In general, the people who telecommute tend to be well educated with a college degree, in a higher income bracket and around 40 years old according to WorldatWork. The report went on to say that the number of telecommuters continues to increase, due to improved home Internet connectivity, increased fuel and commuting cost, and companies embracing improved work-life balance initiatives.

According to the Telework Research Network, if the 41 million Americans who hold jobs that could be done from home chose to do so for at least one day next week, the savings would be $772 million dollars in total, including:

• Commuter cost savings of $494 million
• A savings of 2.3 million barrels of oil totaling $185 million
• Traffic accidents reduced by 775, for a savings of $93 million

Companies can save over $6,500 per employee if that employee telecommutes just one day a week. Citrix Online is saving $2 million dollars in physical space costs by reducing seats in its office by allowing employees to work remotely.

Access Economics estimates that if Australia had a 10 percent increase in the number of people who telecommute for 50 percent of their worktime, the country would gain over $1.4 billion AUD per year ($1.4 billion) with reduced time and costs for travel, lowered office expenses, better employee retention, infrastructure savings, less fuel used and more.

Even the United States government is embracing telecommuting. Employees in the General Services Administration (GSA) are joining up with government agencies, companies and other organizations to pledge to telecommute at least one day next week. According to the GSA, about 50 percent of employees telecommute at least once a week already, which “leads to real estate cost savings and increased productivity, and helps reduce the agency’s environmental impact.” Telework Research Network claims that the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 could result in a $15 billion a year savings for United States taxpayers with agencies saving $850 million in real estate costs and $2.3 billion in absenteeism every year while employees save up to $2700 in transportation and other work expenses and have fewer illnesses.

Whether you work for a small business, a multi-national corporation or a governmental agency, the benefits associated with telecommuting are similar: better balance and quality of life, reduced cost savings for both the employee and employer and a smaller environment footprint.

What are you going to do for Telework Week?

Photo by Bob Cotter used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

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Right Person, Wrong Internet Connection

Situations do come up when the person you want or need to work with just doesn’t have the Internet connectivity to support the tools you use or to easily download the files they need. There are different options available, the simplest of which can be adding a stipend to pay for an improved Internet connection of some sort.

There are, however, some places where a great Internet connection just isn’t available. For the right person, it’s worth choosing tools that don’t require high-speed Internet access. This kind of situation can be less than ideal, especially if you need to keep files synchronized, making it necessary to weigh the difficulties against the value of working with a particular individual.

Preparing for Emergencies

At any given time, you can read about floods, fires and a wide variety of other natural disasters in the news headlines. With team members spread throughout the world, there’s a greater chance that services such as Internet access will be disrupted by such events.

It’s good to have an emergency plan in place for these situations so you aren’t left scrambling if a team member’s Internet connection goes out. That can include making sure that you’ve got alternate lines of communication set up — you may be surprised by how many teams communicate purely online, not even making a note of members’ cell phones in case of an emergency. It can also be worthwhile to look into setting up alternate methods of internet access ahead of time, like a wireless modem.

Hiring With Internet Access in Mind

It’s interesting to watch the job ads listing positions for telecommuting. It’s become fairly common for such jobs to require having a high-speed Internet connection as part of the job. Virtual assistants based in places like the Philippines or India will often make a point of noting the speed of their Internet connection. It’s become a valuable asset in such careers not only because it makes a person more productive but because many employers now expect an Internet connection beyond dial-up.

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In my job, I look at metrics in three major categories: awareness, membership and participation. I use website analytics and social media mentions to gauge whether people are aware of our activities. Membership is measured when people join the community or subscribe to mailing lists. Participation is the most important and most comprehensive set of measurements, looking at posts in our forums, mailing list participation, IRC activity and various developer activities, since I manage an open-source developer community. Most of these are measured and charted over time to show areas of growth or decline in the community on a monthly basis, which allows us to make adjustments if anything starts to stagnate. In addition to the numbers, I also do a fair amount of analysis to look for content trends and recommend potential areas for improvement based on how the community responds to certain activities. While this is a significant amount of work every month, all of these measurements allow me to justify my existence (and my paycheck) to the company and my manager while also helping me find areas where I can improve the community.

So how can metrics help you in your role? Many companies already have processes that require measurement of progress toward goals. The type of metrics that I’m thinking about would complement and augment those existing measurements with a few more details. While there are many good ways to measure effectiveness, there are also a few pitfalls, so let’s look at one approach to setting up some personal web working metrics.

Measure What Matters

Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should measure it! For example, I could measure something like the number or hours worked every day or the number of emails sent/received, but those measurements are irrelevant to my job.  As a community manager, many of the community’s metrics also serve as my personal metrics. You need to look at your position, job expectations and goals to find the best ways to measure whether or not you’ve been effective and productive as a web worker. If you don’t tie your metrics into your career goals and specific job requirements, you won’t be measuring the right things.

Pick What to Report

I consume a significant amount of information, and I measure many different activities. Less than half of my measurements or the data that I look at on a monthly basis make it into my report. Let me be clear, this is not about hiding information; it’s about finding a representative data set that can be consumed by most people without an excessive time commitment. I spend a lot of time looking at the numbers because that’s part of my job, but other people also have their jobs to do, so I need to distill the information down to only the most important information. I have a set of things that always go into the report — this is the baseline of activities that I track over time. A few others might be added if something unusual happens or if I notice something really interesting. In other words, measure some extra activities that you can use to determine how you’re performing, but make sure that what you deliver to your manager is a digestible amount of only the most important metrics.

Categorize

Most of us have jobs that span several different areas, and you probably need to measure your performance across a couple of categories. For my community, I break it out into awareness, membership and participation, which boils down to three levels of engagement for community members. As a web worker, you might have a category or two for your core job function and another category for learning, training or other measures related to career advancement. By categorizing your metrics, you can make sure you aren’t neglecting an important area. For example, neglecting training or learning new skills might not matter in the short term, but if you neglect them too long, you might find that your skills are no longer the ones that your employer requires. It’s part of our human nature to categorize, but be careful not to go overboard here. For most people, two to four categories are all you need if you pick the right ones.

This is just one possible approach to using a metrics or numbers-based approach to measuring your effectiveness, but don’t get too caught up in the process. Stay focused on measuring a few of the most important things for your job and build on it over time.

How have you used metrics and numbers to demonstrate your effectiveness as a web worker?

Image by Flickr user Tom Woodward used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Despite (or maybe because of) these adjustments to my work day, I manage to meet or exceed the expectations for my job. My employer is flexible about when I work as long as I get the job done, and I occasionally pull some late nights, early mornings or do work on the weekend to make sure that I’m taking care of the community that I manage.

All of this flexibility works for me, and it looks like I’m not alone. According to a recent study by a group of researchers at Brigham Young University, people who telecommute balance work and family life better than those who work in an office, but only when flextime is also part of the plan. These researchers analyzed data from more than 24,000 IBM employees from 75 countries to find that telecommuters using flextime could work 57 hours per week before work starts to interfere with their personal lives, while the number was a paltry 38 hours per week for traditional office workers.

This isn’t just an IBM phenomenon, either. About a year ago, I looked at a Cisco study of its telecommuting employees that found:

69 percent of the telecommuting employees see increased productivity.

67 percent said that their work quality improved.

80 percent had an improved quality of life.

One of the biggest surprises for Cisco was that people actually spend more time working when they telecommute. This isn’t really surprising to me as I spend more time working when I telecommute. For one thing, I shave over 1.5 hours of driving time out of my daily schedule. I also tend to start work as soon as I get up around 6am and then take a little break later in the day to go for a quick run, take a shower and put on something other than my pajamas. This lets me get a jump on the work day and take a break when I need it, thus increasing my productivity while allowing me to be flexible with my time.

Smart companies should be taking a serious look at web working as a way to improve employee productivity while saving money that they would spending on extra office space. By being creative and flexible about working arrangements, both companies and employees can benefit.

How do you benefit from telecommuting and flextime without sacrificing productivity?

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Here are a few tips for meeting organizers to help make sure that they have a great meeting over the phone (with “phone” being loosely defined here to include Skype and other online real-time audio):

1. Give people plenty of notice for the meeting, if possible. Ideally, try to schedule your phone meetings with plenty of advance notice to make sure that people have time to prepare. I know this isn’t always possible, but a little planning ahead of time can really help. Keep in mind that what seems like two days’ notice to you might be considerably less for international participants who won’t see your request until their morning, which could mean they have considerably less time to prepare.
2. Keep time zones in mind. In cases where people are spread out across time zones, taking the time to find out where people are physically located so that you can pick a time that is most convenient will help your attendees be alert and prepared for the meeting. With phone numbers becoming less tied to your location, don’t assume that you know where people are based on a phone number. Take the time to ask where they are and find out if they have a preferred meeting time. For example, I work with one person in Finland who prefers 10pm calls to 5pm calls, so he can have meetings after his kids are in bed.
3. Send a written agenda and materials out via email (or post them online) when you schedule the meeting, or no later than 24-48 hours before the meeting, when possible. This gives people plenty of time to prepare for the meeting, especially for people who primarily speak other languages. Giving people who are less fluent in your language a little extra time to assimilate the information can make a big difference in their level of participation. Don’t forget to include the phone number or other logistics for the meeting with local dial-in numbers in other countries, if they’re available.
4. Send a reminder about an hour before the meeting with any last minute updates. This reminder gives people one last chance to prepare for the meeting and can help forgetful participants, especially those for whom the meeting is at a non-traditional time.
5. As people join the meeting, make sure that they announce themselves so that you know who is attending the call. A quick prompt like, “welcome, who just joined us?” can help people know that they should announce themselves. I do this even for Skype calls where you can see who joined because it gives you time to make audio adjustments for anyone who can’t be heard clearly.
6. Double-check that everyone has all of the materials for the meeting. Start the meeting with some introductions (if needed) and a quick review of the agenda and what you plan to cover. This gives you a final check that people know how the meeting will be conducted, and you can make sure that they have all of their materials before the meeting.
7. Consider using online meeting tools. There are many tools that can be used in real-time to manage the content during the meeting and make sure that people are all looking at the same pages of the materials (GoToMeeting, for example). You should make sure that the solution you pick will work for most people given their bandwidth rates and system configuration. For example, if you have some people running on Macs, don’t pick a tool that only works on Windows. I always consider this an optional step for international meetings, especially if you have people located in countries where maintaining a stable Internet connect can be a challenge for people calling in from home outside of the work day. Using these tools doesn’t replace the need to send materials out in advance, since you want to give people time to assimilate the information and have a copy as a backup in case they can’t get connected during the meeting.

Meetings held over the phone where you can’t see the other people are challenging enough, but add international participants, time zones and language challenges into the mix, and you can end up with a seriously unproductive meeting. Taking the time to prepare and keeping a few of these tips in mind can help your meeting go much more smoothly.

What are your tips for making sure that your international phone meetings are successful and productive?

Photo by Flickr user StephenMitchell used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Face Time

If at all possible, your first week really should be face-to-face in the corporate office. There is something about getting the team together in person to establish a good baseline relationship with key team members that can help make the upcoming weeks easier. Being at the office your first week also gives you access to on-site IT staff to make sure that you have all of the equipment and software required to be productive when you get back to your home office, and it gives you access to orientation and other training in addition to face time with your team. Spending the first week in the office isn’t always possible, especially in smaller companies where there is no corporate office or if budget constraints make travel impractical. However, if this is an option, take it!

Meetings

I’m not normally a big fan of meetings, but taking the time to meet with as many key people as possible in your first week can really help you learn about your job, the company and the team. These meetings could be in-person, where possible, or remote, via web conferencing software, VoIP or phone. Talk to your manager and find out if they are already scheduling any meetings for your first week, since some companies are more proactive than others about making a good first impression during week one. If the meetings aren’t already scheduled, find out who you will be working with and schedule meetings with those people in your first week. Focus on learning about what they do, ask about the company and find out what they think you should be doing. Understanding what your peers expect out of your job can give you quite a bit of information about where you should or should not be focusing. Make sure that you figure out which of these people you will interact with on a regular basis and schedule recurring meetings with key people to help you stay in touch with the team while you work from afar. Also ask about what regular meetings you might need to attend and make sure that you have key team meetings, process/product meetings and corporate events on your calendar.

Technology

If possible, try to get the company to send you any required equipment pre-configured to work on the company network along with instructions for getting access to company resources a few days in advance of starting your new remote job. This helps to ensure that you can start being productive immediately rather than spending the first week trying to get online. I’ve had several companies do this, and it gave me a huge productivity boost, since I had time to test everything and resolve any minor issues before “officially” starting the new job. It also gives you plenty of time to get everything configured the way you need it and to get your job-specific software installed at a relaxed pace without being a drain on productivity. Make sure that you take the time to ask about policies or other technological restrictions that prevent you from using certain pieces of software over the corporate network. For example, you shouldn’t plan on using Skype for phone calls only to find out that it doesn’t work over your corporate VPN network.

Remote Office

If you are starting a job where you need to work out of a home office, you might already have a good office setup with some privacy, a comfortable chair and everything you need to work remotely. However, you should be prepared for making some adjustments. Ask your manager in advance about the working environment and your specific job needs. For example, some companies have large numbers of phone meetings, and you might need something other than a cell phone if you are going to have days with back-to-back meetings for large portions of the day over the phone. A landline and a good headset or speaker phone might be a good investment in those cases. If your work involves a lot of contracts or other documentation that you need to send to customers from your home office, you might need a better scanner or even (gasp!) a fax machine.

Tips for Employers

While the above tips are focused on remote employees, as an employer or manager of remote employees, you should think about how you can make the remote employee’s first week a productive and happy one.

• Can you schedule some face-to-face time?
• Have you scheduled meetings for their first week?
• Do they have the technology they need to do their job?
• Can you send them their equipment a few days in advance?
• Are they enrolled in the right training classes?
• Have you carved out time on your calendar to check in with them a few times during that first week?

What are your tips for starting a new job as a remote employee?

Photo by Flickr user mccun934, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The challenge in corporate web working is to be able to consistently prove that you can accomplish just as much, if not more, while working remotely as you could in a traditional office setting. You’re also fighting the perception some people have that “working from home” is really a euphemism for goofing off.

As a result, you need to work extra hard to make sure that people know you are productive, and there are so many things you can do to ruin your chances of being a successful. There are also plenty of things that your company can do that will make it difficult for you to be successful, but I want to focus on how avoid the many things that you can do to limit your chances of being a successful corporate web worker based on your behavior when working remotely.

Here are just a few examples of ways to make sure that you’re never allowed to work remotely again.

1. Refer to working from home as a “day off.”
2. Brag about how little you accomplish while telecommuting.
3. Spend all day on Twitter and Facebook talking about everything except work. Make sure that your co-workers and/or your boss is connected to you on those networks so they can see your bragging.
4. Start a side business and spend all day working on your personal projects, instead of work.
5. Don’t bother to set any goals or figure out what materials you need to do your work from home.
6. Better yet, make sure that you leave some important documents or technology at the office to make sure that you can’t do much work.
7. Make sure that you don’t have the infrastructure you need for working at home (such as a phone headset or solid Internet connection).
8. Squeeze in as many household chores as possible and plan to do big piles of laundry, dishes and home improvement tasks while you are at home.
9. Ignore all of your email and don’t respond to any messages.
10. Don’t answer the phone or return voicemails.
11. Make sure that you set your IM status to offline and ignore any incoming IM.
12. Take long naps. Bonus points for sleeping through scheduled meetings.
13. Fall asleep during your conference calls. Snoring is optional.
14. Refuse to speak during conference calls, especially if someone asks you a question.
15. Don’t bother to mute the phone line on conference calls when your kids or pets come tearing through the room.
16. Spend all day catching up on your soap operas, cartoons or other television shows.
17. Take conference calls or other business calls with the television on in the background.
18. Don’t bother to change out of your pajamas when you have video conferences over your webcam.
19. Don’t accomplish anything tangible or complete any deliverables.
20. When your boss asks what you did when you were working from home, just shrug and say “not much of anything.”

Some of these are obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek, but they do represent real things that people sometimes try to get away with when telecommuting. This isn’t to say that you can never to a load of laundry while working from home, but any of these activities can get in the way of being productive or prevent you from coming across as a responsible professional. We need to think carefully about how our actions might be perceived by our managers, co-workers, customers or other business people that we interact with on a regular basis. At the end of the day, most people are measured by their output. If you consistently get a lot of great quality work accomplished, your chances of success are much higher, but you don’t want a few bad habits to reflect poorly on your work.

What are your favorite examples of what not to do as a corporate web worker?

Photo by Flickr user Ryan Vaarsi used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Telecommuting and working from remote locations works well for me, and it has worked for many, but not all, of the people that I’ve managed. I’ve seen examples of both extremes: people who were incredibly successful as web worker and those who got their telecommuting privileges revoked.

Being able to work from home is a nice benefit, but only if you can continue to successfully perform your job, and there are a number of things that you can do to help improve your chances of success. Here are my top tips for being a successful corporate web worker.

1. Office space. Start by finding a place where you can work remotely without distraction. I’m one of the lucky ones with my own dedicated home office with a door that I can close to distractions. If the best place you have to work is a kitchen table and you have family or roommates at home, working from home might not be the best option. The key is to find some arrangement where you can focus on your work. This could be a location in the house, a coworking space or even a garage / workshop.
2. Set goals. Know what you plan to accomplish and set goals for what you will accomplish when you are working remotely. Obviously, you should do this anyway, but it becomes even more important to have solid goals when you are working outside of the office, since you’ll need to be able to justify your efforts to your manager who can’t just walk by your desk to see you hard at work.
3. Know what you need. Make sure that you have everything that you need to accomplish those goals that you outlined. Do you have access to that document you need to update and solid connectivity to all of your networks in the office? Nothing ruins your day like planning to complete a specific task and realizing that you left some critical piece of documentation or technology sitting in the office.
4. Great output. In most corporate environments today, you’re judged on your output. If you can demonstrate to your manager that you have consistently high quality output while working remotely, your chances of success are pretty good.
5. High volume of output. Quantity is just as important as quality when it comes to working remotely. If all you have to show for your day of remote work is one really high quality email, you probably aren’t going to be successful. Make sure that you are cranking out the deliverables to prove that you are working hard and not goofing off.
6. Focus on work. Stay focused on your work-related activities, and remember that you are working from home, not taking a day off. Save the laundry, dishes, and other household chores for after you finish a solid day of work. You should be doing the same work, just from a different location.
7. Be present. Because you aren’t in the office, you’ll need to find other ways to keep in touch with your coworkers. Stay online, keep your IM client open and use any other collaboration tools available so that your colleagues can see that you are online and available to them.
8. Be responsive. Respond quickly to email and phone messages to demonstrate that you really are working and that people can get answers from you regardless of your physical location.
9. Planning. Plan your remote work days to focus on a couple of big tasks that require quiet concentration, but that you can show off at the end of the day as solid accomplishments. I like to save big creative tasks for the days I’m working at home where I can focus with fewer distractions. Creating reports, documentation or writing presentation materials are all great remote tasks for me.
10. Show off. I know, nobody likes a showoff, but the harsh reality in business (any business) is that people are busy, and if you don’t tell your manager how awesome you are, then she might not notice. Make sure that you take the time to let your manager know exactly what you accomplished when you were working remotely. If she knows that you will do a great job regardless of where you are doing the work, then she’ll have no reason to doubt your ability to work remotely, and it won’t reflect negatively on you when it comes time for that yearly performance review.

What are your secrets for being a successful corporate web worker?

Photo by Dawn Foster used with permission.

Many of us are web workers because we want to spend less time commuting to work and more quality time with family, doing things we enjoy year-round. But life sometimes gets in the way and we forget to enjoy the little moments.

Those little moments don’t mean the big things like making a rare trip to the museum, or catching a show. It can simply be watching your six-year-old read, going to lunch with a friend, looking at the stars on a clear night, playing a game with your family or walking your dog on a spring-like day.

I think we all agree that the older we get, the faster time flies. Remember when you were a child that time took “forever” to get out of school, to reach your next birthday and to earn your driver’s license? Now events sneak up on us. Here’s why web working rocks and gives us time to enjoy the little things in our lives.

• Flexible uniforms and workouts. Web workers can wear whatever we want. I mostly wear shorts and a t-shirt or sweatpants and a sweatshirt. This way, I’m comfortable and always ready to work out.
• Convenient workouts. We can exercise when it’s best for us rather than trying to squeeze it in during lunch, waking up extra early before work or fighting the after-work crowd. I work best in the morning, so I exercise in the early afternoon when my mind starts to lag.
• Personal appointments. When an appointment takes longer than anticipated, we don’t have to stay later in a corporate office to make up for it. We’re already where we need to be and can make up the work easily at night or some other time. If there’s a special event in town that only happens during the day, we don’t have to use a personal day to attend.
• Volunteer any time. Since moving to full-time web working, I’ve been able to volunteer more often and take non-profit board positions, which tend to have meetings during the week day. I have many memories of doing volunteer work that only occurred during the week day.
• Enjoy interests and hobbies. I joined a tennis team that only plays during the week. It doesn’t eat into my work time since drilling and playing a match takes about the same amount of time as one of my regular workouts.
• Flexible schedule. Are you a morning person? A night person? A person who needs to take frequent breaks? Unless you have family commitments, you can work a schedule that fits your innate needs. So when you wake up in the morning, take a moment and think how wonderful it is to have more control over your work schedule.
• Unexpected events. It’s easier to deal with unexpected events as a web worker. When my dad had bypass surgery while I worked for a corporation, I could only spend the afternoon with him. But when he had a stroke, I was a web worker and spent a lot of time with him in the eight months that transpired between the stroke and his passing. Had I been in a corporate job, I would have missed out on all the time I spent with him in his final year.
• Illness. When I get a cold or just plain don’t feel well, I get comfy in bed and snuggle with my laptop. I don’t have to get dressed and drag myself to the office. Or I can work just a couple of hours, enough to get the job done. Plus, you don’t catch anything from colleagues. The more relaxed web working environment can be healthier so that you don’t get sick as often.
• Pets. When I take my dog out for her mid-day break on a typical day, I look at her and around me to take in the moment. If I were still in a corporate job, I would not have her in my life. Sure, she has her accidents in the house and sneaks into the trash when I’m not looking. But nothing beats her spending her day next to me while I work.
• Children. My kids come straight home after school. They stopped going to after-school care when I joined the ranks of web workers. I spend an hour or two with them catching up on their day (when they’re willing to share), ensuring they do their homework and going outside to play. Many of us web workers can easily sit in front of the screen for hours. Thanks to my dog, kids and need to exercise, I give my eyes and body a break. I can also volunteer at their schools during the day; I love seeing them at school with their classmates and remember those days.

I live in the Dallas area in Texas, an area not known for seeing snow often. When we had a beautiful snowfall recently, I took a 30-minute break to build a snowblob. (It had started raining by the time I put on the second layer.) That was great for my spirit and feeling like a kid again. When I returned to my toasty office, I felt revived and forged ahead in my work. Web working is decadent, isn’t it? Stop for a minute and appreciate what you have.

What do you love about web working?

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Recently, I’ve overheard a few web workers who say they’re sick of working remotely. It can be isolating and lonely and grueling; when you’re frustrated there’s no one to vent to; the office ignores you until they decide to load you up with yet another new task; and so on.

All this may be true. But there are other truths, too: working remotely can give you considerable flexibility and help you get more out of life. If you’re feeling a little jaded right now, why not reacquaint yourself with the sunnier side of remote work by indulging in some of its great advantages?

These are the things I enjoy the most about working remotely — they’re the things I do to remind myself how lucky I am to live the way I do. A warning, though: following this advice may lead to a sense of acute well-being, good fortune, or even smugness. Make the most of it, but try not to brag to your on-site colleagues too much…

1. Start the day in bed.

Forget bouncing out of bed at seven: arrange your affairs (and family, if need be) so that you can wake up as late as you wish.

To optimize the sense of decadence, grab a coffee and your laptop and head back to bed to take in the news, sift through the morning’s emails, and check your schedule with a sense of leisure.

When you do finally arise, you’ll likely be more relaxed and feel more positive about the tasks you need to do today.

2. Work from a luxurious location.

Just how remote is your remote work? If you find yourself chained to your desk, it might be time to rediscover the real joys of being off-site.

What’s the most decadent location in your area? It might be on your balcony, a nearby beach, an upmarket cafe that makes great pancakes, or the domed reading room in the historic library down the road.

Whatever it is, head out to spend a little time working in the most beautiful, calm, relaxed location you can think of. While you’re there, take a moment to appreciate just how lucky you are not to be stuck in the cube farm.

3. Talk to a local.

Isolation is the bane of many remote worker’s lives. So why not break the trend today? At lunchtime, step outside and say hello to someone in your area.

Where I live, the only place I’m likely to see another person is at the general store. Fine; I’ll stroll down there to buy milk or an ice cream (more decadence!) and have a chat with the shop keeper. You may be lucky enough to have neighbors, or see strangers passing along your street: say hello and ask how they’re going.

Much has been said to the effect that going out of your way — and your comfort zone — to make contact with another person can lead to feelings of wellbeing and involvement, and boost your self-esteem and mood. It’s also unlikely to be something that would happen very often on the lunchtime-busy streets outside a city office. Just as well you work remotely!

4. Optimize break time.

It’s not just what you do with your breaks: it’s when you take them.

As a remote worker, you don’t have the boss or your colleagues tracking your every move, so you can take a break when you need to, rather than at an approved time. Make the most of that: recognize when you need time out, and take it.

There is, of course, the question of what you’ll do with that five — or fifteen — minutes. I like to spend my breaks doing things I can’t do in an office: digging something out of my vegetable garden for dinner, playing with a pet, or collecting eggs. Going for a run at three in the afternoon is, to me, a great indulgence of working off-site.

5. At 5.01, do something you love.

Those poor saps in the office rarely knock off at five, and then they still have to spend time in traffic or on transport once they finish up for the day.

Not you! Finish on the dot of five — if not a shade earlier — and make sure that at 5.01 you’re engaged in something you truly enjoy. My first choice would be to sip a martini on my deck, looking out across the countryside, but your idea of heaven may be to play with your kids, catch an early movie, or spend an hour or two mucking around on the drums before the guys arrive — exhausted from work and commuting — for band practice.

Make the most of those extra hours, and you’ll remember why working remotely seemed like such a good idea in the first place.

Try any or all of these tricks and you’ll likely find you have a reinvigorated appreciation for your remote work setup. How luck you are to work remotely! Who’d ever want to change that?

Over to you: what do you do to remind yourself of the decadence of remote work?

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• VoIP
• Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS)
• Mobile
• Hybrid

It’s important that remote workers have a business line that rings separately from their home phone. This post is going to look at these options for corporate telecommuters.

VoIP
Corporate-grade VoIP solutions like Asterisk and Cisco Unified Communications enable corporations to extend their VoIP systems out to remote users. Depending on the VoIP backend, it can be as easy as remote users plugging their corporate-issue VoIP handsets into their home broadband routers to make them available on the corporate PBX, regardless of their physical office location.

Extending your corporate VoIP solution to remote workers has the following benefits:

• Corporate management over all employee VoIP phones.
• Corporate security over all employee VoIP phones.
• Standardized telephone billing.
• External customers and partners are provided with a consistent telephone experience, whether the employee they are calling is a part-time or full-time remote worker.

However, extending your corporate VoIP solution to remote workers has the following dependencies:

• Experience, trained and certified staff to manage the implementation, operations, and security of a VoIP telephony solution.
• Potential need for additional network hardware and security.
• Support staff in place to help remote users on IP telephone configuration issues.

VoIP phone systems are also gaining ground in the consumer and mobile computing market, which opens another set of options for equipping corporate telecommuters with VoIP communication:

• Roll out Skype or Gizmo5 to remote workers. While both these desktop VoIP clients are popular, they don’t have the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to be first-line communications tools.
• Roll out Vonage to remote workers. While it is low cost, you can expect quality issues.
• Sign up your remote workers for VoIP phone service from their local cable provider. However SLAs may vary and the local cable provider may or may not have a business-class offering that it is appropriate and budget-friendly.

Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS)
While corporate-grade VoIP systems are gaining in popularity for economic reasons, there are still many corporations relying on telephone systems using traditional landlines. Since these systems lack the robust features of VoIP telephones, corporations with remote workers have the following options:

• Relying on corporate voicemail boxes for offsite workers to receive calls from customers and partners. This could result in a lag on their response time and productivity.
• Releasing home phone numbers to external clients and partners. This may cause some confusion or send the wrong message. In addition, some employees may not want their personal landline and/or mobile phone numbers released to external customers and partners.

One of the keys to a successful telecommuting program is having the infrastructure to support the remote workers so they can be responsive to company business. Companies still using POTS may have to get creative to ensure their remote workers are always accessible via telephone.

Mobile
The mobile phone is the first number to call for many web workers whether they be corporate or independent. When choosing whether to roll out mobile phones as the primary telephone contact for corporate remote workers, there are a few things to consider:

• Are mobile phones part of the corporate culture?
• Are remote workers expected to pay for the phones? Will there be a corporate standard for mobile devices of will the users choose and buy their own mobile devices?
• Your support staff will need to be skilled in mobile devices.
• There are additional network security considerations for smartphone access to the corporate VPN.

Hybrid
Even corporate web workers may not stay in the same place the whole time, whether it is their home office, favorite coffee shop, coworking center, client site, hotel room or even favorite poolside. Therefore, corporate telecommuting programs may need to consider a hybrid telephony solution for their remote workers that includes both landline and mobile phones.

Corporations leaning towards a hybrid telephony solution for remote workers should keep an eye on Google Voice, which Charles covered recently. They could also consider Grasshopper, a business-grade VoIP solution, which Charles also covered.

Build the Better Remote Worker Telephony Solution
Outside of the technological considerations for rolling out telephones to corporate remote workers, companies need to consider budgetary constraints and whether they want to burden their remote workers and accounting staff with the processing of expense reports. The considerations in this post show that rolling out corporate telecommuting isn’t the turnkey affair it is for independent web workers.

What considerations should employers take into account when rolling out a remote work telephony program?

IP Telephone Image by sxc.hu user dhaake

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This post is going to look at some of the organizational considerations for building, launching and supporting a successful remote work program. While some of these points may seem obvious for the seasoned web workers in our audience, they do need to be factored into the overall corporate decision-making process when implementing an employee telecommuting program.

Selecting Employee Candidates. While some large corporations, like IBM, have full-blown remote working plans for employees, there are plenty of other companies with programs that allow workers to telecommute a couple of days a week. Choosing employee candidates for such a program can be challenging, because the employee’s job and performance have to be taken into account. People in occupations such as sales, marketing and knowledge workers (like writers and programmers) are ideal candidates for remote work on a full-time or part-time basis, but companies need to ensure they only select proven performers. Choosing the right employee candidates could be a post in itself, but is often the first question large organizations take into consideration when the issue of telecommuting arises.

Appointing a Telecommuting Plan Project Manager. Companies taking the first steps into a telecommuting plan need to appoint a project manager, and treat the plan just like any other important project or corporate initiative. This project manager’s role should include:

• Being the central point of contact for the program, including being an interface for telecommuters and their managers.
• Being the escalation point for any telecommuting program issues, including managerial, technical and communications problems.
• Evangelizing the value of telecommuting for the corporation and its productivity.

Hardware, Software and Security. There are two camps when it comes to providing the required equipment for telecommuting. In the first camp, the employer provides all of the hardware and software for the telecommuting employee. The second camp relies on the employee’s own gear, with minimal investment from the employer. At the very least, employees using their own equipment need to be outfitted with the applications they will need to do their work (such as Microsoft Office) and company-approved security software.

Remote Access. Establishing a corporate telecommuting plan is the ideal time to revisit the existing firewall and VPN provisions and ask the following questions:

• Does the corporate firewall and VPN have sufficient capacity to accommodate all of the telecommuters in the program?
• Management of operating system and software patches and updates for remote users is another remote access requirement. Is the infrastructure in place to push the patches and updates to them remotely? Alternatively, will the telecommuters manage the updates on their own?

Communications Strategy. Telecommuting workers may lack the face-to-face communications opportunities of working down the hallway from their coworkers but have a bevy of tools available to keep them in contact with their colleagues, company clients, and partners:

• Corporate Instant Messaging (IM) services, like Microsoft Office Communicator, can provide secure IM communications and “presence” (showing when a user is available to communicate).
• Commercial IM clients like AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger have less security but still enable “presence” and can be useful to companies who have yet to implement a secure corporate IM solution.
• Many of today’s current-generation laptops include video cameras, which can be paired with an IM client or Skype to give telecommuting staff video conferencing capability, either one-on-one, or in small groups.
• Company meetings can take on a new dynamic when telecommuting employees are involved, so companies should check out Web conferencing solutions. WebWorkerDaily has covered a number of such solutions, including present.io and Tinychat. Adobe Acrobat Connect is another economical web conferencing solution.
• Companies should consider loaning or subsidizing BlackBerrys, or other smart phones, to telecommuting employees.

Training. Corporations should expect certain training requirements from their telecommuters. Some typical requirements are:

• Basic hardware/software troubleshooting.
• Basic home network/Internet connectivity troubleshooting.
• PC Security, including anti-virus, firewall, VPN, anti-spyware and anti-malware tools.
• New processes developed for the telecommuting workers.

Revisit Paper-Driven Processes. Many companies are rife with paper-driven processes like Paid Time Off (PTO) requests and expense reports. These processes can be problematic for remote workers, so should be replaced with online equivalents. Here are some examples of ways to retool such processes:

• Use electronic forms software like Microsoft InfoPath, Formatta eForms Manager, or Adobe Acrobat to put corporate forms online and make them available to remote workers. The capability to sign forms electronically is also necessary.
• Look to Microsoft Word’s track changes and commenting tools to make document reviews electronic.
• Consider Adobe Acrobat for online document reviews and collaboration.

Online Collaboration. With the advances in online office and collaboration tools, companies may want to revisit their software choices for telecommuting workers:

• Google Apps Premier Edition can be a potential collaboration solution for remote workers, if the organization is looking towards the cloud for online collaboration.
• SharePoint may already be in place in the organization. The IT group should test and ensure ready access to the SharePoint server via VPN.

While working remotely may seem like old hat to many of us, there is a lot that goes into rolling out a telecommuting program, particularly in larger organizations. It requires the support of management, IT staff and the prospective telecommuters themselves.

Have you implemented a telecommuting program in your organization? What challenges did you face?

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Data Security Basics

The biggest concern for many employers is just how safe their data is. An employer can put some very specific safeguards in place in an office environment, controlling just who has access to specific computers, and so on. But it’s reasonable for an employer to be a little worried about just who has access to their information at your home.

Wireless networks are often a concern. Many telecommuters take advantage of unsecured Wi-Fi to do their work, whether they’re at home or at the local coffee shop. For many businesses, this situation is the start of a nightmare: What if someone malicious manages to get your passwords through one of those unsecured networks, or just copies all of the company data on your laptop? While that sort of scenario may not seem particularly likely to an experienced web worker — especially one who knows to take a few precautions — it remains a concern for employers.

Equipment Concerns

Some companies provide computer equipment to their telecommuting employees as a matter of course. Along with your laptop or other equipment, you’ll likely get a training manual or other guidelines setting out how your employer expects you to use this machine. They pretty much boil down to the fact that this is a work computer and should be treated as such.

But you may also find that you’re doing work for an employer on your own computer. While an employer can’t require you to use your computer in any specific way, they will feel more comfortable with a telecommuter who takes a few precautions. Letting your kids use your computer can be a big concern from an employer’s point of view — they’re worried that a child could download a virus or some spyware that endangers not only your data but even your ability to work.

Reassure Your Employer

These sorts of worries aren’t insurmountable, though. Just taking the time to discuss the issue with your employer offers you a chance to demonstrate that you won’t place company information at risk and that you are aware of potential issues. If you can tell your employer about the precautions you take, you may even be able to skip a lecture from the IT department. The precautions many employers care about, whether or not they’re providing you with hardware and software, can include several different expectations. They can vary depending on the company and the sensitivity of the data involved, but taking the following steps can help to ease a manager’s worries:

• Maintaining up-to-date virus protection
• Connecting to the Internet through a secure network
• Limiting the people who have physical access to your computer
• Only using applications that have built-in security measures, such as using SSL

What measures have you taken to reassure your employer that its data is safe?

Image by Flickr user Steve Garfield

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Focus on the Company, Rather than the Job Title

Certain companies are just much more likely to offer the opportunity to telecommute than others. As long as telecommuting is already a part of the company culture, you won’t be in the awkward position of having to sell a new employer on the idea. It makes sense to pick out a few companies that you’re interested in working for, and then start exploring their actual job openings. Since many companies don’t list many of the job openings they have on the majority of job boards, searching for a new position by employer, rather than job title, can speed up the process.

Look at Small Businesses

While many large companies have reputations as great telecommuting employers, there are many small companies willing to consider employees who want to telecommute. While you may need to do a little more convincing, the financial benefits of working with telecommuters can be particularly attractive to small businesses — the reduced cost of providing office space, furniture and equipment for an employee can be enough to convince some small business owners.

It is harder to tell right off the bat how a smaller business will be to work with as a telecommuter: there aren’t always other employees you can ask about their own experiences. However, many small businesses can be more flexible when taking on new telecommuters, because they don’t have to create a company-wide telecommuting policy for all employees.

Be Ready to Negotiate

Even when companies have a telecommuting policy in place, it is rarely universal. Some companies allow managers to allow exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Others allow different policies for different departments. The main point to be aware of is that managers often want to retain some level of control over just who is telecommuting and how often they do so. That doesn’t mean that you can’t negotiate your own telecommuting arrangement, however.

Some employers are simply looking for some level of reassurance that you’ll be just as great an employee if you’re working over the web than you’ll be if you’re actually in the office. If you can offer up some reassurance (a regular schedule of check-ins, certain goals, or another system), you have a good starting point to negotiate a telecommuting arrangement that works for you. Georgina wrote a great post called “How To Ask the Boss If You Can Work Remotely” which contains many useful tips that can also be applied to negotiations with a new employer.

Be Wary of Scams

One of the biggest difficulties in looking for a telecommuting position is the sheer number of scams that focus on telecommuters. Most of them are very easy to recognize, but it’s still easy to wind up spending a significant amount of time going through job listings on sites with more than their fair share of scams.

Depending on what kind of job you’re looking for, you might be exposed to more scams. Positions requiring fewer skills typically attract more scam listings. Always be wary of offers that look too good to be true.

Have you found your dream telecommuting position? How did you do it?

Image by Flickr user _e.t

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One of the main things to be aware of is that working styles differ across cultures. For example, I’m so used to working with people from the UK and the U.S. that I forget that I can’t be as upfront and straightforward with some of my Filipino colleagues. For us Filipinos, the first few minutes of a business meeting or phone call is usually devoted to idle chit-chat. Also, I can’t give them negative feedback without sandwiching it between positive statements. While I love working with people from different backgrounds, this kind of variety requires some adjustments on my part. As I work with a greater variety of people, I often have to increase the adjustments I have to make.

But doing this has its benefits. When you’re used to your own working culture, you overlook its flaws and weaknesses. By working with people who have a different working style from yours, you’ll be able to see your own flaws more clearly. The first time I worked with local colleagues, it made me see a more personal side to business interaction. This was something I needed at that time, since my communications with international clients were too matter-of-fact. The personal touch I added later allowed me to differentiate myself.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that two work cultures will create conflict, or even clash. The best way to avoid this is by managing expectations from the start. Here’s what fellow WWD blogger Pamela Poole had to say about this:

“If you find yourself working with people from other cultures, my advice is to be very explicit about your expectations and make sure you know theirs from the very start of your negotiations to avoid any misunderstandings down the line.”

Another effect of web working with an international team is that geography becomes a less important factor in business. We can increasingly focus on other factors such as quality of work, experience, and cost. This shift should allow for more equal opportunities for people to compete professionally, where they aren’t judged on nationality.

Also, working with an international team requires you to consider a new factor that you probably rarely thought of before: timezones. This is usually less of a problem for one-on-one meetings, but what if you have to organize a group conference call with members in three different timezones? At least one person on the team will have to make a major schedule change just to accommodate the majority.

To prevent such group sessions from being unfair, it’s important to conduct them only when necessary. No one wants to stay up three hours later than usual just to do collaboration that can be done using a wiki. The good news is that if your team is picky when scheduling conference calls, you’re less likely to waste everybody’s time.

Working with international colleagues may be a challenge, but this has its own rewards. As technology improves and as the global community gets more comfortable to international web work, these challenges will hopefully become non-existent.

Do you work with an international team? If so, what effect does this have on your process and working style? Share your tips in the comments.

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A year ago, the outlook for corporate telecommuting seemed optimistic.  More and more businesses and government agencies were taking the risk to allow their employees to telework.  This was good news to cubicle dwellers who saw teleworking as a way to achieve better work-life balance and for business owners to attract top talent and cut costs in the long run.

Then, the economy turned out in such a way that taking these risks suddenly became too risky.  In times like these, businesses will lean towards one of two approaches to this dilemma:

1) Innovation

Some businesses will take the economy’s current state as a cue to find innovative solutions to their problems.  According to a recent survey by Harris Interactive, around 31 percent of employers claim that they are planning to provide alternative work arrangements to their employees.  Out of that 31 percent, 48 percent are considering telecommuting as part of their plans.

This minority will be the innovators of telecommuting and other alternative work practices.  They’re the ones who will view the downturn as an opportunity to explore the benefits of telecommuting and use it as a way to maintain their competitive edge.

2) Protection

Based on the same survey, majority of employers don’t seem to think that the downturn is the best time to experiment on working arrangements.  Since more budget cuts and layoffs are on the way in several industries, some employers probably won’t risk spending their funds and working hours on telecommuting initiatives.  Their eyes would be fixed on other problems such as increasing profit and keeping running expenses low.

Even the employees themselves might want to take protective measures.  The looming threat of more layoffs might force teleworkers to assert their physical presence as a way of trying to save their jobs.  They might feel more vulnerable to layoffs because it might be harder for them to prove their performance when they’re not inside the office – especially if the company doesn’t have a proper performance qualifying system in place for teleworkers.

Whether your company tends to be innovative or protective, neither approach is necessarily better than the other.  Innovation without doing the proper research and studies first will lead to misspent money and time.  Being too protective of existing working environments and traditions, on the other hand, decreases a businesses chances of adapting during dramatic changes in the economy.  What we need in these times are solutions that are creative, well-studied, and will produce measurable results.

What are your predictions for the fate of telecommuting in 2009?  Is your company going to lean towards innovation or protection?

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