Tag Archives: Telecommuting

A Great Time to Practice Telecommuting

photo by gak

We are a week away to a possible BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) strike in the San Francisco area…again. If your people can’t get to work, what will you do? Your competition elsewhere in the world is not encumbered by your particular transportation woes! They will take this opportunity to move ahead of you while you are shutdown because your people struggle to get to the office to man (people?) the phones or work on that critical project.

So, what better time than right now, this week, to practice your emergency plans for business continuity for natural disasters and the like. Surely you have such plans already in place just waiting to be triggered! Well, okay, if you don’t, at least ask as many of those affected by the pending strike to work from home one day this week. See how things go. Fine tune your processes and telecommuting technologies. It is better to be ready to activate your plans or at least be aware of your potential problems than to scramble to keep things together when disaster strikes.

For tips on how to run teams virtually, or how to better work remotely as a telecommuter, check out the rest of this site.

Telecommute Resumes

images4 Until today I had never heard of a “telecommute resume,” but Employment Digest has some tips for building one. While their advice is worth a look, I think they’re addressing how to build a resume to win any great job in a competitive global market. They’ve left out the one thing that might add value to resume aimed specifically at a telecommuting position.

Continue reading →

A Bit of Good News

images3 This article from Management Issues, a great blog focused on the British workplace, predicts what the working world will look like in 2018. Not only do they predict working from anywhere, but they also expect more collaboration particularly using social media, remote conferencing, email, and texting. Need a sunshine break from the 2009 gloom? Take a look.

A Tax Break?

images2 A New York Times article on mass transit prompted this interesting letter (link requires a New York Times account.) The writer, Nicole Belson Goluboff, proposes that “The most efficient and most advanced ways for Americans to travel include telecommuting, as well as mass transit, and President-elect Barack Obama should make this alternative a priority, too. Tax credits should be available both to employers and to workers who embrace this option, and to companies that offer broadband access where it has been absent or inadequate.”

What a great way to reduce pollution and fossil fuel consumption as well as to encourage employers to reduce costly office space and fuel costs for their employees! I don’t suppose it’s time to hold my breath yet, but wouldn’t that be a good fit in an energy program?

Telecommuting: Going Up or Down?

images Whither telecommuting? With gas over $4 and talk of the “war for talent,” business magazines said that companies previously unwilling to endorse telecommuting had found it necessary to compete for top talent. Then the market fell, layoffs began, fuel costs dropped, and job seekers were everywhere. Continue reading →

Everybody's Talking

Lindsay Blakely at BNET interviews Tammy Erickson of Harvard Business blog here about doing away with outdated time-based management by enacting a Results Only Working Environment. While ROWE can be used effectively by in-office workers, such a results-based performance measurement system is ideal for telecommuters and remote workers.

The Management Issues blog lists five “don’ts” here that anyone planning a telecommute program should avoid. Successful telecommuting needs some well-considered structure.

Workforce.com discusses Accenture’s efforts to maintain a sense of community among remote workers and promote the retention of remote employees here.

Topless telecommuting?

What would your reaction be if you started a video connection with a telecommuting colleague at his home only to discover he was not wearing a shirt? Well, this happened to me not too long ago. It was hot in one of my team member’s home office, so he opted to go shirtless that day. This made me think (since I was his manager at the time), should this be allowed? After all, had he been in the office that day, he certainly would not have done this, and indeed could not because, as with most companies of any size, we had a dress code.