High-Tech Workplace Hits Home

In a July 1994 memo to agency heads, President Clinton directed the heads of the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration to "take all necessary steps to support and encourage the expanded implementation of flexible work arrangements," including telecommuting.

Following up two years later, Clinton directed agencies to expand opportunities for telecommuting wherever possible to achieve the goal of 60,000 telecommmuters by 1998 as set by the President's Management Council. This includes telecommuting from home and from satellite locations.

Telecommuting sure sounds like the answer to many of society's challenges, from reducing congestion on overcrowded highways to restoring the quality of family life. But is it? First, let's define terms. Telecommuting refers to everything from working at home full time, to working out of a mobile field office or specially established telecommuting center, to the occasional day spent at home to escape office phones and other interruptions.

The benefits can be substantial. Just think about the long-term implications if commuter traffic were to level off or even diminish in the next century. Technology now gives many workers at home access to virtually all the tools they have at the office. When you are on the other end of a fax, phone or e-mail line, no one needs to know what you are wearing or even where in the world you are.

The range of jobs that can be done outside traditional offices grows almost by the hour.

Perhaps most important, offering employees increased opportunities to be with their families may be essential to competing in the labor market. Especially in the high-tech job market, there is increasing evidence that quality-of-life considerations are as important as pay.

Face to Face

Sounds great so far. But a few words of caution are in order:

Work at home is not always humane and family-friendly. The spouse of the programmer who is constantly getting middle-of-the-night calls may start to wonder whether work at home is really such a good idea. The remedy is fairly simple. Managers need to establish explicit ground rules on what is expected, including work hours and on-call availability.

Not all jobs are suitable for telecommuting. Some jobs require face-to-face contact with customers or colleagues. These positions generally fall into two categories: those where customers require a fixed location for support and those where group interaction is still the most effective way to achieve a result. Electronic mail and voice mail do not communicate nuances and subtleties well. In both cases, technology is coming up with innovations every day, such as inexpensive two-way video. Managers need to reevaluate periodically whether telecommuting has become a viable option.

Telecommuting also raises issues of fairness. In some offices, the jobs most suitable to telecommuting are those done by individuals who work independently. That tends to leave lower-level support staff at the office holding down the fort, which can lead to resentment. There are no simple solutions, but care must be taken not to polarize the workforce.

Building and maintaining office culture and values is more difficult. Those who work at home often complain that they miss the conversation around the coffee pot at the office. This is a metaphor for a problem larger than social isolation.

Teams are built not just through formal communications and interactions but through daily, casual contact. That is lost when the workforce is fragmented. Managers need to devise substitutes for the support and communications systems that daily contact in the office now provides.

Watching Results, Not the Clock

New management tools and styles are needed. The old techniques of management by surveillance no longer work. Telecommuting forces us to think about managing performance by results, not by the clock. Sounds a bit like the gospel of the Government Performance and Results Act. In some cases it is easy. For field inspectors or computer programmers, we already have well-established metrics for assessing performance.

Even when results are easily measured, it is often a matter of changing the mind-set of managers who grew up in a world of regimented command-and-control management. Despite a sincere commitment to change, they are uncomfortable leading an invisible workforce. Telecommuting forces a different conversation about performance that does not begin (and often end) with whether you showed up for work on time.

That a growing portion of the workforce will work outside the traditional office setting is both inevitable and desirable. Making that happen sensibly will require care.

Franklin S. Reeder heads The Reeder Group, a Washington-based consulting firm he founded after more than 35 years in government.