from the New York Times
August 17, 1997
For Stay-Home Workers,
Speed Bumps on the Telecommute
By SUSAN J. WELLS
C atherine Rossbach swears that she will never work at home again.
After telecommuting for years for two publishing companies in New
Jersey and California, Ms. Rossbach thought twice when Sage
Publishing, based in Los Angeles, wanted to hire her as
acquisitions editor on the East Coast -- a post that required
telecommuting from her home in Mamaroneck, N.Y.
Susan Harris for The New York Times
Catherine Rossbach persuaded her Los Angeles-based employer to rent an
office for her near her Rye, N.Y., home.
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"I hated it thoroughly," Ms. Rossbach said of her previous
experience. "I'd do my grocery shopping in the middle of the day
when there were no crowds, and then I'd end up working until 2 a.m.
I had no structure to my workday and felt totally isolated. I
couldn't win."
Her solution? She persuaded Sage to lease her an office in a
building in nearby Rye, N.Y., as a condition of accepting the job.
"I like getting up and going to 'the office' every day," she said.
"It's a separate, professional environment that gives me the
discipline and structure I need to get my work done."
Ms. Rossbach isn't alone in her rejection of telecommuting, the
work-at-home trend that has grown along with the Internet,
personal-computer ownership and flex time. Those who study
telecommuting say it is still growing, but they acknowledge that it
may have hit a turning point -- some say a coming of age -- for
some of the same reasons Ms. Rossbach and others have discovered.
"There's kind of a fork in the road occurring right now," said Gil
Gordon, who has operated a telecommuting consulting firm in
Monmouth Junction, N.J., for 15 years. "There was a lot of naivete
surrounding telecommuting -- it sounded great to lots of people and
everyone thought it'd be easy. But it's really not that easy. And a
lot of workers and their companies are just now realizing this."
Forty-two percent of companies of various sizes have telecommuting
arrangements, according to a 1996 study of 305 North American
business executives by the Olsten Corp., a Melville, N.Y., staffing
services company. That figure is up from 33 percent in the 1995
study. But the companies surveyed said that only 7 percent of their
employees ever telecommute -- a number that has held steady for
four consecutive annual surveys.
What is happening? One of every five telecommuting arrangements
fails, estimated Christena Nippert-Eng, assistant professor of
sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the author of
"Transition to Telecommuting," to be published by the University of
Chicago Press.
Dr. Nippert-Eng says there are two reasons: Employees have
unrealistic expectations, and employers are afraid of losing
control.
"You need significant individual skills to manage yourself and your
work from home," Dr. Nippert-Eng said. "People think telecommuting
may be the ultimate way to balance work and family, but for a lot
of them, working at home is just another stress-producer."
One former telecommuter found that he could not concentrate on his
work because his dog barked too much, Dr. Nippert-Eng said. If the
master was home, the dog figured, it was play time. Another
telecommuter, Dr. Nippert-Eng said, found that because she was the
only work-at-home professional on her block, her house became the
drop-off point for U.P.S. packages and other deliveries;
neighborhood children even gathered there after school.
[INLINE]
Carol Halebian for The New York Times
Jenny Nelson, an engineering team leader for AT&T, works out of her
Upper West Side home two to three days a week.
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From the employer's perspective, "the workplace is still designed
to value and reward commitment to the office and being there to
prove your worth," Dr. Nippert-Eng said. "The authoritarian,
surveillance-type concept of management really hasn't changed that
much yet."
Peg Mauer, a technical writer who lives in Piercefield, N.Y.,
experienced that attitude first hand. She worked for a big company
in Rochester for 21 years before asking to telecommute full-time.
Her managers, she said, thought about the request for two years,
then said no. "Telecommuting is a power and control issue, not a
money issue," she said. "Management still perceives it as a risk --
a risk they're scared to take." She ultimately left the company as
a result.
Although many companies see benefits in telecommuting -- lower real
estate costs, lower turnover and increased productivity -- the list
of growing pains is also expanding.
And both the benefits and disadvantages are difficult to measure.
"I liken telecommuting to a Rorschach test," said Tom Miller, vice
president of the emerging-technologies research group of Find/SVP
Inc., a consulting and research firm based in New York. "Everyone
tends to see what they want to in it. It's really a slippery term,
and therefore that makes it difficult to research."
Estimates of the number of American telecommuters range from 9
million to 42 million. In its latest study, a phone survey of 2,000
households conducted in April, Find/SVP said there were 11.1
million telecommuters nationwide.
IDC/Link, a New York-based technology research company, uses an
extremely broad definition of home workers. It includes
self-employed contractors, part-timers and even people who simply
bring work home from the office at night. The company estimates
that there were 32.7 million work-at-home households and it
projects annual growth of 8.2 percent through 2001.
"Whether you are or are not a telecommuter is not cut and dried,"
said Gordon, the telecommuting consultant. "There's a mix of work
going on."
But one thing is sure: telecommuting is on the rise. "If the
economy is doing well, there are more jobs, and companies feel safe
about their future," Miller said. "Then employees and their
managers tend to be more agreeable to flexible work arrangements
that can benefit both of them."
Some advocates of telecommuting agree with the estimates and
heavily promote them; others do not. Robert Moskowitz, president of
the 100,000-member American Telecommuting Association in
Washington, said his group generally considered the numbers
overstated. Gail Martin, executive director of TAC/the
International Telework Association, also in Washington, tends to
believe the numbers are reliable and possibly understated.
Dr. Charles Grantham, president of the Institute for the Study of
Distributed Work in Walnut Creek, Calif., said: "The lack of
uniformity is rampant. In my opinion, a real problem is that no one
has done a complete and large-enough random sample of U.S.
residences to really find out what's going on out there."
Grantham bases his research on independent studies coupled with
market data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He breaks the
numbers down this way:
-- Some 9 million to 14 million American workers are telecommuters,
defined as those who work from their homes on a regular basis (at
least two days a week) for an outside company.
-- From 10 million to 12 million are home-based workers, or those
who run businesses from their homes.
-- Some 12 million to 16 million are independent contractors who
work for multiple companies.
Grantham predicts that the number of independent contractors will
explode over the next five years, far outpacing the number of
telecommuters. Such contractors tend to be well-educated
professionals who can -- and do -- demand a better quality of life.
"And being out of sight, out of mind with the boss is a justifiable
concern with telecommuters," he said -- one that individuals
working for themselves don't have.
The trend is somewhat self-regulating in that employees who dislike
telecommuting stop -- or the employer calls them back into the
office. On average, workers give up telecommuting after 6 to 18
months, Gordon estimated.
ON-THE-JOB CONCERNS,
ON THE HOME FRONT
New legal issues could affect the growth of telecommuting. Here is
a sampling.
ACCOMMODATION
A Federal District Court jury in San Francisco recently awarded an
employee a schedule that includes one day a week of telecommuting,
plus $90,000 in damages, after his employer refused his
telecommuting request. The employee, who complained of back and
neck pain from his long commute to work, sued under the Americans
With Disabilities Act. The employer is appealing.
The case is thought to be the first in which a court has granted a
worker a right to telecommute. The employee argued that his job did
not require a lot of time in the office.
LIABILITY
Employment lawyers are encouraging companies to require
telecommuters to sign agreements releasing the employer from
liability for work-related injuries and negligence in the home
office. But in some states, it is the company's responsibility to
insure safety.
California labor laws, for example, require employers to provide a
safe workplace, even if it is someone's home. That is one reason
Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., offers telecommuters a
33 percent discount on ergonomic furniture.
PRIVACY
Just how much control can an employer have over a telecommuter's
home? Can it, for instance, require an employee to have a
child-care or an elder-care provider in place during working hours?
Watson Wyatt International, based in Bethesda, Md., has a policy
calling for the telecommuter to have the same arrangements as when
the employee is in the office.
"That brings up all kinds of workplace privacy issues," said
Christena Nippert-Eng, assistant professor of sociology at the
Illinois Institute of Technology.
SUSAN J. WELLS
"Something happens at that point -- maybe the job changes, or
there's a reason for the employer to call a professional-level
worker back in, or the employee's personal situation changes," he
said. "It's not always a forever deal."
Legislation may also play a part in encouraging -- or discouraging
-- telecommuting.
A provision in the federal budget and tax bills that would have
widened the definition of independent contractors -- making it
easier for businesses to categorize telecommuting employees as
outside contractors and thus save on benefit costs -- did not make
it to the final version signed by President Clinton on Aug. 5.
Unions fought the measure, but business lobbyists said they planned
to push the issue again next year.
Under the new tax law, rules that take effect in 1999 will enable
more people to deduct the costs of a home office. Reversing a 1993
Supreme Court decision, the measure lets home-office workers deduct
expenses if they do not conduct a substantial amount of
administrative business elsewhere.
Other legislation under consideration would qualify employers'
telecommuting costs -- for an extra phone line, for example, -- as
tax-free transportation costs. This break would be similar to the
transit subsidies for employers that pay workers' subway fares.
Despite their differences, researchers agree on one thing:
Telecommuting tends to work best in companies that have clear,
formal and tested policies -- instead of having it start casually
from the ground up, as one worker persuades one manager to try it.
"Formal arrangements are almost always better for both parties,"
said Robert Straus, an analyst at IDC/Link. "The set-up itself is
extremely important."
Many companies have just recently latched onto the formal approach.
Consider Merrill Lynch. Since putting a formal telecommuting plan
in place in early 1996, the firm, which had studied telecommuting
since 1992, has had just one dropout out of 400 throughout the
nation. That woman missed the interaction with co-workers, a
spokeswoman said.
"We didn't just wake up one morning and say, 'We're going to do
this, O.K., let's go with it.' " said Camille Manfredonia, vice
president and director of alternative work arrangements at Merrill
Lynch. "It was a well-thought-out structure."
The company, which has 21 pages of guidelines, developed a
four-step preparation process. Much like a family counseling
session, it includes a workshop in which the employee and the
manager discuss issues that could poison the relationship.
They consider how to measure productivity, work flow and time
management; how the telecommuter will communicate with co-workers,
and how to quell fears of career sabotage from being out of the
office.
The final step is two weeks of practice in a telecommuting "lab,"
said Howie Sorgen, senior vice president and chief technology
officer for Merrill Lynch's private client technology division,
where 170 of 1,700 systems professionals telecommute.
In the lab, employees work alone. Even though they are in the same
building, they communicate with managers only by phone and E-mail
-- just as they would from home. They also learn how to
troubleshoot problems with their personal computers, software and
other equipment they will take home. Sorgen's goal for the division
is 450 telecommuters by the end of 1998.
Like Merrill Lynch, AT&T asks managers and potential telecommuters
to attend a series of training courses offered through the
company's School of Business and Technology in Somerset, N.J.
The company now counts 36,000 employees, or 55 percent of its
United States-based managers, as telecommuters, said Susan Sears,
AT&T's telework project director. The average telecommuter at AT&T
spends about six days a month out of the office.
Jenny Nelson, a fire protection engineering team leader for AT&T,
has telecommuted for eight years. She started after having her
first child, working from home part-time. She continued the
arrangement informally until AT&T wrote a formal telecommuting
policy in 1992.
She has an agreement with the company that outlines her
telecommuting in detail -- from her daily routine to keeping in
touch with the office to how her work and productivity are
evaluated.
"It gets very specific," she said. She now telecommutes two to
three days a week and keeps in touch with the office by E-mail --
she estimates that she answers 40 to 60 messages a day -- pager and
voice mail.
"I love it. It's easier for me to meet my personal needs, too,"
said Ms. Nelson, who now has three children, ages 3, 6 and 8. "If
someone needs to come fix something at my house, for instance, I
can be there." As part of her agreement, she also participates in
what some AT&T employees call "the virtual water cooler," by
meeting co-workers for lunch once a week.
"I'm actually in closer contact with more people now than ever
before," she said.
Each telecommuter is expected to find ways to interact with
co-workers on a regular basis, Ms. Sears said. The goal is to keep
telecommuters in the loop.
"Telecommuters and their managers have to get concerns out in the
open and address them up front," Ms. Nelson advised. "If you don't
have a good match, it won't work well."
The best telecommuters, experts suggest, are self-directed,
self-motivated, independent, focused, well-organized, dependable
and have been in their jobs long enough to have developed solid,
successful relationships with bosses and co-workers.
What about the boss? "It's tough for managers to let go," said Dr.
Nippert-Eng, the sociologist. The best managers of telecommuters
are more likely to be good communicators who put a lot of trust in
employees and value their suggestions. They also tend to be more
hands-off than hands-on, and reward results, not appearances.
The decision to telecommute, said Gordon, the consultant, comes
down to three simple factors: the suitability of the job, the
suitability of the worker and the manager, and the suitability of
the home environment. "You can have the first two," he said, "but
if you're tapping into the PC on the kitchen table surrounded by
three noisy toddlers, it just isn't going to work."
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
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