Jill Hart writes about five different ways to find a telecommuting job: newspapers, online (Job sites, Craigslist, watch out for scams - remember, you should never have to pay someone to get a job), post your resume online, cold-call local businesses, start a work-at-home business

Personally, I do not see much of a difference between lists like this, and guides on how to get any type of job. Although you may have luck searching for, finding and getting a telecommuting job, I think that your chances would be much better if by searching for a job that you like. While evaluating companies, be sure to think about whether this is the type of company that might allow or encourage telecommuting (ie: in technology, other employees telecommuting, seem to be following recent technology trends) or not (still using mainframe computers, old-fashioned). When interviewing, ask whether they are open to telecommuting, and make it clear that this is something that you would be interested in. However, be sure that you like the job and the company. If you go for a job where the only redeeming quality is working from home, and you don’t actually like the work, then you will probably not find telecommuting to be as good as you thought, and you will probably be looking for a new job sooner rather than later.

Myscha talks about some of the things that she finds that she consistently uses when working from home (aside from a central location in which you can organize your things and do work, preferably with a door to close):

• Fax machine (you may think that it is outdated, but it is not. I can definitely attest to this)
• Personal Copier and reliable printer (this could be combined with a fax machine if you get the right model)
• Home Computer
• Office Supplies (this is supposed to be your office, after all, and you will have use for them. Better to stockpile in the beginning so that they are on hand when you need them)
• Organizational Tools (ranging from desk calendar to PDA/Blackberry)

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A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Sue Shellenbarger talks about the other side of telecommuting - people who work remotely and end up disliking the experience:

It’s an ironic twist on corporate America’s march toward telecommuting: A small but significant number of foot soldiers dislike the trend…A large majority of workers like working from home because it offers flexibility and reduces commuting costs and hassles. (As a longtime telecommuter, I am among them.) But the very perk that so many people covet in their quest to balance work and personal life is anathema to others. Among office workers who could telecommute if they wanted — that is, who have jobs or employer policies that permit working from home — 14% want to stay in the office…

Though this number - 14% - is definitely in the minority, it is still a significant percentage of people who for various reasons would prefer to work in the office rather than remotely.

According to the article, one of the main factors in telecommuting that causes this dissatisfaction is lack of social contact with ones coworkers. When working remotely, one cannot meet one’s peers face-to-face on a daily basis. For those who find this contact to be an integral part of their workday, the lack of it is something that can be very detrimental.

The article also talks about the steps that some individuals and companies are taking to try to address this issue. Some people make sure that they have daily schedules, maintain contact with coworkers via phone and Instant Messenger, or make a point of going into the office at least once every few weeks. Some companies retrain employees and managers to prepare them for working and supervising remotely, while others IBM (who have 40% of their 330,000 employees working remotely) have invested in programs to help rebuild their workplace culture:

IBM set about rebuilding workplace culture. The company last year began pouring new resources into the “IBM Club,” an 80-year-old employee organization that had shrunk amid 1990s spending cuts, revitalizing it as a vehicle for employee sports leagues, parties and networking; membership has grown to 90,000. Managers started “speed mentoring,” gathering employees in small groups with a senior manager for advice, says Monica Chambers, a human-resource manager. IBM also expanded and improved satellite offices as a place to meet and use support services. (Moves like IBM’s are fostering a boom in leased satellite and temporary office space.) Morale ratings rose 28 percentage points over 18 months, with 78% saying they were happy in their jobs, Mr. Pelino says.

Whatever is done to address this, potential dissatisfaction (especially because of lack of social contact) is something that any would-be telecommuter employee or employer should be aware of, and should take proactive steps to address and fix.

Working from home has lots of benefits: no commute, you don’t have to dress for the office, play your music loud, etc. However, in order to keep up (and improve on) your productivity while working at home, it is essential to come up with and enact a strategy for dealing with distractions.

Distractions at home can take many forms:

• Children and/or Spouse
• Household chores (washing three days of dishes is a handy method for procrastination when you are really desperate)
• Phone/Mail/Bills
• Television/Video Games

The common theme among these distractions is that they are things that are commonly found at home that you would not normally encounter in your place of work. There are good things and bad things about the average workplace - one positive thing is that the normal distractions you would face at home are not there, enabling you to (at least in theory) be more productive. Thus, in order to telecommute productively, one must find a way to achieve some level of concentration in an environment that is at first glance not so conducive to it.

So without further ado, here are a few ideas for ways to handle these distractions:

1) Close Your Door

Make sure that your workspace is separated as much as possible from the potential sources of distraction (ie: television, kitchen, play room) and make sure that the word gets out that whenever your door is closed, you are working and are not to be disturbed. You can even set up with your spouse or children that if they need to speak with you and want to see if you are free for a minute, they should IM you, email you, call your cell phone, but not knock on the door. Take advantage of the proximity of your home office to the rest of your home, but in all other ways, treat it like a real office (where these other distractions probably wouldn’t exist and where your kids could never just come in and say hello).

2) Headphones

The idea here is that even when you are working behind a closed door (or if you are sharing a home office with the family PC and cannot have the door closed as often as you would like) there will still be distracting home-sounds that make their way into your work area and could potentially disrupt your thought process and work flow. To combat this, try some headphones, especially the type that is designed to cancel noise. For those who like to work with music, this is a no-brainer (and a good idea even if you work in a regular office). However, even if you don’t like to listen to music all the time while you work, wearing headphones can help you to focus more on the task at hand, ignore distractions and let the background noises fade a bit. (And if you do have to share your home office with someone else, wearing headphones can be like a second door - it is a sign to the other person that you are working now and should not be disturbed).

3) Schedule

The two tips above are intended to help you insulate yourself from the distraction-filled environment that is your home-office, and help you to create for yourself some thinking-space. However, there is another aspect of working from home that these do not take advantage of. One very nice thing is that you do have more flexibility to help watch the baby, run an errand, play with the kids when they come home from school or do something else that is only possible at home and would not be possible in the traditional office. Or perhaps you might need to take a break from what you are doing and watching TV or a DVD (which is done more comfortably at home and not in front of your co-workers) is exactly what you need to do. How can you make these distractions a part of your work day in a way that will improve, not hurt your productivity?

The answer is to schedule out your daily activities. You may want to have this rigidly set (ie: on every Monday I will work from 9am to 11:30am and then take a 45 minute break), or you may want to do this flexibly, creating a To Do list every day, listing the tasks that you want to accomplish and how long each will take (I have found David Seah’s Printable CEO, and Online Emergent Task Timer excellent tools for this type of informal task planning). Whichever way you do it, this will help you to set boundaries for yourself regarding your goals, and will help you to use the distractions that surround you as tools for making progress in your work and goals for completing your tasks, rather than as a means for procrastination.

Rameikis writes about some of the social aspects of work that she feels are lacking for telecommuters (my emphasis):

Working from home and conducting all of your business by phone and through email is not an easy thing. For all the fact that telecommuting has been touted as the way of the future since the early 80s, industry has been very slow in developing effective attitudes, strategies and policies for creating a environment where effective working relationships can be both built and maintained over long distances and across time zones (where some team members are going to bed just as others are getting up).

What invariably suffers from the fairly outdated management principles still in practice is the sense of community. There is no water cooler. No photocopier or coffee station. Developing and maintaining personal connections with the people you work ‘beside’ is not nearly as natural when you have never actually met as it is when you can meet face to face on an almost daily basis. The team building and moral boosting plans they come up with invariably require proximity: you must work at head office to participate in any of them, which leaves the remote workers (more than half of the company’s employees) feeling like second class citizens within the corporation.

I can definitely identify with what Rameikis is talking about here. In some ways, there really is no substitute for face-to-face contact. So much of communication is based on visual clues that even if you make it a point to speak on the phone with colleagues (instead of using email and IM exclusively) you will never have the same level of personal connection with your coworkers than if you were sitting next to them in the same room. (I do not have so much experience with video conferencing, but I have been told that the same holds true there as well).

While chatting on IM is nice, I do not think that this problem will be easily solved, even if some “outdated management principles” are changed to fit some of the needs of today’s remote worker. For the time being, it is something that a person has to be aware of if they are going to be working outside of the office for an extended amount of time. And if you need it, it is up to you to find some other type of social outlet that you would have otherwise sought at the water cooler or coffee station.

CIO Magazine has just published an article called Seven Things the CIO Should Know About Telecommuting (found via SlashDot) by Esther Schindler. The summary is:

1. Telecommuting saves money for the company - you will save on lower office expenses for the telecommuter, you can hire people in different locales for less money than you would have to pay locally.
2. Telecommuters can be more productive - Many people thrive in a quieter environment, away from the hustle and bustle. Face time can sometimes be inverse to productivity.
3. Telecommuting doesn’t work for everyone - You need to be self-motivated and be able to be away from the social outlets that an office can provide in order to be a successful telecommuter
4. Trust your people - Having workers out of the office is not possible unless you trust them to be able to work away from your scrutiny.
5. Hone management skills for telecommuting - Communication is key. You have to be able to adapt your management style to focus on the parts of the job that need emphasis for the remote worker.
6. Keep the telecommuter in the loop -Email, IM, phone - make sure that you stay connected with them, and they stay connected with you. They are still part of the team.
7. Tools and technology make the difference - Get them a good computer, help them outfit their home-office, set up a VPN, pay for their office-related expenses, buy them a second (or third!) computer.

In short, telecommuting is a viable way for employees to work efficiently and productively, providing that they are supported by their employer and supervisor. See the article for more information and thoughts on the subject.