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Telecommuting Transition
How to Switch Smoothly from Corporate Life to a Home Office
By Johnathon Allen
- Suggest a trial run involving employees who already have sufficient equipment at home so that no additional costs are incurred.
- Work with management to establish a service-level agreement specifying performance requirements and measurements.
- Seek the aid of a professional consultant to adopt efficient systems.
- Establish specific rules of conduct, in particular, when you'll be accessible.
"It turns out that one of the most frequent problems telecommuters face is not getting to work -- as their supervisors often fear -- but knowing how to stop," Weill says. "In fact, with the inundation of modern technology, workers may be forced to learn a new skill: being gracefully inaccessible so they can get on with living the rest of their lives."
Of course, not all companies are resistant to the idea of telecommuting. Hopeful teleworkers can seek out jobs with progressive Hi-tech companies, like Sun Microsystems, who are busy figuring out the best ways to tap the efficiencies of a virtual workforce.
According to Kathryn Ridley, director of Sun's Workplace Resources group in Palo Alto, Calif., about 30 percent of Sun's employees telecommute, travel or work from a telework center.
"In order to maintain a high level of productivity and quality of life for our employees, we're developing a new facility management approach termed 'clicks not bricks,'" Ridely says. "This approach favors the click of a mouse over the bricks of a traditional office. Our CEO, Scott McNealy, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that he is going to put 25,000 workers out of offices. This doesn't mean that employees won't have a place to go, it means that they're going to be extremely versatile and mobile."