Telecommuting means working from anywhere other than your
office, preferably at home in your pajamas. In the last decade scores of people
have taken to this mobile way of working. And they love it. More freedom, no
suits and ties, more time at home with their families. Technology has made this
all possible. However the future of telecommuting seems up in the air. The
majority of these "free" workers are small business owners or work for
smaller companies that can afford to be flexible. Large companies and
corporations don't appear as willing to give their employees the same freedoms.
Despite faster and faster connections, smaller computers,
cheaper laptops, and advances in networking software, telecommuting has not
evolved as it was predicted to do ten years ago. Past predictions were inflated
due to the "PC mania of ten years ago when everyone thought there would be
a PC on every kitchen counter for their recipes," said Gil Gordon,
president of Gil Gordon Associates, a Monmouth Junction, N.J., researcher.
Gordon said the number of teleworkers — people who are not self-employed and
who work one day a week or more at home — has grown 10 per cent per year for
the past five to eight years. Not an explosion, maybe, but certainly a
respectable figure. "Telecommuting is alive and well and growing, but it's
clearly not universally distributed across the workplace landscape," Gordon
said. "It's not something that everyone offers." Carl Van Horn a
professor affiliated at Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for
Workforce Development, agreed. In the past there were two inhibitors: management
philosophy and technology, Van Horn said. "The latter has eroded to be very
minimal," he said. "Setting up telework offices is not expensive,
where it used to be very costly. The cost of equipment is way, way low, as is
the cost for secure broadband transmission." Van Horn estimated setting up
a remote office in 1992 to be about $5,000 for a fax modem and a fast computer.
The same office can now be fielded for around $2,000. "People used to have
problems with long-distance connections, etc.," he said. "And you
don't have that with satellite cable and other things. You can be online all day
for a flat charge." Van Horn estimates that a broadband setup in New
Jersey, for example, can be had for $30 to $40 per month, whereas long-distance
phone costs in 1992 could run to $150 or more.
Even as late as the latter part of the year 200 predictions
were still calling for a growth in telecommuting. The research group, IDC, said
that telecommuting in the U.S. would increase 9 per cent, from 39 million in
2000 to 55 million in 2004. Latin America would experience the largest
telecommuter growth rate at 28 per cent, from 5.1 million in 1999 to 17.4
million in 2004. Western Europe's mobile and remote workers would increase
nearly 28 per cent, from 8 million to 27 million during the same time. IDC also
said, "telecommuting will skyrocket as more people adopt handheld devices,
as wireless and broadband technologies for business travellers improve, and as
technology to deliver mission-critical applications to home workers are
enhanced".
It appears that those predictions were a bit premature. In
fact, the pressure is on in some companies to bring those home workers back into
the corporate nest. "It may be time for them to get out of their PJs and
back into suits," said Tim Scannell, analyst with Mobile Insights, a
Mountain View, Calif. research firm. "I see the pendulum swinging back the
other way as companies want people in the office," said an IT manager for
media giant AOL Time Warner. "Companies are looking at this looming
recession and the first thing they do is call those people in from home,"
said Scannell. "They feel that there is a lack of control over home workers
and the obvious answer is to pull employees back into the building where there
is more control." Ronan McGrath, CIO of Rogers Communications, the Toronto
cable and media conglomerate agrees. "The concept of a widely-distributed,
highly-coordinated workforce is hard to implement. Decentralizing people just
based on real estate is not a compelling reason."
The main stumbling blocks to teleworking seem to be finance
and support. It is still very expensive for a company to set up and maintain a
VPN (Virtual Private Network) for an employee. This leaves the employee left
handling his own internet connection and computer support. At the workplace,
most companies are tied into fast, broadband connections. Most of these large
companies are not willing to commit the finances to tie homeworkers into that
connection. Nearly half of the workers surveyed, by the Heldrich Center and the
Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut, said
they are more productive working at home or somewhere else offsite, and 11 per
cent said they are less productive under those circumstances. And while 59 per
cent of workers indicated they would take advantage of telecommuting, only 17
per cent said they have been offered that option. Yet 67 per cent said they have
computer and Internet access at home. "Some managers think they need to see
someone in order to manage them," Van Horn said. "It's a wrong
philosophy, but it's an old philosophy." "They'd rather come home and
have dinner with the kids by 7 than stay at work late and miss all that,"
Van Horn said. "Working at home is a way of balancing work and
family." This writer humbly agrees. At this time in the world's history,
where all are concerned about the erosion of the family, the dollar still stands
in the way. And our children are still being left behind. Shame on us.
