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.

Hunter Arnold states that telecommuting is not all that it is hyped up to be and that it will really lead to less productivity than if the same people had gone into an office instead of going home:

So many modern workers are “telecommuting” or “working from home” that these days that it seems like no one shows up to the office at all.  If working at home worked was as productive as coming to the office and helped me avoid traffic, I’d be the first one to jump on the band wagon. But the problem is, there isn’t much evidence  that “working from home” or “virtual officing” is even close to as effective as showing up at the office.

Why is this?

Despite my determination and drive, I’m the first to admit that if I’m working from my kitchen, I’m probably not as productive as I am in the office.  When I’m in the office, I’m more likely to be focused and committed. There’s no doorbell or TV or pantry to distract me.  More importantly, I’m surrounded by my contemporaries, who stimulate and challenge me to give my work my all.  So why is working at home so popular?  Because it’s a major excuse not to work at all.

I would like to respectfully disagree with this blanket assessment of productivity in home vs. office as well as the conclusions that are reached. There are definitely situations and industries where people are better off in the office. When person-to-person interaction is required, there is no substitute for being the same room as a coworker. And even in industries where telecommuting might make sense, if you are someone who requires being “surrounded by your contemporaries, who stimulate and challenge you to give your work your all” in order to be productive, then you definitely should not work from home.

(And if as Hunter suggests, everyone who telecommuted worked from their kitchens, than I would have to agree with many of his assessments. A kitchen is not a place that is conducive to reducing distractions or providing an environment suitable for working productively. However, there are other places in the house where a person can work, and there are strategies and methods that one can use in order to create a place in your home that can serve as a proper work environment.)

However, if you are someone who wastes 4-5 hours a week in worthless meetings, 1-2 hours a week rifling through your desk, 5-10 hours a week in a car shuttling back and forth from the office; If you are someone who may only really accomplish 1.5 hours of solid work a day, and for you, one of the main sources of wasted time is your commute and the office environment (unfortunately, but not everyone is lucky enough to have a job and coworkers who consistently stimulate and challenge you to give work your all), and if you are in a job which permits it and you yourself are able to handle it, then by telecommuting, you will almost certainly be able to achieve higher levels of productivity and job satisfaction than if you were at the office.

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.

John Wesley writes (Why the 9 to 5 Office Worker Will Become a Thing of the Past, found via War-N) about how the traditional work day (”9-5″) is very inefficient for many of today’s workers, and ends up with less productive, less satisfied employees.

A continuous 8 hour work day is a relic of the past. It makes sense for physical labor and manufacturing work, but with information workers it doesn’t account for the mental energy cycle…In the case of the modern information worker, nearly all tasks involve creative or strategic thinking…

I can’t speak for all workers, but I’ve observed that productivity levels generally peak twice a day — first thing in the morning and shortly after lunch. The most productive period is the beginning of the day. People are capable of creative tasks like writing and solving complex technical problems. After a couple hours of intense work, energy levels drop and workers downgrade to less demanding tasks like responding to email and tinkering with existing creations. Towards the end of the cycle, the mind is so cluttered and drained that workers resort to “work related activities” that appear productive but don’t contribute to the bottom line. The afternoon cycle is similar but the productivity peak isn’t as high. For different people the peaks and valleys will vary, but overall I’d estimate only 3-4 hours a day could be classified as highly productive. This number isn’t caused by slacking. You can’t force an information worker to be highly productive when the energy isn’t there.

While the 9-5 work day is a relic of manufacturing labor, it does also make sense if there is a need for people to all be present at one location at one time. (Though I do remember a partial solution at a company where I once interviewed: Everyone had to work 8 hours a day, and everyone had to be present on-site between the hours of 11am and 2pm. Thus there is a time when everyone can have meetings, and there are also accommodations in place for those who are early or late risers.)

Wesley suggests as a solution that the work day should be planned around times when the worker’s mental energies are at their peaks. This means that the 8 hours may not be consecutive, and will most probably be scattered in bursts throughout the day. As a computer programmer, I personally find this to be very true - I often find myself reading blogs (or playing DTD) during the middle of the day not as a way to avoid work, but rather as a way to regroup my mental energy after one task, in preparation for the next.

The solution that makes the most sense is a remote work arrangement because it reduces employer costs and allows employees to adjust their work schedule to their mental energy cycle. When a worker becomes mentally fatigued, they can go off the clock and engage in recharge activities that are personally productive like exercise or relaxation. When energy returns, the worker can start working again at a high level, effectively cutting out the low productivity period of the cycle. Employers don’t pay for unproductive time and employees get to work in a more natural pattern that adjusts to their personal lives.

A good point is made at the end of the article that the biggest barrier to larger scale adoption to telecommuting is inertia and office politics. I would contend though that there will always be certain industries that are better suited towards telecommuting (and outsourcing), such as computer programming, and certain industries that will never fully transition to this (hospitals, psychologists, universities and schools, power plants, manufacturing, etc).

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.