Book Description
- Manage distance workers with confidence - Set up an effective training and evaluation program - Provide flexibility while keeping your business on track


From the Back Cover
Does your business need more employees but you don’t have the office space to accommodate them? Does someone on your staff want to work from home? Do you want to promote a flexible work environment but fear losing profits? Telecommuting may be the answer. The changing face of today’s workforce and workplace means that employers need to seek alternative solutions to accommodating the needs of workers and expanding their businesses. Telecommuting: Managing Off-Site Staff forSmall Business provides managers with the tools to set up and maintain a productive telecommuting program that benefits both employees and employers. Includes: - Determining whether telecommuting is right for your company - Assessing current and new telework candidates - Training telemanagers and teleworkers - Helping on-site staff to cope - Communicating effectively - Setting up the home office - Measuring the success of your program - Taking care of the legal details


About the Author
Lin Grensing-Pophal, SPHR, writes business and employee management articles for general and trade publications and is the author of five books previously published by Self-Counsel Press.


Excerpted from Telecommuting: Managing Off-Site Staff for Small Business (Self-Counsel Business Series) by Lin Grensing-Pophal, Gil Gordon. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1. The Origins of Telecommuting As long ago as the 19th century, people were telecommuting. While the term wasn’t coined until almost 100 years later, the first person on record who performed work at a remote location was a Boston bank president who had a phone line strung from his office to his home — in 1877! According to Gil Gordon, founder of Gil Gordon Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in the implementation of telecommuting/virtual office and other alternative work arrangements, the terminology may be new, but the concept really isn’t. Gordon is recognized internationally as an expert in the virtual-office concept and is a pioneer in the field. "I’ve heard stories of people working at home in their living rooms with keypunch in the mid 1960s," Gordon says. But, he points out, telecommuting as we know it can be traced to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when more serious attempts at telecommuting were being made by businesses, and we began to see some widespread adoption of the concept. Even as early as the 1950s, location was becoming less and less important to the concept of work. Telephone communications were widely established. And as the make-up of work changed to more information-based economy following World War II, staff could work more independently, without need of constant supervision. You’ve heard of the Internet, haven’t you? Well, in 1963, a programmer working on the Arpanet Project (the forerunner to today’s Internet) withdrew from the project to stay home with his wife, who was going through a difficult pregnancy. Another programmer suggested he install an additional phone line in his home so he could program from there. The practice of working from home still didn’t have a name, but people were starting to experiment with it. In 1973, Jack Nilles, a scientist working on a nasa satellite communications projects in Los Angeles, coined the term telecommuting. Now, Nilles is internationally known as the father of telecommuting. He originally used the term to denote "a geographically dispersed office where workers can work at home on a computer and transmit data and documents to a central office via telephone lines." In 1982, Nilles incorporated jala International, Inc.An international group of management consultants, jala’s mission is "to help organizations make effective use of information technology — telecommunications and computers — and to better cope with the accelerating rate of change in the business environment." By the time Nilles had come up with a word for the concept of working from locations other than the traditional office, companies were already beginning to experiment with the practice. In 1978, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of South Carolina had started a cottage-keyer project — recognizing that employees could easily perform a number of keyboarding activities at home. In the first year of the project they demonstrated a 26 percent increase in productivity. In 1980, Mountain Bell started a telecommuting project for its managers. That same year the us Army launched a telecommuting pilot. By the mid-1980s, telecommuting was becoming an increasingly popular option. It seemed to address a number of issues including gridlock, pollution, employee retention, savings on office space — and even increases in productivity. In 1989, at&t started a pilot telecommuting program in Los Angeles; the program was expanded to Phoenix in 1990. Employees trialed the idea of working at home several days per month. at&t’s move in this direction was a voluntary response to Title I of the 1990 Clean Air Act. In 1992, at&t introduced a formal telework policy and started its Virtual Workplace training programs. By 1999, more than half of at&t’s managers teleworked at least one day a month; 25 percent of their managers teleworked one day or more per week and 10 percent teleworked 100 percent of the time. Telecommuting was given a boost in 1990 when amendments to the Clean Air Act mandated employer trip-reduction programs. While telecommuting wasn’t a requirement under the Act, it was a recommended way to meet trip-reduction goals and a number of organizations began experimenting with this option. The bill was changed in 1995, and reductions in car-commuter trips are no longer mandatory. However, regional or state rules are still in effect, and telecommuting remains one good way to get cars off the road. There have been some major changes in telecommuting since its early beginnings. These changes have been driven both by demand and by technology — the Internet, e-mail, and cell phones now make it easier than ever to work from virtually any place, at any time. 2. The Terminology of Telecommuting The term telecommuting is frequently confused with the term telework. Telework is actually a broad term that encompasses telecommuting as well as satellite offices, neighborhood work centers, and mobile working. Telework means, literally, working from a remote location. The four options mentioned above are all variations of telework. Telecommuting refers to employees who work at home on occasion or on a regular basis and who are connected to the workplace through various telecommunications links that might include a telephone, electronic mail, or a computer link to office servers. It’s the use of information and communication technology to work away from what might be considered the traditional work setting. The most common alternative worksite is the employee’s home. Other popular options include telework centers, satellite offices, client offices, hotel rooms, airplanes, trains, and even automobiles. Satellite offices are facilities that are located at a separate location from the main business headquarters and that house only employees who work for that specific company. Neighborhood work centers appear to be exactly like satellite offices, but there is one important distinction. While a satellite office would house employees who all work for the same firm, a neighborhood work center includes employees from a variety of different businesses. Neighborhood work centers are most common in large metropolitan areas and provide space for monthly leasing, as well as business equipment such as fax machines and computers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER