“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?

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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

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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!

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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?

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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.

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…a telecommuting pilot program at the SBA responsible for educational materials and outreach to small businesses on the benefits of telecommuting…

And while we all know how bills can get waylaid on their way to becoming laws (thank you, School House Rock) it’s nice to see the telecommuting lifestyle come up in environmental legislation. It makes me wonder if businesses that run completely virtually are missing out on some tax breaks because they have already reduced their emissions as much as is humanly possible.

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1. Expand instant messaging to all staff, not just the web worker elite. This is good for two reasons: first, you expand the number of people you can casually discuss things with. More importantly, when useful and fun tools are rolled out to more people it reduces the resentment that can arise when some folks telecommute and others just can’t.

2. Make the most of your onsite time. When you do make it into the office, schedule some walk-around-and-visit-time throughout your time in country. Or take on the role of Julie the Cruise Director and schedule some group lunches or a happy hour and invite the whole office.

3. Seek opportunities to reach out to more people. While you wouldn’t want to subvert anyone’s manager’s authority, you can make more contacts within your organization by going directly to the source for an answer, rather than filtering your request through the proper channels.

4. Send updates to everyone, and ask for feedback and ideas. Depending on how integrated your work is in the life of the office, many people may have no idea what you and your team are working on, particularly if they never get a chance to wander by your desk and peep at your screen. So on a routine basis, send a little broadcast email about project progress, and see what interest and ideas those who aren’t directly involved might have.

What other methods do you use build your watercooler network?

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When you have…

…a cell phone, land line, Skype number, and backup VOIP line for people to talk to you

…and a number of email addresses where people can leave you more detailed messages

…and several IM clients

…plus Twitter

…augmented by online project and team management sites

…and various videoconferencing platforms…

suddenly you’ve transitioned from accessible coworker to frustrating obstacle course.

If your customers and colleagues are spending several hours downloading clients, setting up accounts on various systems, and otherwise initiating specialized ways of reaching you, your technology has become more of a problem than a solution.

Not only is there the initial hassle factor, but there is the ongoing fuss of deciding which of the half a dozen ways to get in touch with you is going to be best in any particular circumstance. And while having a single point of failure (“He’s not answering the phone!”) is risky, user fatigue from having too many points of potential failure (“He never picks up the cell phone, and forget about hearing back in email!@#$%@#$!”) is also problematic.

You need a small set of ways to get in touch that consistently reaches you, like right when they call, not when you get around to picking up your voicemail. Real time accessibility — wherein your colleagues and clients can reach you predictably and easily — is essential.

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But what else does it take to keep your web work flowing? Here are my top picks:

1. USB-Powered Garments: Keeping the temperature low is good for your computing equipment, but bad for your extremities. Luckily there are suitably geeky options — from gloves to slippers you can get a lot of warmth directly from your USB ports.

2. Espresso Machine: Sometimes you need the jolt but you don’t want to take a jaunt to the cafe. Or maybe you’re one of those rural web workers, and it’s a two-day hike to the nearest Starbucks. It is time to take control of the means of production and ramp up your in-house coffee production equipment. You can get started in the wonderful world of home fancy coffee making for less than $200, and you’ll be amazed how much espresso you can drink when you can pump out a shot anytime you want. Buzzzz.

3. Headset Wardrobe: It requires a frightening number of headsets to keep me in touch: wireless Bluetooth for the computer, plus a Bluetooth back up when the primary flakes out during a videoconference, two wired headsets with a mini-pin in for the phone, one that hooks on my non-Bluetooth ear and a second that’s a bit more “Time-Life operator” for really long conversations, and finally a third wired headset and amplifier for the computer when the wireless just won’t work.

4. Flowers: Gazing at an alternative to what is flickering across the screen(s) on your desk is invigorating when you need to refresh your focus or vision. Almost any living thing will serve this purpose: a fish tank, a hermit crab, plants and flowers, or what have you. If your office is lacking in windows, it’s even more important to get another living thing to join you in your workspace.

5. The Perfect Chair: The one piece of equipment that you touch more than any other is your office chair, and its role in your energy level, comfort, and overall health is hard to overstate. My latest choice: a large exercise ball. It keeps me moving, sitting up straight, and makes it seem just a little more fun in my office. Plus, as a business-extremely-casual web worker, I’m not confronted with any skirt-related awkwardness that might be a problem in a more traditional office setting.

What accessories make your workday more productive, more comfortable, or more fun?

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How to move on to the next important task? We’ve tried these techniques:

1. Keep it together. Have an on-deck circle for your major tasks with all the stuff you’ll need to make significant progress on the item in one place — a folder, project folio, or web-based work area. When you are ready to move from one task to the next, you won’t waste a lot of time trying to get all the assets together.

2. Don’t stop. Many people find that setting a fixed period of time to work — say 45 minutes — rather than setting out to just complete a to-do item is a better way to work. Having a time focus will keep you moving if the first thing you tackle turns out to be a trivial matter. A day can slip by too quickly if you find yourself working 10-minute problems interspersed with 20-minute coffee-fetching sprees.

3. Have a plan. You don’t need to sit there and figure out what you should tackle next — you’ve got a solid plan of the major things you’re trying to accomplish today. The next step is clear, and your task list is handy so making the switch is easy. Right?

4. Get it going. We all need to take a break, and certainly no one should be risking DVT so they can get more done. But defer your coffee spree for just a couple of minutes, and instead get started on the next task. Then when you come back caffeinated and ready to rock, you’ll already be started and will spend less time floundering.

5. Push past roadblocks.You’re really making progress when you reach a point where you need an answer from a colleague or client, and suddenly the happy GTD vibe you had dissolves — the one person who knows the answer is at lunch, in jail, napping under his desk, on vacation, whatever — the point is he’s not on the other end of the phone. Now is the time your commitment to moving quickly from task to task will be tested, so hang tough! You can make a reasonable guess about what the decider would want, evaluate the risk and possible cost of undoing that choice should it not be exactly the right thing, and then proceed. Nine times out of ten you’ll make the right decision, and you’re that much closer to Getting another Thing Done.

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It’s easy to lose momentum during the sabbatical, but there are some tasks you just might want to tackle:

1. Take a moment to reflect on the direction you’re heading. This goes beyond just the Getting Things Done that you might be doing daily, and I’m afraid it requires some deep thought. Are you working on projects that you find engaging, or are you just paying the piper without enjoying the tune? Is your work making you stretch, taking you to places that you want to go, or do you find yourself wondering where you’re going and why you might be in that handbasket? The ever-thoughtful David Seah has written eloquently about this activity, and his musings are worth reading as you consider what you’ve been up to and what you’d really want to be doing.

2. Tidy up physically. Open up those file drawers and consider whether project files from long-completed projects are filled with hidden gold mines of useful insight or notes from dull meetings that weren’t even useful to you when you were actively working on the project. Just imagine: if you are hit by a bus, will people going through your files think, “Gosh, she really has saved the most strategically useful information from her years of work.” Or will it be, “Good grief, didn’t he ever throw anything away?!?”

3. Tidy up electronically. Don’t force yourself into email bankruptcy. Get it together and just confront all the things in your inboxes and assorted folders. While you’re at it, look at those perpetual items on your assorted to-do lists and knock out as many as is humanly possible. You’ll feel an enormous surge of accomplishment, even though you haven’t actually done anything other than basic communication.

4. Give yourself some training. So often web workers are working outside the normal workplace re-education schemes that keep our colleagues up to date on employment law, server virtualization, and the like. Commit to keeping your own skills sharp and filling in the gaps about what you know about your toolset by committing to spend a week or two working through some self-education. Get a teach-dummies-something-in-some-period-of-time-headfirst book and start at the beginning and work through every exercise until you get to the end.

What do you do when you find yourself in the midst of a lull in your work?

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