Posted on 04/26/2006 11:27:10 AM PDT by Tamar1973
NEW YORK (Reuters) - With gas prices near all-time highs, telecommuting is becoming a win-win for companies and their staff -- leaving workers paying less for gas and offering hidden benefits for employers.
Telecommuting has moved beyond a scheme to ease the struggles of stressed-out workers to a system that saves money for company and employee alike, companies and experts say. Companies can keep workers they might otherwise lose, while workers can count the benefit in terms of cold, hard cash, they say.
Opting to let employees work from home as fuel prices have risen, Florida's Kissimmee Utility Authority managed to retrieve the experience and skills of a veteran employee in the billing department who quit last year.
She now telecommutes from a new home 746 miles away.
"I love it. I'm saving gas by not having to go out to do another job," said the employee, Debbie Brandt, from her home in Forest, Virginia.
The utility's customer service workers who have take up telecommuting have proven more productive at home, handling more calls than they did when working in the office, said Jef Gray, Kissimmee's vice president of information technology.
"Here come higher fuel prices again, and again we've got folks who want to work from home and say, 'It would help me with the cost,'" he said. "It's telecommuting to the rescue. Everybody wins."
The practice of telecommuting has taken off in recent years as advances in telecommunications have enabled employees to work efficiently at home on computers and telephones. Continued...
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
Pinging you....
Our office is supposed to move to a 9/80's schedule. We will take of every other Friday. 10% reduction is a start.
Telecommuting is the future - as is Telelearning (distance learning). Regarding the latter, when you consider how much tax money could be saved by not having to keep and maintain school busses, school properties, incompetent teacher salaries (when the best teachers in the world can be accessed on line), etc., etc., it only makes sense and it's only a matter of time and getting rid of the parasitic unions.
I'm sure the unions would find a way to unionize the internet.
I'm a telecommuter, good side is you can surf free republic on one side and work on the other. The other good thing is being with family all day long and about the only thing bad is being with the family all day long. I also am more productive, work my job, surf the net, started a new business and also do more stuff around the house. Oh look the grass needs water. BRB
One of the things you have to do is to get the "Boss" on board with this.
Some are control freaks who think they have to have you under thumb all day in order to make sure you are working.
This is an extreme example: What if the majority of Cantor-Fitzgerald employees had been allowed to telecommute?!
My father in law had that problem and he only telecommuted once a week. However, if companies have to face losing quality employees because they can't afford the gas to commute, they may come around, eventually. Those that come around will survive, the one who don't, won't.
Those are the guys who "manage by walking around." Most are pretty proud of their mentality, too.
Describes my Boss to a T
I've talked to people on the phone who telecommute from Bombay, heh, heh!
"One of the things you have to do is to get the "Boss" on board with this.
Some are control freaks who think they have to have you under thumb all day in order to make sure you are working."
Mine isn't even in this building so he almost never sees me, but he still believes that people who "telecommute" are simply goofing off. Never mind that it's easy to tell whether or not I'm getting my work done.
Well, it was...until Sarbanes-Oxley passed. Making public company CFOs criminally liable for financial reporting errors and misuse of company data just about guaranteed that telecommuting policies will be drastically curtailed or eliminated in those firms - no public company executive is going to allow the unnecessary risk of letting corporate data go offsite when he could go to jail for something a telecommuter misplaced.
And once your boss is on board . . . .
It will be one short step from you telecommuting to your job to someone in India telecommuting to what once was your job.
"It will be one short step from you telecommuting to your job to someone in India telecommuting to what once was your job."
Nope, won't happen. If he did that 90% of our customers would go find a new Software company. Our Business stays afloat because of the knowledge (industry wise) of our Technicians.
Should he pull a stunt like that he may as well shut out the lights and go home. He'd be bankrupt in 4 months.
I'm supposed to be working right now.
I don't want to be classified non-essential. Never a good term to show up in the annual review.
I have been on a 9/80 schedule for 7 years and I love it.
Unfortunately, telecommuting is entirely up to the employer's discretion and his faith in his enployees.
Unfortunately, in the public employee sector, the fear of featherbedding is almost certainly well founded. Twenty percent of the workers do 80% of the work...
My wife's company tried to offshore some of their operations to the Phillippines. The project crashed and burned because the people they hired (who my poor wife had to try to train) didn't even have a cursory grasp of English grammar. Mind you, they were completely computer-bound jobs that could easily be given to telecommuters. So, not every job can be shipped to India.
Why not - they're sending it to India and China already.
1. You're isolated and don't have much interaction with colleagues
2. When the network is acting up, as it has today, it is hell because you can't get or stay connected.
3. The ability to telecommute also sets you up for doing work in the middle of the night on a regular basis. What used to be voluntary is now expected.
You're whistling in the dark.
Only a matter of time before the developing world's English skills improve.
What I had in mind specifically were IT folks maintaing the servers the rest of us use to remain connected.
the President should be actively encouraging this - telecommuting is a very fast way to reduce gasoline usage very quickly.
offsite? its already offsite via VPN, and being offshored to various countries.
More whistling in the dark.
The day WILL come when foreign technicians will have the same know how and communications skills your workers have.
It might take a few more years--but it will happen.
I guess than people would have to learn how to create and maintain their own social circles rather than depending upon a workplace to provide that interaction.
2. When the network is acting up, as it has today, it is hell because you can't get or stay connected.
With the new broadband capabilities, this is becoming less and less of a problem. I actually have fewer computer problems now than I did several years ago where it seemd our in-office systems were crashing at least 1-2 a month.
In an office, if one person's link crashes, all the office might end up twiddling their thumbs until IT fixes it. Now, if my broadband crashes for a time, I just call my manager and she can immediately notify our team and they can help pick up the slack until I am back on line and I am available to do the same of someone else's connection crashes for a time.
3. The ability to telecommute also sets you up for doing work in the middle of the night on a regular basis. What used to be voluntary is now expected.
Changings in hours might occur. For example, I work from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. which is a shift from the normal 8 to 5 senario but if you are considered hourly, like I am, you won't be set up to do work "in the middle of the night" (unless you are telecommuting from Bombay, I suppose.)
Maybe you should first find out what I'm doing before you make such a wild claim.
Our Software deals with the Heavy Duty truck and Auto Repair business.
Our Techs are veterans in both of those industries from parts room managers to bookkeepers to Service writers.
The Chances someone in India is going to learn this business as it applies to an American Company are 2.
Slim and None.
Sorry, won't happen.
The Phillippines was once an American protectorate. India was a British colony. They've both had plenty of time to brush up on their English.
We actually have some of those that work from the house. A few years ago on of our IT guys got in a very, very bad motorcycle wreck; he is now a paraplegic. The company set him up with everything he needed to work for the house including some cool egonomic features.
It can be nice working at a good company.
Me, I telecommute 1/2 days. Sometimes my main customers are in China, other times they are in France (Never on the same project, thank goodness!). Then, I have a bunch who are right here in Phoenix.
I have a very unusual job for telecommuting. I really had to apply some ingenuity to get my duties "telecommutable."
But now they will be paid to speak it instead of exploited to speak it.
And there's billions more all over the world who are rapidly becoming industrialized.
Give them time.
Their voiceboxes aren't so different from yours.
There's even a chance Americans who speak only English, will be second-class workers in the brave new global economy, being displaced by workers who speak more than one major language.
Glad to see that you have ALL the answers, but speaking from experience - I telecommute 95% of the time, you don't have a clue.
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