Hertz’s CIO explains how the company moved from housing all its customer service agents in a call center to having nearly half of them based at home, puncturing any ideas of successful remote workers as elite, highly educated professionals in the process. Read More »
Collaboration
With the Olympics just a few months away, there’s the usual flurry of stories detailing frenzied preparations by organizers and athletes. But one other type of news item is surprisingly popular in Britain – stories equating telecommuting during the games with slacking at home. Read More »
Got a remote gig that allows you to work from home but a home that isn’t exactly palatial? Design pros channel James Bond to offer clever solutions to keep your business and personal life from blurring, even if you’re living in tight quarters. Read More »
Study after study shows that flexible work arrangements increase productivity and make for happier employees. But studies also reveal middle managers resist the idea. A recent forum on paid family leave at the Ford Foundation offers tips on converting them into flex work believers. Read More »
Traditional business culture, with its emphasis on networking, meetings and pitching, doesn’t generally favor introverts. And the current management mania for collaboration may be making matters worse for quiet ruminators. Is remote working the solution to the problem, or does it bring its own issues? Read More »
Remote working is often about practicing what you preach. Got an outdoor adventure brand? No chaining your employees to their desks then. Built your company late at night? Forget the nine to five. But what if your company is all about tracking time? Harvest explains. Read More »
Remote work advocates have plenty of scientific ammunition to convince skeptics as study after study has shown telecommuters get more done. But what’s true on average doesn’t hold for every case, new research suggests. For stultifying tasks (and, unsurprisingly, slackers), the office may be best. Read More »
An exec at jobs marketplace Zaarly pens an uncompromising post admitting he’s been converted to remote work skepticism and arguing that for demanding, idea-hungry startups at least co-located teams are definitely the way to go. Is he on to something? Read More »
A new survey released by remote access company TeamViewer today shows that while both genders predict more online meetings in the future, women see more benefits to the practice than men do and are also more demanding of their meeting hosts. Why is this? Read More »
A quarterly report from Elance indicates that with the lengthy economic crisis in Europe showing no signs of coming to a happy conclusion, workers in troubled countries are increasingly turning to remote work as an alternative to finding jobs in their stressed home economies. Read More »
Microsoft Canada’s latest Flexible Working report shows that despite a steady drumbeat of studies validating the idea that telecommuting improves productivity, Canadian managers are still much more skeptical of the practice than their employees, holding back uptake of remote work. Read More »
The results are out on UK telecoms giant O2′s one-day telecommuting experiment and it’s good news for fans of remote work. Sending nearly 3,000 workers home improved productivity, saved money and CO2, and resulted in more sleep and family time for employees. Read More »
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