The Hindu Business Line : Can I work from home?

MY FRIEND who lives in Bangalore works for a global organisation, in a global role. His day starts early since his manager is in Melbourne, Australia. He works long hours but does not complain since quite often he does not leave his home to get to work. He simply `telecommutes'.

In fact, he has been doing that for over two years now and quite enjoys it. His wife and kids love it too. There was only one initial problem they had to handle — for a while his neighbours believed that he had lost his job and was staying at home while his wife went out to work!

According to the recent Fortune magazine's survey of the 100 best US companies, 79 allow employees to telecommute at least 20 per cent of their time. In one of the chosen organisations, 60 per cent of the employees work from home!

For all of you who are already envious about this friend of mine and all the employees at the 100 best organisations who do not have to go through harrowing traffic jams and all the accompanying hassles and can work out of the comfort of their home, read on to know if you can do this too. If you are a business leader or owner or manager and are inspired to try this out, you will find some answers too. For all of you, this article is a quick primer on the subject of telecommuting or simply ``working out of home".

At the outset, it would be important to emphasise that the concept of working from home is not new at all. What has made it easier is the advancement in technology and the new nature of work.

Tele-commuting or tele-working?

The terms telework and telecommuting refer to an arrangement involving the performance of work away from the central work site. It means employees do their work through telephones and computers at a tele-work site on specified days, usually one or two days per week.

The tele-work site is an alternate work site that may be the employee's home or a satellite office (a shared mini-office near the home). The other days of the week are worked at the central work site, which means the traditional office or workplace.

The term `telework' tends to be used more in Europe and some other countries, while `telecommuting' is used more in the US. Some people prefer the word `telework' because it is a more accurate description of the concept — the `tele' prefix means `distance', so `telework' means "work at a distance".

Tele-working is quite different from things like flexi-working and part-time working. The latter means going to work part of the day, while the former is loosely used to mean flexible work timings, where the employee can come in or leave a little flexibly during the `flex-time' hours subject to being present for the core-hours

Jobs suitable for telecommuting

Tele-working is for artists, desktop publishers, photographers, data entry operators, transcriptionists, engineers, programmers, IT professionals, sales people, web designers, writers, translators and translation editors, out bound call-centre employees, medical summary writers, customer service callers and representatives, information analysts, web searchers, proposal writers, ... the list goes on.

Basically any job that is information-based, is dependent solely on the employee concerned, calls for minimum on-line supervision, has a minimum amount of unpredictable face-to-face contact and is physically portable (can be taken home in a briefcase or box, or can be accessed via phone line) offers good prospects for tele-working.

Tele-commuting does not work if the role calls for supervision, significant equipment and infrastructure, team interactions, daily work delivery requiring interpersonal dependencies and so on.

How does it work in an organisational setting?

Obviously, to make such a programme work, organisations undertake a lot of preparatory work:

They first identify and review all roles and determine whether some of them can be performed at home. Here again, the chosen role tends to be analysed to see if all or some parts of it can be done out of home. The need for face-to-face interaction is especially checked.

The organisations typically create a telecommuting agreement that clearly sets forth the terms of the arrangement.

Managers are given clear criteria to help them decide on the people for whom they might approve this arrangement. In other words, this arrangement is not a natural right or condition of service. They will typically make it available only to people who can manage their own time and work load well, solve many of their own problems, and find satisfaction in completing tasks on their own with minimal direct supervision.

In the case of new employees, this arrangement is extended only after they prove themselves.

All tele-working employees necessarily go the original workplace on a few assigned days for reviews and for performing some parts of the job.

The arrangement is normally not open-ended and comes up for periodic review.

What does it take to make telecommuting a success

Telecommuting is not as easy as it sounds. There are many critical success factors that one must be aware of and secure. Here are a few:

Please do not use tele-commuting to get rid of a problem employee from the office! It is better to deal with discipline directly than abusing the system.

It would help if the approving managers themselves have tele-worked and understand what it takes.

Telecommuters should be treated the same as others with regard to promotions, training and so on.

Policy should also provide for telecommuters returning to the normal workplace and normal routine later, if required by either party.

Individuals should be honest, highly motivated and self-directed. High degree of self-discipline is required.

They should also be able to make it clear to family and friends that they are working and cannot have their time imposed upon. For this, an understanding and supportive family would help a great deal.

There should be clarity on communication protocols, as well as good communication infrastructure such as intranet and so on.

A very strong performance management system is required to ensure that goals are clear, reviews are frequent and performance is measured objectively.

Risks relating to data integrity need to be considered and provided for.

Basically, the arrangement calls for a very high level of trust on one side and self-discipline on the other side.

Most important, managers and CEOs need to get out of the "face-time" mind-set to be able to embrace this without suspicion. If you are culturally not ready, don't do it!

What are the drivers for telecommuting?

Why are organisations and employees looking at this seriously? Obviously, there are strong drivers. For the organisation, it saves up a lot of infrastructure and real-estate costs. In many countries, organisations actively encourage employees to work out of home so that expensive office space is spared.

This arrangement also gives the organisation access to a segment of employees who would otherwise not be available for employment. (Women with significant need to balance the demands of their home-maker role.) It also significantly enhances their image as an employee-friendly organisation.There are great attractions for the employee too. A lot of flexibility, reduced traffic jams and the ability to plan the day for both work and personal requirements are some of these attractions. It certainly adds significant joy to their work life.

Are there risks and problems?

There are certainly quite a few risks and problems. Managers might perceive loss of control. Employees might miss physical interaction with the team and feel lonely at times.

They may also feel they are not part of the organisation, and are missing out on important happenings. Organisations also worry about data integrity.

While tele-working has been in vogue in many parts of the world, the concept is still new to India. Few Indian organisations and many multi-national corporations in India have formal policies in this regard.

Given the very nature of their work, many Indian technology organisations have adopted this quite successfully.

Obviously, tele-work will never completely replace the traditional work site and the face-to-face contact at the workplace.

However, it will be used increasingly by organisations to enlarge the pool of resources they can tap for employment. It will also help them hold on to the resources that they already have.

The changing employment contract will make it more and more emotionally easy for employees to tele-commute. More important, employees will seek this as a way of striking greater balance between work and life since these two are already all quite mixed up anyway!

(The author is the founder and CEO of totus consulting. totus consulting is a strategic HR Consulting firm that designs and implements HR systems and process for organisations across diverse industries. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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