Policies and Procedures – Page 48 – IS Survivor Publishing

Telecommuters, raise your hands

According to the KJR Manifesto, relationships precede process (Guideline #4) — before employees can work together effectively they first have to establish trust.

That’s hard enough when employees work in the same locale. Such factors as working on different floors or for rival managers can be enough to prevent it.

It’s harder when there’s no face-to-face interaction, as is the case when some employees work remotely, or when the entire enterprise is virtual. While telepresence technologies have improved, web conferencing software like WebEx and GoToMeeting, Instant Messaging (a necessity, by the way), e-mail, shared files … even teleconferencing … aren’t remotely close

Telecommuting bait-and-switch

By: Bob Lewis|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated: April 13, 2009

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: