Mobile Work Exchange

Good article, thanks! I'm a Software Consultant in Colorado who recently moved from Denver [big city with jobs] to Ridgway [small town with no jobs]. We made this move with the hope/plan that I would continue consulting doing some travel but mostly tele-working. It has worked out well so far with my current contract. But, with the next one, who knows? It is surprising how many companies/managers are not open to the idea of tele-working for a software developer! I sit at a computer all day. I am confident that positive change will come in this arena, but it will be slow. Keep up the discussion!

Josh - As always, this is a thought-provoking article. I completely agree that we are now knowledge workers. The only issue is that some employees are not comfortable in the knowlege/idea-rich environment of service. Some cannot work effectively as an independent thinker. Therefore, we should be hiring/retaining these type of workers if we really want telework to be effective. These self-starters are still rare in the Federal government, and in fact are not encouraged to stay. Most become consultants (after they retire). This is at the heart of our dilemma in making telework work.

Thanks for the comments Jason and Terry.

Jason - it is strange that manager want to see you in your chair. Its possible that they don't really understand what you do and have no way to measure your effectiveness without seeing you work. I've watched good coders and bad ones, and both "look" like they are working. Actually, the good ones probably look less like they are working since they think before they type.

Terry, I will take issue that there are few self starters in the government. I do think we beat it out of most of them, but there are lots of very bright and motivated public employees. We need to manage and lead them more effectively and we will then be able to reap the benefits as a nation.

Thought provoking blog. I have always found that there are different kinds of people with different requirements no matter where you go. Just as there are different learning styles that are more effective for varying persons, there are various work environments that should all be utilized accordingly to promote productivity within your employee base. Employees who are independent, and more productivewhen left to their own devices should be tele-workers allowing for cost reductions through real estate savings, power usage savings, etc... However, a good portion of our population thrives on being in a tightly knit environment, and productivity significantly declines if they are sent to an independent remote environment. Having a base offices nationally, and allowing those who choose to have an office to do so is a model I could see many companies toying wiht over the next two to five years.

Good point about people being different Rick. When I used to do transportation planning, we frequently used an expression that I think fits here: "no one size fits all." Remote work is a tool, not a silver bullet. When it makes sense, do it. When it doesn't, don't. Too often we do things without understanding (or caring about) the root of the problem we should be trying to solve. Someone told me a story today about when the Soviet leader Khrushchev came to the US and saw all the corn being produced in Iowa. He went back to Moscow and told everyone how great it was and the Soviet bureaucracy planted corn everywhere. Guess what, corn doesn't grow in Russia (wrong soils and climate) and it was a failure. They thought the problem was that they were not growing enough corn, but the real problem was not enough food. Sending people home who work better in groups is like trying to grow corn in Russia.

Until recently, I worked in state government. Your discussion about measuring performance is what did in the teleworking in our little agency. We brought in people schooled in the performance mechanisms of factories who then went on to attempt to push those square pegs into the round holes of intellectual performance. That, in turn, scared the pants off of upper management. Presto! We were back into the mode of, "If you're not in your cubicle, how can I know you are working?" Sad. Of the fair amount of research I did on the subject, I never found a performance measurement system that seemed to fit with the kind of knowledge work (and workplace) you're talking about. Do all of the olden-timers have to dry up and go away or is there another way of looking at it?

@Carol. The world has come a long way in the last few years with regards to remote employee management. There are not a lot of solutions on the market for performance management, but we've found that a standard package would be hard to market considering all of the variables found when comparing various company procedures, etc... Surprisingly, we've found that a simple homegrown project calendar solution with deadlines and metrics for accountability works best, especially if you can couple that with some sort of PC usage/endpoint monitoring solution (there are plenty of these that exist). We specialize in customized remote worker management solutions, and often have to redirect the focus of management from time to productivity. You really don't need to care how much time remote workers are putting in, or "if they are at their desks", as long as their assignments are completed by the deadlines posted in your project calendar, and you can see that they are logging in daily to do work. Setting realistic quotas for performance, and holding folks accountable to them will help remote workers to figure out how much time is required to complete their job, as opposed to having to sit at a desk for a set period of time. They may in fact acheive a productiviy boost in an independent environment free of coworker distraction, and if they can get the job done in less time while doing the best job possible, we feel there should not be an issue with this. The above being said, I do not recommend you put hourly rate employees or timeclock employees in a telework scenario. Telework is best suited for salaried knowledge workers, commissioned marketing and salespeople, and folks whose day to day activities can be applied to a project calendar of sorts, at least if you want to manage thier productivity.

...and yes... I misspelled the word "their". There is no spellcheck on this thread FYI.

@ Rick, I totally fear what bureaucrats would do with a PC usage monitoring solution. But I like your idea of focusing on project calendars. What astonishes me, and maybe the organization from which I come is uniquely backward in this regard, is how management seems to perceive highly-educated scientists, engineers, toxicologists, and other professionals more like teenagers than the adults they are. Which, I suppose, gets back to Josh's premise that telework begs the larger question of managing knowledge workers.

First, I am a little misty-eyed because I finally (after nearly a year) have some discussion in this space that is not back and forth with me. So thank you Carol and Rick. Now I will get on my soapbox a little. Carol, my dear, you are not too old, too stubborn, or too anything (well maybe stubborn, lol) to be effective in a mobile work environment. You managed me, Liz, Marady, et. al. from across the Bay without seeing our smiling faces very often. We didn't cross the bridge any more often than your average remote worker (Liz even less often). So I don't buy the "you're too old to learn this skill" bull. (Ed. note: Carol is an former client and dear friend, so I am having a little fun with her because she posted a snarky comment on my FB page). As far as managing scientists and engineers, academia seems to have a model for outcome measure management of these folks. I doubt many tenure discussions centered around perfect attendance (except possibly at fundraising events). What I am trying to say is that until we look at what people do and measure their success, not their effort, we will not have an effective way to manage knowledge workers. Do you really care how many hours your lawyer spends on your defense if you win? Or how much time your doctor spends looking at your chart if he cures you? Or how many hours, days, weeks, or months it took for the folks who designed this webpage to do it as long as it works? We should be buying outcomes, not effort, and certainly not rewarding people older than 16 for perfect attendance. OK, I'm back down off the sandbox. I do miss our chats Carol and at risk of offending many past and current clients, you will always be my fav.

Aw, shucks. Y'all turn my head.

I work for a large defense contractor for a customer located at Quantico, VA (formerly in Alexandria, but a part of the recent BRAC). I live in Fredericksburg (south of, but relatively close to, Quantico), but have to fight I-95 traffic daily--as I am required to commute to our contractor facility in Arlington. The few interactions I need to have are with folks located in Quantico (customer and contractor staff/mgmt). Due to space limitations at Quantico, I am required to drive to Arlington to work--for NO good reason. Did I mention the work I do is unclassified, results-based (i.e., deliverables with due dates), and is much more conducive to working from the solitude of my home office? I spend the time and money to commute to Arlington, only to struggle with concentrating when I work once at my cubicle, as the people that are left there (with no "adult supervision") are more concerned with joking around (loudly) and in general being very inconsiderate of the few of us trying to work.
I must admit I am spoiled, as I know firsthand the enormous value of telework--prior to coming to my current company, I was a full-time teleworker for over 10 years before being RIF'd. I dearly miss the work-life balance the most--not being home to have dinner with my family each night is among the most frustrating.

Unfortunately, in this down economy, I have to tolerate my situation--my manager simply does not care, and has been clear that it's his way or the highway---senseless.

I can dream...I only wish more people would realize the vast benefits of telework for the employee AND the bottom line of the company. It's true "different strokes for different folks" in terms of work style, etc., but there should be freedom to produce results, succeeding as the knowledge worker sees fit-- so long as the customer is satisfied.
For anyone who has read through my rant..thanks for listening. I really appreciate the work that teleworkexchange is doing--from my perspective, I would most like to see more focus on matching teleworkers with telework-friendly companies-- it would be great to see a searchable listing of job postings.

Rick,

I don't understand why you would not recommend telework arrangements for hourly employees. As a federal employee, I'm paid hourly; I and many of my coworkers telework. As technical employees in payroll, our schedules are governed by the two-week pay cycle, so we have that in common with project-based employees - we have to produce specific results in a fixed timeframe to be considered productive.

We are perhaps hybrid knowledge workers, although many of us would not be classified as professional due to federal classification systems. I don't believe that confining telework to salaried or non-salaried employees is always reliable criteria for making this decision. In determining requirements for telework in our organization, activities and resources needed to work are the key factors used for making the decision.

@ Anonymous... I do not recommend telework for hourly rate pay because there is no reliable way to monitor if someone is working for a specified time period off-site. You can tell if they have logged in, or logged out, but not the specified time period they actually worked on a given project. If an employee is on-site being monitored, it is fairly simple to ensure they are on task for the specified number of hours you are subsequently paying them for. If an employee is being paid based on task completion, or is a fixed pay employee, the number of hours worked is irrelevant so long as the projects are completed according to deadlines or ahead of schedule. For an employee paid an hourly rate, working off site, it is VERY easy to misreport hours and to fudge pay higher than it actually should be, it is also very easy to "milk" the hours to be less effective than you could be in order to increase pay. People may not even do this consciously, and it may only be a minute here or a minute there. However compounded over time, the potential for mistakes of this nature greatly increases. If everyone operated by the same ethical and moral guidelines, and everyone had the same work ethic, I would agree that employing remote workers on an hourly rate pay scale is safe. However, as an employer, and someone who has a fair understanding of human nature, I feel that having hourly employees off-site is an unnecessary risk.

@ Rick, weren't you the one arguing that measuring performance somehow did the trick? Maybe I'm just a bit tired from actually getting to talk with my buddy Josh for a couple of hours (yay!), but the distinguishing between hourly and salaried workers comes across to me as classist. There's dignity in every form of work, as my Dad drilled into me, and fundamental to that dignity is trust. Trust with the understanding that betrayal has serious adverse consequences. Can we not go into a work relationship assuming that everyone shares a common commitment to the goal?

@Carol. I am still a proponent that measuring performance does the trick, but you must pay someone based on performance if that is the case. Hence, my argument for contract or salary/fixed pay employees with project deadlines in remote scenarios. If you pay someone hourly, you're measuring time, not performance.

In response to your question: I am not a pessimist by any means, but I believe the answer, in a general sense, is no. There are specific teams that are extremely well put together, and will be reliable, focused, and productive no matter what you do. However, this is not average any means, and we've all heard the expression about the word assume. In my position, the most serious adverse consequence I can impose is termination, and that is not serious enough should someone decide to finagle a couple thousand dollars in payroll costs, compounded over months/years,etc. Being that there is no way to monitor their hourly output, it's just a risk to run fiscally

My job is to eliminate these kinds of risk while enhancing performance and output. Hourly remote work breeds laziness in many cases, and I believe if you are on this site, you are probably the exception, not the average employee, which is why this may not sound 100% to you. However, most people want to collect as much pay for as little work as possible, and until you get an employee onto a performance based system that incentivizes faster turnaround and better results, and penalizes missed deadlines etc... I do not believe they should be operating remotely at an hourly rate for which they are paid regardless of output/performance.

@ Rick, your point is well taken, especially if your job is to eliminate risk. Having just left a couple of decades of state government and knowing all too well how difficult it is to terminate a belligerently poor performer, I amaze myself that I still get all atwitter at the idea of taking risks.

Great comments folks. Thanks for being part of the discussion. As far as "hourly" workers, this may be a vestige of our industrial (factory) worker past. We punched a clock and made widgets on the assembly line. You had to be in your spot on the line or the widgets didn't get made (anyone else getting a Lucy flashback). Like wisdom teeth and our tailbone stub, hourly workers need to be reassessed to see if there is a better way to manage these functions on an outcome basis. The key point is that you need to assess them. Not every job is best managed this way. There is no silver bullet in management folks. Look at what outcome you want (I'm pretty sure the desired outcome is not 9-5 workers) and then look at how best to achieve that outcome. The solution needs to fit the problem, not the other way around.