Telework slowly catching on, officials say

For some federal managers, the concept of telework conjures up images of workers watching soap operas in their pajamas. But now agencies are stepping up their efforts to encourage telecommuting.

E-mail and telephone communication fail to fulfill managers' need for control, according to experts on the future of government telework. Recent technologies, such as desktop video conferencing, are necessary to make managers comfortable with a workforce away from the office.

Thanks to congressional pressure and labor union support, agencies are allowing more of their workers to work from home or one of the telework centers that have sprouted in the suburbs of many major U.S. cities. A 2004 Office of Personnel Management report found that 5.6 percent of federal workers telecommute; those listed as eligible for telework has grown from 35 percent of the workforce in 2002 to 43 percent in 2003.

Pressure for agencies to equip employees to work anywhere is growing. The majority of workers eligible to telework now are those with jobs that involve minimal human interaction, primarily writers.

But telework gurus in the Innovative Workplaces Division of the General Service Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy believe that most workers--with janitors and security guards as exceptions--will make telework part of their lives.

With the threat of financial penalties from Congress, agencies are figuring out ways to determine what makes a worker eligible for telework.

"We've seen a flurry of activity from some of the agencies," said Teresa Noll, a telework team leader in the Innovative Workplaces Division. Part of the activity involves agencies designating employees, typically in human resources, as telework coordinators. There are now 218 coordinators, up from 21 in 2001.

Two Republican congressmen from Virginia, Frank Wolf and Tom Davis, started promoting telework as an option because they believed it would help reduce traffic congestion in the Washington metro area. But after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the rationale shifted to decentralizing the federal workforce to make it more difficult for terrorists to immobilize the government.

But since agencies get to decide who's eligible, some believe the legislation will do little to bring telework to the government.

William Michael, a senior telework program analyst at GSA, said his advice to agencies is to make a list of workers ineligible for telework and make everyone else eligible.

Agencies need to stop defining people by where they work and start defining them by what they do, said Michael Atkinson, a program expert in GSA's Innovative Workplaces Division.

"Twenty years down the road, we won't have 'work anywhere' policies," Atkinson said. "It will probably be just called 'work.' "

Atkinson and his GSA colleagues say they try to think outside the box while remaining "fully conscious of what the box is."

"It'll never be 100 percent telework or 100 percent work-at-home, but I think you'll see the momentum shift over the next five years," Atkinson said. "Agencies aren't ready for the change … but face-to-face time is a remnant of the old [era]."

William M. Mularie, chief executive officer of the Telework Consortium, a Herndon, Va.-based nonprofit partnership that attempts to make telework more available to workers, said agencies' rules need to change.

"It's very difficult to change culture," Mularie said. "Our job is to show that it is possible."

He said that he understands managers' apprehension toward telework and hopes high-speed Internet connections and the increasing use of video cameras will give them peace of mind. With such devices, "there's not the suspicion that [an employee is] on his cell phone and leaning over a five-foot putt at the golf course," Mularie said.

The cost for agencies to equip employees with the ability to telework by video could range around $2,500, which would include a quality computer and a $100 video camera. Mularie said he believes agencies would make up that amount in less than a year.

"What we're trying to do is to induce OPM, which is given the job of writing telework regulations, to take a look at what you can do now with technology," Mularie said. "The rules should change to reflect the technology, and it's going to have to come from changing legislation."

A two-year-old telework pilot program in the office of the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration helped the agency save about $1,600 per worker per year. The system includes "hoteling" software that keeps workers up-to-date on space available at agency offices, which depends on which workers are teleworking on a given day. The office has saved $100,000 in leased office space in its Washington, D.C., and Atlanta offices from teleworking efforts.