This would be funny if it was funny.
A satirical piece I published in InfoWorld (“10 sure-fire ways to kill telecommuting,” 3/30/2009) mentioned that some promised savings would not materialize. In particular, reductions in office space lease costs often won’t materialize for years, because once you’ve signed a lease you pay until it expires.
The column also “recommended” pushing all home office costs onto remote employees as a great way to encourage ergonomically unsound furnishings, rely on consumer-grade networks, and cause employee resentment.
The timing was perfect: The following, provided by a KJR subscriber, is paraphrased from an internal memo posted on a well-known company’s intranet just last week:
Audience: Employees for whom the company has incurred expenses associated with home internet services. This includes expenses paid through employee reimbursement as well as funds paid through company corporate managed plans.
What’s changing? We are eliminating payment of home internet expenses. You are now responsible for providing your own internet access service if you choose to use such a service to conduct business from a home office. This includes all types of internet access — high speed DSL, broadband, cable, satellite or dial-up.
All employees affected by this announcement may elect to return to work at a company facility …
Objectively, the policy is fair: Most white-collar households would have broadband service anyway, and the company isn’t requiring anyone to subscribe. Working from home is, for this company at least, an employee benefit — nothing more, nothing less.
And, this is 2009, where companies are looking for every nickel of operating cost savings that doesn’t come from additional layoffs.
Further, my source informs me that as a result of staff reductions and the popularity of the work-from-home program, “company facilities” currently have acres of unused space.
So the policy is fair. Whether it’s a good idea is a different question. Certainly, large numbers of employees will consider it bait-and-switch and resent it. Then they’ll compare the cost of commuting to the costs and non-work benefits of broadband, absorb the expense into the family budget, and continue to work remotely.
This wouldn’t be the first company to discover that many of the promised cost savings associated with telecommuting are illusory. Because while one of the frequently touted and attention-getting benefits of telecommuting is that it can save an employer money, few employers can save very much, at least in the short term.
Recall from last week that “telecommuter” refers to five very different classes of employee: Ad hoc or casual, scheduled, mobile, remote, and virtual enterprise workforce. Of these, only remote employees and virtual enterprise save serious money, and these are the hardest to make work.
Using remote workers or virtualizing the entire enterprise can save money because the employer doesn’t have to provide office space, which can easily cost $5,000 or more to build out. But as already mentioned, you’ll be paying rent on the office space until your lease is up. At most you’ll save about half — the ongoing cost of maintaining employee cubicles and facilities, and that’s assuming you push all home-office costs onto your remote workers.
Not that you should. Companies run on trust, and even without shifting costs to employees, working remotely tends to erode it. As Larry Wainwright, Software Development Manager at Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc. explains, “People who work at home tend to become disconnected from the belief system in the company, seem to generate conspiracy theories because of this disconnect and aren’t nearly as loyal to the company as to the customers that they tend to spend more time speaking to.”
Successful use of a full-time remote workforce isn’t easy; managing a virtual enterprise is even harder. Managers accustomed to walking around, dropping in, getting a feel for team dynamics through osmosis and so on will need extensive training and coaching to adapt to managing and leading remote employees … doing what’s needed to maintain their trust, sense of connection to the company, and ongoing effectiveness in their roles.
As one manager new to managing remote employees explained, “We take our best people and then cut back on the time mentoring and coaching, and even end up delegating less to them. We’re eating our seed crop when we do this and killing succession.”
Huh. Telecommuting is starting to sound pretty bad. It isn’t, of course. It isn’t good either. “Good” and “bad” are simplistic formulations.
And if we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that simplistic formulations get you into trouble.
Wilhelm Nietzsche wrote Beyond Good and Evil as a treatise on ethics. I don’t do ethics. Even so, next week’s column will go beyond “good” and “bad” to give you specific techniques that can help you make telecommuting successful.
Should employers cover the cost of home broadband for their remote employees? Other office costs?
If a company informs an employee (when they hire them) that they are required to pay for something, (wear specific clothing/broadband access at home/office supplies), then it is fair because the employee can accept or reject the job offer.
If a company changes the rules after hiring, employees will correctly see this as an effective cut in pay, since the company now requires them to pay for something that the company wants.
In politics this is referred to as an unfunded mandate.
Back in 90’s before HP took over Compaq, Compaq shifted to an almost all telecommuting workforce. A fellow classmate worked for Compaq and he said at first it was difficult but after some adjustment he really liked it. I was wondering if you have/had any info on how this worked out – did Compaq stay with it, did HP stay with it after they took over, employee reactions, other repurcussions. Today’s issue got me wondering.
Alec Pennington
Bob,
As always, your column was relevant and thought provoking. Keep up the good (great!) work.
My 2c – telecommuters should pay their own broadband costs. In 2009 it’s a household utility just like water or electricity. But the firm should be throwing in (nominal) payment for office supplies and sundries. If they don’t, the telecommuter will feel they’re being exploited – and with good reason.
One issue closely related to the challenges of telecommuting is managing remote teams. The last three jobs I’ve had for large scale operations have servers in multi-sites for disaster coverage as well as moving the servers closer to the people they are serving. So we have one “team” in 3 or 4 locations, managed my one manager in one location. The employees in his location see him and vice versa but the other teams get zero face time with him or their teammates. I have 8 people I work with on a daily basis and know them by their voices and IM chats — and wouldn’t know them if they were standing next to me at Starbucks. Those “disconnected” issues affect people besides just telecommuters.
I was telecommuting and had my salary cut in half a couple months ago because “the company couldn’t book enough time for me” – at least according to my boss. My coworkers said there was plenty of work. I’m thinking the tendency to (in your words) generate conspiracy theories may sometomes be healthy paranoia if you can’t maintain good communications with your manager.
Doing better elsewhere now,
Dan
What I find interesting is that some companies that object to telecommuting for whatever reason have no second thought about outsourcing work to other countries. That might be a good column to write in the future.
I don’t know the legal angle, but it seems to me that if the employer sends everyone home and asks them to work remotely, even making them supply their own laptop (which most would not do for security reasons) it would all be fair. We are adults able to enter any contract we want. Those that supply the tools will get better workers for the rate they are paying.
The same thing already happens in construction. Some people are required to have their own pick-up truck, others get a company one. Just about everyone is required to supply their own hand tools, but most use a company supplied ladders.
All’s fair.
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Some things missing here. The office rent is a good point, but as a 9 year veteran of Virtual workspace it is hard to believe that an organization has had space available “in case” I move back to an office – so this is a “new” cost back to our team if I move to an office. Additionally, while sq ft use is only one component, I believe it is a business write off that becomes subsidized by the government tax system as a cost of doing business make the “fixed cost” less than complete loss to the organization. There is no tax write off that I know of for internet as a condition of employment for regular employees. Most leases run for less than 3 years I think – could be wrong but I am not in real estate. In which case an “over abundance” of office space would be worked out of the budget in short order, or the lawyers (another business write off) can figure out how to break the lease.
Construction is an interesting comparison (from the comments page), but in the technology field if Internet is considered universal, then why not PCs? We all have personal PCs… we should be donating those to business purposes as well. With requirements from the company for the necessary monitoring software and obilgatory hardware upgrades to run our personal hardware on the company intranet. This would also would fit the definition of “fair” as well you describe. Oops – forgot add those cell phones we all seem to have in the mix too – they can be used for business under new vision of employee equity as well. In construction, it is rare that a new ladder, hammer, etc. is required unless completely broken which is not true in the life cycle or the technology sector. And if an employee returns to “dial up” access… is that still fair? They have provided access to the work flow needed, but customers may have to wait for work product as the link will take some time for that presentation to be transmitted. Or perhaps it is fair to require an employee to have dish or equal to or higher than DSL access as a condition of employment. The CEO can afford it so it is fair for all to cover this requirement. Most economics texts I have seen lists this sort of “fair” as regressive.
The cost of $25 to $40 per month for internet access seems to be a minor cost in the scheme of a large enterprise – when compared to moving numbers of folks to office space with the attendent phone / internet access / furniture / heating / cooling / security that would be apportioned to make a facility ready and available for work. It would not take many to move back to regular space to cover the entire internet budget for VO folks of an organization.
The key here is management as always. Having remote workers appear in an office that has no presence of the direct manangement in charge of them (remote folks are not generally near their management by definition) buys the organization little with a move – other than lost time as employees will not be available to do work on an adhoc basis from home in real time, but instead have that soon to be unacceptable lag to getting to the “work space”. Another view is to simply have the employees move to the new work location, under their own power – that is fair all will have to move to maintain employment as past telecommuting / virtual office workers would be treated the same – at least those that are not near the selected site would be in the same boat as a version of fair.
Lastly, the problem with this type of “new direction” in governance is so often preceded or followed by downsizing efforts – where the unspoken message is (was) that an employee in a particular space may become too “expensive” and be a target for off-shoring if they do not comply, to the new sense of “fairness”. I think the current ratio is about get about 5 for 1 when looking at skilled help in the far east as opposed to the U.S.. I think they must be paying for their internet there too – don’t you think?
In return for all this “fairness” the employee gets what out of the deal? I have not heard that part yet. Food for thought.
Bob,
Believe that you’re right on the money with this. In addition there are costs that aren’t acknowledged (which include IT support resources).
I have been successful in making this case to management and was able impact the thinking on remote work policies.
Thank you,
Peter
Bob,
Managing in an telecommuting environment does present additional challanges but a good manager will be successful regardless of wether it is a viirtual or a brick and mortor environment. I have also heard of organizations that are now cutting back on expenses for virtual employees (internet access, phone) in order to save pennies which will result in them spending dollars if those employees decide to come back into the office.
“And, this is 2009, where companies are looking for every nickel of operating cost savings that doesn’t come from additional layoffs.”
That is, when they’re not looking to pinch every last penny.
“Certainly, large numbers of employees will consider it bait-and-switch and resent it. Then they’ll compare the cost of commuting to the costs and non-work benefits of broadband, absorb the expense into the family budget, and continue to work remotely.”
Broadband costs are dropping in most areas. Basic DSL can be had in some places for the cost of ordering pizza once a month. That is not to defend the companies’ decisions– it’s just to say that broandband is not necessarily expensive enough for businesses to bear the responsibility of anymore.
“n particular, reductions in office space lease costs often won’t materialize for years, because once you’ve signed a lease you pay until it expires.”
How come the accountants didn’t see this when the telecommuting craze first kicked in?
What about having a manager who telecommutes?
I currently have a manager that is in California. The bulk of the team is in Texas. We occasionally see the manager in person and usually for only a couple of minutes because when he does come into town he has lots of meetings with leadership etc.
Otherwise he works on California time and occasionally responds to e-mail usually incorrectly because he dos not have the entire picture.
Further, this is at a time when the company is laying off people to “save on cost” but are willing to fly him from California to Texas routinely.
I happen to work for that miserable company.
There’s more to that story than dropping telecom for telecommuters – the company is also dropping the partial reimbursement (about half the cost) for DSL for IT staff who are expected to take calls and fix systems on a 7 by 24 by 365 basis.
This is only the latest of a long string of takeaways and needs to be considered in that context. Many of my coworkers are fed up – instead of using their personal DSL, they will drive to the site, do the work, then file for mileage reimbursement.
Suppose I can fix a problem remotely in 5 minutes via my DSL connection. If I refused to allow the company to use my DSL connection, fixing that same problem would take 50 to 60 minutes more for travel one way, then 5 minutes to fix the problem.
Is that unprofessional? Yes. Does the company deserve that? Hell, yes!
Think a 60 minute delay in fixing a service outage and the cost reimbursement of the 90 miles round trip and you can rapidly see this is a very, very stupid idea for staff that is on call.
Can’t these management brainiacs do what others have done and sublet part of their space?