Telecommuting

Today I would like to look at this increasingly used model of working in Corporates. While many companies still believe in face to face as the only method of interacting within employee community, many have started on the path to telecommuting as a way of life. 

As a partial telecommuting professional, here are some of my experiences of the pros and cons. As always, there are two sides of the coin, and here too I have tried to keep it balanced.

POSITIVES:

1. We save a lot of carbon footprint if we telecommute. Think of cars, public transport etc that get reduced load since people are putting less pressure on the resources. Especially relevant for countries that see tremendous traffic jams during peak hours. And especially relevant also to countries where Car Pooling is considered almost a “crime” and looked down upon. On the flip side, it really puts the pressure on your own home infrastructure since you are consuming more Airconditioning, Lighting, Telephone and Wireless.
2. You get to see your family more (only for those who are married and have a family). 
   We used to joke about how our kids are growing up laterally coz we don’t get time to see them horizontally, meaning since you work so long hours, the kids go to sleep way before you land up at home. That way you only saw them growing up in their sleep. On the flip side, I do remember my wife asking me to take the kids to the school bus stand. They are yet to wake up to the fact that we are working, so what if we are still in our PJs. 
   One of the days I remember we were having a conference call and a very serious fight broke out about what should be the relevant strategy to move forward, and lo behold, there was a very naughty little voice that started talking baby gibberish. For a moment the whole conference went silent, and then the whole group broke out laughing. It seems that one of the participants son had picked up the extension and started giving his advice.
3. It improves your ability to influence your “work / life balance”. I have seen many people trying to juggle a budding career with priorities at home. In the process they lag behind in both the aspects of their life – work and home. And then it soon spirals into a trying to catch up on things game. On the flip side, it gives into the hands of most people an ability to do whatever you please with time. As you know non productive work does expand to fill up your time. So there is a serious concern felt by many that individuals do personal work when official work needs to take priority. 
   It’s like the Biology experiment of frog in water that is kept for boiling. At the end of the experiment boiling water brings the death of the frog. The frog does not understand the changes in the environment as it is subtle but keeps degrading to a point where it looses all its body controls to take corrective action. My point, this freedom to manage your time is a big responsibility and only the best know how to manage it well and to your benefit.
4. It reduces the infrastructure cost per employee. For many companies their sales reps, service reps, and logistics teams are constantly on the move. Does it make sense to have dedicated workspaces for such members when their most productive (read revenue generating time) is out with customers? On the flip side, there are employees like project managers, call center workers, product line managers, shopfloor folks and workers who need that infrastructure to support teams who are mobile. Using the same yardstick in the name of cost rationalization is a stupid idea.

NEGATIVES

1. It stifles brainstorming and creative thinking within groups. There are many instances when most admirable campaigns happened across the pantry with caffeine and smokes. The strongest of business strategies have happened when the boss has brainstormed with his employees on the fly in a “5 minutes” discussion which turned out to be great strategies on which companies spent millions of dollars.
   
2. It reduces your ability to socially network. Think Office Romances, those chance meetings that get you great jobs, those water cooler talks about office politics and some cool things to do. But what the heck, in today’s world of facebook, orkut and linkedin, many find it more convenient to be digital than physical.
   
3. Costs seem to reduce in short run, but over the long term cost structure of doing business will increase. Now I put costs as one of the primary positives earlier. However I mention it now. The reason is simple. If you see all the savings company gets above starts to tell on the balance sheets and profit & loss accounts quickly. Any cost savings gets reflected in hard currency saved. However, what these measures fail to measure is the ease of doing business which goes through the roof, in a negative manner. Imagine, the amount of money a company will need to spend to make its employees interact with each other. Imagine the amount of money spent to create knowledge sharing tools which at best are still very static. Imagine the cost of brain storming. When an employee gets a brilliant idea, he will not be able to share it instantly. It will need a formal ideas capturing mechanism, which again costs money. Imagine …

That’s all for today.