Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend CoreNet Global Mid-Atlantic's roundtable discussion sponsored by Cassidy & Pinkard on "The Workplace Goes Virtual: A Status Report on Telework in Washington". Despite the real estate background of the audience, the focus followed the title, with a handful of speakers from various organizations providing quick glimpses of telework activities in the D.C. area.

A long-time proponent of telework and sponsor of telework initiatives, Congressman Frank Wolf spoke on its many benefits. He mentioned many of the initiatives currently underway to actively promote telework such as the eCommute program and the work of the Telework Consortium on visual collaboration. He emphasized the critical need to solve the area's pending transportation crisis before businesses start to leave in response to the gridlock. Wolf also expressed serious concern over the federal government's progress to implement telework internally.

It was during the Telework Coalition informative presentation by John Edwards that I clearly saw the difference between the Telework Coalition's focus and that of the Telework Consortium. The Telework Coalition's underlying assumption seems to be that a teleworking employee would mostly work from the office, but collect work that could be done in solitary to do at home for one or two days a week. The Telework Consortium's focus on collaboration relies on an underlying assumption that with the appropriate technology in place, you can do any part (or all parts) of your work remotely. Don't misunderstand, I believe both assumptions are valid, and there are problems to solve on both sides that will benefit teleworkers as well as the community at large, especially when we're all pulling together.

These differing assumptions have different implications. For example, if you're doing solitary work, it's easier to measure output, thus "managing by results" is an effective technique to use. If you're collaborating with collegues, on the other hand, progress often comes in leaps and bounds, and isn't as easily tagged to an individual. "Management by results" works well at the group level, but at the individual level, management must rely to a higher degree on trust.

One way to increase trust is to increase communications, either by communicating more or by communication better. Face-to-face communications, enabled by high-quality video applications, enable better communications. After all, who actually has time for more communications?

More details and related links:

• Congressman Wolf's press release citing the GMU study says "According to a George Mason University (Fairfax, Va.) study, for every 1 percent of the Washington metro region workforce that telecommutes, there is a 3 percent reduction in traffic delays. George Mason University has recently completed another study which suggests that on Friday mornings there is a 2 to 4 percent drop in traffic volume in the Washington metro region, a so-called "Friday effect.""
• eCommute program is sponsored by the EPA and runs pilots in 5 regions: Denver, Houston, Los Angelos, Philidelphia, and Washington D.C. that track teleworkers' miles saved and air pollution avoided. A final study report to Congress will be made in 2004.
• Telework Coalition's John Edwards also spoke on the benefits of telework, providing numerous statistics on cost savings and productivity. One gem from John: when speaking about telework's benefits for Continuity of Operations (COOP) and Continuity of Government (COG), "Even if you don't do it[telework], you need to be able to do it." Hurricane Isabel was given as a timely example.

9:46:39 AM    
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