larger companies. It seems that the main barrier in the way to doing this is technological: while employing remote workers can lead to higher productivity and job satisfaction, it also requires the expenditure of initial investment in the proper technology to support these workers. Without being able to fully and securely integrate into the office remotely, telecommuting is often not worthwhile. Correspondingly, according to the survey cited above, 43% of SMB’s have the technology framework in place to support remote workers, compared with 76% of larger businesses.  As the different technologies needed for telework become cheaper and easier to implement, the percentage of small businesses supporting telecommuting should rise.

In the meantime, if you work for a small or medium-size business and want to pursue telecommuting, consider the following options:

• Build up the trust - Small businesses that are not used to employees working from outside of the office will tend to be more reluctant to let you out of their sphere of influence than would be a larger corporation that has internal policy and technology built to do just that. Although the company can theoretically gain in productivity from employees working where they are most comfortable, they also risk more by giving up on direct oversight. To overcome this, give them good reason to be able to trust you in the scenario where you would be working from outside of the office. Only with this trust in place will they feel more comfortable investing in the technology needed to make it work.
• Do your own research - Though a small business may be more open to change and innovation than a corporate behemoth that has dozens of people employed to set corporate policies, and thus a small business may be the ideal candidate to make the move towards supporting telecommuting, small businesses are also less likely to have extra man hours available to set up and support telecommuting policy and technology. If you feel that it is appropriate, take the initiative yourself. Research the pros and cons of telecommuting for your company and for your position. Look into the different technology requirements (you would be surprised how many free or relatively inexpensive solutions are out there that can help make the technology work for you). Present your findings to your managers. This saves them the work, shows them that it may be a very worthwhile proposition for them financially, and is an indicator that you are taking it seriously.
• Start Small - There is no need to go all-in from the start. Suggest that you start telecommuting one day a week. Keep a log of how your work is going, how it affects your productivity, commute and overall job satisfaction. One day every week or two is much more palatable as it does not require that every last piece of technology be in place and allows management to see first-hand how it is affecting you.

USA Today reports on how more companies in the US are trying to help employees with transportation costs, or through other methods (ie: more telecommuting) in response to higher gas prices:

Employers are taking action as average national gas prices persist above $3 a gallon. Nearly 90% of employees drive to work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Thirteen percent of companies offer transit subsidies, and 7% subsidize carpooling, according to a 2006 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. Twenty-six percent allow telecommuting on a part-time basis.

The article also details workplace initiatives like providing a shared vehicle for limited employee use, flexible work schedules to help employees avoid peak rush-hour traffic and reimbursements for employees who carpool. Look to see these types of commute-friendly policy changes become more standard as commutes get longer and gas gets more expensive. Read More…

InsideRecuiting has published an article giving lots of insight into how companies are relating to telecommuting:

Workers are affected negatively by long commutes

• New survey by the Urban Land Institute: 69% of the larger companies (those with 100-plus employees) believe a long commute time increases employee stress, but 55% reported a lack of affordable housing near their location
• 76% of workers between 18 and 34 would be at least somewhat likely to make a lateral employment move in exchange for a shorter commute (Harris Interactive)

Telecommuting trends

• 45% of the larger companies offer flextime to reduce commuting time, but just 21% offer telecommuting
• 29% of companies say they plan to use a telecommuting program and will allow workers to telecommute every day, and 16% will allow workers to telecommute one or two days a week. Another 17% said they would consider it, if enough employees requested the option (EE)
• Korn/Ferry survey of 1,320 executives indicated that 61% believe telecommuters are less likely to be promoted, compared to their on-site colleagues. Still, 48% said they would consider a telecommuting arrangement

Impact on Environment, Finance

• IBM (25% of 300,000 workers telecommute) estimates that they save $700 million annually because of telecommuting
• Cisco has cut travel by 20% a year due to videoconferencing (two million miles of travel saved, CO₂ emissions lowered by approximately 10%)
• Sun has flexible policies regarding telework, offers local “drop-in centers” which save employees 90 minutes of commuting time ($63 million and 29,000 tons of CO₂ emissions saved annually)

Read more: Honk If Your Company Loves Telecommuting

Shoshana Zuboff writes about how it is not enough to just speak about how we should develop alternate forms of energy, or how people should just use fewer resources and drive less. In order to affect a more drastic (and permanent) change to the way that we use our resources, some societal norms need to change to accommodate new working and living lifestyles. One of the main things that must change is the current normative practice of centralized working:

But the most compelling and far reaching response to the climate crisis is to bust up our current patterns of concentration. Distributing work is the most obvious piece of low hanging fruit. It’s a win in every direction. It will create more value–and wealth– because it reorients employees from organizational to individual space so they engage with customers, not each other. It’s one key to reducing overhead and restructuring costs, helping to make support widely affordable. And, it’s essential to a quantum shift in carbon emissions. In other words, it’s in the critical path of the new capitalism and the needs of our planet. Other dimensions of infrastructure can evolve quickly to complement new patterns of distributed work. The platforms already exist for new distribution systems that bring products and services to our homes. Rapid prototyping will enable small scale low energy production that occurs locally or even at home.

The solutions to climate crisis will not come from simply doing the old model– only less. Forcing more social competition over the shrinking pie of fossil fuels will destroy what’s left of our social fabric. Yes we need to develop alternate energy, but those innovations will be most effective in the context of a whole new distributed model for life and work. The two vectors of capitalism and climate are converging on this one idea: don’t reduce, distribute!

Read More on The Support Economy (found via The HR Lawyer’s Blog)

From the Telework Exchange (found via Shawn Malone), a study was just released based on responses from 200 managers from 45 different federal agencies regarding their attitudes towards teleworking:

Survey results indicate that only 35 percent of Federal managers believe their agencies support telework, despite a 2001 Congressional mandate that requires agencies to implement telework programs.

Despite these initial results, there is hope. The study demonstrates that attitudes toward telework improve dramatically as managers become more exposed to alternative work arrangements. Fifty-four percent of non-teleworking managers have favorable views of telework. That number jumps to 75 percent among managers who telework themselves.

The message is that more managers should try telework and understand its value.

The study recommends giving more managers the option to take part in teleworking pilot programs (since the managers who telework view it more favorably than those who don’t) as well as educational efforts across government. I would however hesitate at recommending that large numbers of managers start telecommuting to work - after all, at least not on a full time basis (after all, you do need some face time when you are managing)

HR Daily Advisor has posted an article by Jay Schleifer (Telecommuters: Why They’re Suing Their Employers) reporting that as telecommuting is becoming more popular (up 40% in a single year), instances of remote workers suing their employers are becoming more common.

The crux of the issue is control. Without direct on-site supervision, employers simply don’t have it over how many hours employees work, whether they’re following company policy, and even whether home offices are properly set up so that workers don’t lose client information or injure themselves using ergonomically unsound equipment.

The solution appears to be in thinking through and implementing a set of solid policies to resolve the issues above, at the start of any telecommuting relationship.

According to Schleifer, some of the different issues that should be fleshed out include:

• Wage and Hours - determine exactly when the employee should be working. How is this reported, how is overtime to be handled?
• Enforce work schedules - make sure that agreements about overtime (or the non-approval of overtime) are followed
• Travel Expenses and Equipment - who buys it, who is responsible for its maintenance, what will happen to it if the employee leaves the company, how much will be the company’s responsibility, how much the employee’s (ie: the company may by the computer, but what about headphones? desk? surge protector? phone bill?)
• Proprietary Information - how should this be controlled and safeguarded when stored primarily in the employees home
• ADA Compliance - If applicable, how will the company work with disabled employees who are working from home

Although the $65 million dollar lawsuits will tend to happen more with extremely large companies like IBM (who have much more ingrained bureaucracy), many of these issues are still extremely relevant for smaller companies who employee remote workers. While any good employer-employee relationship must be based on trust (and even more so for telecommuters), potentially disruptive issues like the ones described above are best handled at the outset rather than after the fact.