A Blast from the Past?

I just read Getting Clueful: Seven Things the CIO Should Know About Telecommuting - a recent CIO.com article. And it struck me that this article might have been written ten years ago! If your CIO doesn't understand the benefits of telecommuting, your company is in trouble. You should be looking for a new job, because there are a lot of CIO's who "get it".

Now, my definition of telecommuting may be different than some. I only had one or two people who worked remotely for months at a time. The vast majority of my team had the ability to work from home and did so, occasionally (a few days a month). The key is flexibility and trust.

We were able to have some very skilled (out of state) employees temporarily relocate to our head office to participate in a major ERP implementation. Once the system went live, these people were able to return to their home states and still provide application support. On a quarterly basis, they'd travel back to our Head Office for a week, to reconnect with our team, and their internal customers, but for the majority of the time they worked remotely.

If it weren't for telecommuting, we would have lost these people and our company would have been worse for it.

If you're running an IT department of any size at all (greater than 10 people) and you aren't setup for telecommuting (whether occasional or full time) you need to find a new job.

Folks, the ability to telecommute is table stakes. If your company isn't already offering telecommuting options, you're likely not attracting the best IT talent available - and you're saying something in a loud voice; We don't TRUST our employees.

Personally, I've had at least some of my staff telecommuting (at least on a part time basis) for over a decade. I can't imagine asking people to be on call (either developers or technical staff) without giving them the opportunity to remotely access systems to solve issues at all hours of the night, from home.

The benefits have been tremendous:
1. It allows parents the ability to stay at home with a sick child and still get some work done.
2. It allows employees to avoid hazardous weather related commutes to the office altogether.
3. It allows "off hours" work to get done.
4. Remote access is fundamental to any disaster recovery plan anyway, so it's not an additional cost to provide for most IT employees.
5. It allows employees the flexibility to get to doctor's appointments anytime during the day and still get some work done - instead of restricting appointments early in the morning or after work.
6. It allows you to attract talent from outside your local community.
7. With IM, E-mail, cell phones, Blackberries, Wikis, Sharepoint, web based applications, VPN security, Skype, desktop video-conferencing tools, Web-Ex etc, there is really no reason to have to come to the office 100% of the time.

In my experience, the flexibility afforded employees, paid huge dividends in terms of work accomplished, company/team loyalty and retention.

If your CIO is suffering from "trust issues" there are lots of ways to tell if remote work is getting done;

1. Are deadlines being missed?
2. What is the quality of the work?
3. Are IMs, emails being answered promptly?
4. Can remote people be accessed by cell phone easily?

I actually think it's easier for some non-performers to "hide in plain sight" at the office, than it is to hide remotely.

It doesn't take long to determine who can effectively work remotely and who can't. And always remember that telecommuting can be administered as a privilege, not a right.