“Nearly half (44 percent) of chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed said their companies’ IT workforce is telecommuting at a rate that is the same or higher than five years ago; only 3 percent said IT staff work remotely less frequently today than five years ago”

Interesting results. I think that if they surveyed IT companies with fewer than 100 employees, they would likely find even more web work going on for a number of reasons.

For example, web workers require fewer real infrastructure supports (office space, furniture, land-line telephone) that can sometimes be a struggle for the small guys. If you’re a start-up going through a hiring spree, just getting physical space for the new folks can be a major headache, and adding people virtually is a much bigger savings for you than for a larger firm with established office space.

I also think it’s interesting that they specify that IT staff are working remotely. Huh? I know the survey was done by Robert Half Technology but I’m interested in what’s going on with web work outside IT. We can’t all be cranking code or pushing server patches from Tahiti.

What do you think about the study?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

It appeals to so many parts of my psyche…the office supply fetishist…the icon afficianado…the organizational aspirant…the penmanship idealist…

This system is so ornate and yet simple and beautiful at the same time, it seems almost impossible to maintain. This may be one of those cases where the cost of being this organized has reached a point of dimishing returns. And in all honesty, the picture where all the cards are spread out for grouping makes me feel a little nauseated. I feel much better with them categorized and safely contained in the index box.

I don’t know what this says about me. But I do think that the PoIC is a stroke of mad genius.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• The rise of tablets in the enterprise

One is the risk of getting in trouble with FLSA with regard to exempt or non-exempt staff. There are much better places to get advice on how staff positions are cast into these two categories, but once you’ve made decisions on your positions, you’ll want to be careful that your remote work policies don’t get you into trouble with this stuff (follow the link for some older, but still very good information on this very subject).

The good news is, like so many HR policies, a straightforward remote work policy that is written down, reviewed by your HR advisor/legal, and then uniformly applied to your staff shouldn’t get you in too much trouble.

So don’t be afraid to roll one out!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Unless the air conditioning at work is better than at home, this is a good week to telecommute…

If you’re only an occasional web worker, take a little time today to plan out some tasks that you can work on constructively from home (or at a very nearby coffee shop… or quiet, contemplative swimming pool). Then stay home tomorrow and be cool.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Business continuity and disaster preparedness (or COOP in government-speak, short for “continuity-of-operations program”) is yet another great reason to foster a web-working culture, even in the most traditional businesses. FCW.com, the online arm of Federal Computer Week, reported this week about a recent Juniper Networks survey of federal, state, and local government computing professionals that noted in part:

41 percent [of survey respondents] think that telework is so critical to COOP that all employees should telework occasionally as a form of COOP preparation.

This is key: you can’t know your “emergency only” remote access plans will work unless people are using them on a regular basis to do their regular work.

A lot of companies in the Bay Area discovered the weaknesses in their remote access technologies during the commuting crisis a few months ago. Those companies with robust telecommuting policies and technologies in place were able to continue operations without a hitch, even with their employees facing (and rejecting) multi-hour commutes until the highway repair was completed.

So, let’s review: Making web working technologies and techniques a part of your regular workplace routine is good because

• People like telecommuting
• You offer a great benefit without a huge cost
• You can reduce staff turn-over
• You can compete for the best talent no matter where that talent may wish to reside
• You help your employees save money on gas or public transportation costs
• You help save the environment
• It can help you stay in business in the event that some unforeseen disaster makes it impossible for your workers to schlep to your offices.

What’s not to love?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

People are looking for ways to counteract the inherent isolation that comes from being a lone wolf. Whether it’s virtual tools that approximate the experience of having people around you, or the group of casual or formal co-working arrangements that seem to be cropping up, there is a growing movement to take web work back into a pseudo-office environment.

But why?

Why are we driving to coffee shops and meet-ups and other places that are filled with the distractions that we’re supposed to be getting away from through the peaceful beauty of our web workerhood? Could it be there is a happy medium between coding for five hours without seeing another human face and sitting in an open bull-pen listening to our colleagues yak about their mortgages, hairdos, man/woman trouble, man/woman success, and beer-drinking plans?

What do you think?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

1. You’re “working” at home…nudge nudge, wink wink. No, actually I’m really working. If you call me, I answer. Need something before day’s end? Consider it done. I’m not “working” (read “doing laundry and watching E! all day”). I’m working (read “kicking out the jams”).

2. You’re wearing pajamas, or are perhaps naked from the waist down. I don’t know what kind of operation you think we run around here, but I assure you I would never do either of these things for a variety of reasons. The most important reason is that I need to feel like I’m going to work, and to that end I must shower, clothe myself, and otherwise do things that the typical office worker ideally does on a daily basis.

3. Home-based work is great because you get to spend more time with your family. I refer you back to item one, regarding the difference between “working” and actually working. I do not spend my days doing glitter projects with the kids in my home office. Any extra time I get with my wonderful family is likely due to the fact that I’m not driving anywhere to get to work and not working from home. If I could walk five minutes to a job down the street, I suspect I’d experience the same boost in family time.

4. You must get so lonely. Well, if the phone stopped ringing and the IM and email stopped flowing, I suppose I might have a chance to experience that loneliness. Of course, your work may be different, but most of the home-based workers I know are very in touch, albeit virtually.

5. You must be involved in some kind of bleeding edge technology work to be able to work from home. In reality, home-based workers are doing all kinds of old fashioned jobs (writing, radiology) as well as the more groovy Web 2.0-type stuff. There’s no telling what kind of job you might could do remotely, if you put your mind to figuring out how it can be done.

What myths and misconceptions about home-based work have you encountered among your colleagues, neighbors, or significant others?

Related posts:

• How to manage kids in the home office
• 9 best practices for home-based workers
• Telecommuting: Not just for disaster response
• Yes, I’m really working right now
• Claiming your home office deduction

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

And while full-time, slipper-wearing, video-conferencing-from-your-backyard web work isn’t possible for all employees, you may find that you can edge your regular job toward a more web worker-like structure.

First, analyze your actual day-to-day work.

Do you have tasks that require both sustained attention and limited interaction with colleagues? These kinds of tasks are perfect candidates to be saved up and batch-processed on a telecommuting day. Take note of how much time you’re spending on this stuff to discover if you have enough of it on a regular basis to warrant working at home on it.

Next, examine the things you do when you log in from home to do after hours and on weekends — restarting servers, performing site fixes, remote support. If these are things you also do during a normal workday there is no reason that you couldn’t accomplish them on a telecommute day.

Explore the capabilities of your office phone system. Most systems have a forwarding setting that allows you to make the phone ring wherever you are. And while being in touch might undermine the “sustained attention – low interactivity” goal you set for your telecommute days, it also helps to assuage the fear that you’re “working from home” instead of actually working from home.

Armed with these facts about exactly what you’ll be doing at home, how you’ll be able to do these things, and how your manager will be able to check up on you, you’re ready to write a proposal. Emphasize the benefits of the arrangement to your employer: it’s a great benefit that costs them nothing to offer, they can check up on you to their heart’s content, and you’ll be getting more done.

Now march into your manager’s office and ask to work remotely one day a week. Come on. You can do it. Let us know how it goes!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

When we think about web work, we often visualize an office (sometimes neat, sometimes not so much), or maybe a coffee shop or other third place where geeks congregate. But there are so many other places to work — hospital waiting rooms, hot air balloons, hangars, hilltops — and those are just the places that begin with the letter “H”.

So how far out can you work? How far out should you work?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

1. Use your time to confront difficult issues and people: If there are projects that are proving hard to advance from afar, take the opportunity to get all the players in as few rooms as possible — preferably just one! Often you can reinvigorate things with a little in-person pep rally, and get a better read on what the interpersonal dynamics might could be that are impeding your progress. Likewise, neutralize negative people by judiciously applied lunch meetings. If you know there are some squeaky wheels in your office, apply the grease while you’re close at hand.

2. Find a “hook” for your trip: I try to schedule trips around significant events where I will maximize my visibility and the impact of me actually being there. It might be an all-staff meeting with my colleagues from around the division, a retreat, the kick-off of a new project, or the wrap of a project. Large gatherings, especially those that include people you don’t see that often online, really reinforce the idea that you still actually work there. I then build meetings, conduct training classes, and do the other stuff that needs doing in person around that major “hook”.

3. Make the most of your time: Schedule your time carefully — it doesn’t really help you increase your visibility to sit in the server room and work on servers (although that’s important too). Get out and about and hit the conference rooms hard. Try web-enabling your schedule to make sure those who want to meet with you get a chance to and to make multi-person meetings easy to set up.

4. Don’t schedule your time too tightly: Running from meeting to meeting will make you feel busy and important, but it’s a good idea to leave yourself a little wiggle-room too, especially toward the end of your trip. Having some open space in your schedule will allow you to add some follow-up meetings if needed, and to spend a little time reading email, returning calls, and kind of acting like you are working, not just gadflying from pillar to post.

5. Never underestimate the power of happy hour: What’s the one thing that’s hard to do from your home office? Socialize with co-workers. Take every opportunity to socialize with your colleagues to remind people not only that you work there, but that they like you. It’s an invaluable opportunity to catch up on the gossip — and gossip flows a little more freely when everyone is all likkered up.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks