Legislators rally for telework adoption. Lawmakers have been making noise on the telework front lately, with legislatures convening to discuss what government agencies and corporations are doing to help the U.S. workforce deal with volatile gas prices. [Big ol' Network World Fusion feed]
OK, let us take a look at all the issues involved in Teleworking, because they are many and varied and messy.
First, teleworking is, on the surface and in general, a great idea. More work is done, less money is spent on certain resources and there is some flexibility to the average employee's work day which can bring improvements in morale.
Teleworking, however is full of problems that most people tend to gloss over (and in this case the Federal government is doing it as well) or just ignore outright as inconvenient.
So, let us look at the pros and cons.
PRO: It saves millions on energy costs. This one is kind of tough to quantify and qualify. It is possible that there are some cost savings in terms of commuting but this one is tough to prove because there are shifts in the commuting load and other fixed costs (such as mass transit subsidies and operational costs) that do not always depend on the level of commuting. Yes, there are some quick savings on gas for cars, but there has been no long term studies to suggest that this is a true savings (in other words, the savings are real, rather than transferred to another part of the gas budget for trips that might not be taken because of the cost of commuting).
The second major savings that is talked about is in the area of lights and power at the company or agency. Again, these savings seem obvious, but have not been proven real. Most of the cost savings in this arena are generally transferred to the IT budget to support the teleworking employee base.
PRO: The employee has more time. This again is a questionable one. If the employee is truly motivated to work from home, you could put them anywhere and they would be productive, whether at home or on the road. This is the type of employee that frankly is rare and hard to find. Most people, once out of the eye of their supervisor will do the minimum amount of work needed to get by. This is not beneficial for the company or the employee. Some would say that this is how to tell the good from the bad employee. Trust me when I say that most will fall into the lazy category.
CON: Who pays? This is cited most often as the single biggest argument against telework. Who pays the bills? Does the employee have to foot the bill for the connection (usually a high speed connection is required), workstation, chair, desk etc? While some of this is allowable under the IRS rules, it is really a grey area that requires careful documentation and tracking. It becomes a very slippery slope.
CON: Information Security. The second most cited reason for not teleworking is the security of data beyond the "corporation firewalls." This is not trivial. How do you ensure that data is not sitting on someone's hard drive at home? On a laptop at a coffee shop? On an airplane? This is not a simple question and there are millions of dollars being spend by corporations to ensure that the data that should stay safe is kept safe because "user training" is generally not enough.
CON: Support. Technical support of home users is getting better but it is still a challenge for most corporations, and with the mess of ISPs supplying the last mile infrastructure and the number of home networks that may or may not be installed correctly can lead to a myriad of problems in resolving issues of a technical nature from accessing the corporate firewalls to data shares and intranets.
And then there is the entire social issue of "work" and "promotion." How does a manager determine who gets the raises and promotions? The employee who is under his nose all the time but does marginal work or the employee that is rairly seen but is an outstanding worker? I know that in theory, the latter should win but I have seen the practice where the former wins every time. Unfair? Yup, but that is human nature. Finally there is the subculture of manager that just does not trust employees that they cannot see. If you are not in the office, you are not working, regardless of the type of work you are doing or the nature of the work. You have to be there to handle the "crisis" or the issue that just popped up.
Finally there are substantial costs involved in opening up the network to the telecommuter. Whether it is in the form of increased security and access or better training, it all costs money and that money, in a time of shrinking IT budgets and increasing scrutiny of the bottom line has to come from somewhere. Throw in the requirements of SarBox and you are looking at almost competing requirements that will drive most IT staffs insane, let alone the end users.
10:14:13 AM 
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