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I've been to several companies where 10-20% of the workers telecommute. Then some that are 5% and very very few are above 50%. Most companies are still not embracing and some even taking it all away.
I think the primary problem is trust, employers simply don't trust employees. Which I think is often old school mentality.
What is the difference between a worker sitting there surfing the web waiting for work and doing it from home?
One company that I've worked for that has over 50% workers telecommuting have a very good rating on Glassdoor and they are more accessible remotely than companies with people onsite but disappears a lot or go to breaks.
With cloud computing, powerful home and work computers, mobile devices, and reliable internets we should all be able to perform our jobs mostly from home and commute only for important meetings.
I've personally conducted meetings online with 20-30 connected audiences and worked out fine if you know how to moderate communication.
Progress takes time. Telecommuting is still relatively new and the technology that has made it accessible to more companies is only a few years old. Also, you still have "older" managers in the workforce who want to do things how they were done in their bygone era.
Give it another 10 years or so and I'm sure there will be significant progress in this realm.
My company has reversed policy and is actively recalling telecommuters back to the office, and it's a large multinational organization. Workers have until the end of the month to make arraingments, find transportation, and prepare to go back to reporting to a geographical location at 8am. Only field personel and salesmen with direct customer interaction are exempted.
They believe having everyone in one location will increase decision making, colaberation, and overall responsiveness.
Progress takes time. Telecommuting is still relatively new and the technology that has made it accessible to more companies is only a few years old. Also, you still have "older" managers in the workforce who want to do things how they were done in their bygone era.
Give it another 10 years or so and I'm sure there will be significant progress in this realm.
I've done telecommuting in the early 2000, back then you are lucky to have high speed internet. Today most people should have high speed via their smartphone or cable. I agree that too many boomers are still using old methodology with new tech. A manager who manages a huge network operation still watches DVDs on his laptop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JB from NC
My company has reversed policy and is actively recalling telecommuters back to the office, and it's a large multinational organization. Workers have until the end of the month to make arraingments, find transportation, and prepare to go back to reporting to a geographical location at 8am. Only field personel and salesmen with direct customer interaction are exempted.
They believe having everyone in one location will increase decision making, colaberation, and overall responsiveness.
I don't know how they can reverse that without losing people, one company I know has workers all over the states because they hire the best talent not limited by location. They will probably lose some people over this change and may have to approve or exempt more people.
I don't know how they can reverse that without losing people, one company I know has workers all over the states because they hire the best talent not limited by location. They will probably lose some people over this change and may have to approve or exempt more people.
As a manager, I got the distinct feeling that retention wasn't a major concern to the powers that be.
I think it's a good way to see how many people are actually 'surfing the web' or 'watching dvds' while they're supposed to be working. If that's the case, they can observe this and cut staff accordingly until the majority of the workforce, is, in fact, working.
My company has reversed policy and is actively recalling telecommuters back to the office, and it's a large multinational organization. Workers have until the end of the month to make arraingments, find transportation, and prepare to go back to reporting to a geographical location at 8am. Only field personel and salesmen with direct customer interaction are exempted.
They believe having everyone in one location will increase decision making, colaberation, and overall responsiveness.
Yahoo! did the same thing and locals complained traffic would've been an even bigger mess than what it was. I wonder what happened to that.
My company (largish tech firm, not Google) allows remote employees and I feel like they miss out on a lot of informal conversation and collaboration. Sure, their work gets done and there are quite a few who are extremely intelligent and good contributors, but I still feel like they miss out on quite a bit by not being at the office.
I worked remotely for many years for a large company. They got a heck of a lot more work out of me when I was at home than when I was at the office - precisely because of the informal conversation, inane meetings, supposed 'collaborations' (I did those when required, by phone) I didn't have to participate in. I liked the people but there were way too many time wasters in my opinion when everyone had to be 'in the office' all day. I think better by myself anyway and the type of work I was doing required a lot of that. I had shown up (after driving all night if I had to) at any required face to face meeting for several years and that had worked fine for all of us.
Eventually though, even knowing this and saying I was an excellent employee, they told me I either had to move to the DC area or I would be laid off since the government department they contracted to demanded more 'face to face' time and accounting.
I spent 3 months up there at their expense and hated the area - plus I had a house I had to sell to do that and they wouldn't give me time to arrange that. I chose to be laid off. I missed the actual work but not the constant pressure to have to go sit in an office all day and get little done.
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