Travel-free commuting - telecommuting

Travel-Free Commuting

Working at home on a company payroll--called telecommuting--grows easier as technology improves.

Donna Cunningham, media-relations manager for AT&T Bell Laboratories in Short Hills, N.J., gets up most mornings around 5 o'clock, reads the newspaper over a cup of coffee, and then gets ready to go to work. But instead of stepping out to her car, she walks downstairs to her office on the first floor of her three-story home just outside Burlington, Vt.

Cunningham belongs to the growing legion of telecommuters, people who regularly work in home offices on a corporate payroll. "As far as I know, I have the only office at AT&T with a wood stove," she says with a laugh.

Telecommuting at any distance, let alone from Vermont to New Jersey, would have been difficult, if not impossible, only a few years ago. However, thanks to the advent of low-cost powerful personal computers, voice mail, and facsimile machines, taking care of business at home is easier than ever before.

Telecommuters, according to the experts, generally are "information workers," those whose jobs call for analysis, research, writing, budgeting, typing, or computer programming, to cite a few examples.

The typical telecommuter works slightly less than two days a week at home, and the experts further say that full-time telecommuting is rare and in most instances is not desirable. They also say top managers seldom can be telecommuters; nor can low-level workers who require a lot of supervision. Many of those who can't take advantage of telecommuting are in service companies, manufacturing, or health care.

So far, telecommuting has been "wonderful," says Bell Labs' Cunningham. She spends much of her time on the telephone, orchestrating conference calls between journalists and scientists at the famed research center and conferring with her co-workers on aspects of corporate media relations. Several times a day, Cunningham writes messages to colleagues using her personal computer and sends them by electronic mail.

"It's not quite the same as going next door, leaning against the door jamb, and having a face-to-face conversation," Cunningham admits. But she is as productive from her home office in Vermont as she could be in the company's home office in New Jersey, she says.

"Enlightened management" put her on the road to telecommuting and helped make it succeed, Cunningham says. She began telecommuting in July 1989 after she married and told her supervisor that she planned to resign and move to Vermont with her husband. Her supervisor suggested that Cunningham take her job with her.

However, such managers are relatively rare. Telecommuting "doesn't fly" with most managers because they are reluctant to allow their employees to work without close supervision, says Carol D'Agostino, senior research associate and newsletter editor for the Home Office Research Group of Link Resources in New York City. D'Agostino has been telecommuting from her home in Valley Stream, Long Island, to Link, based in Manhattan, for more than six years.

Managers who do have employees who telecommute, however, generally say that employers have more to gain than lose. At least a portion of the time that telecommuters save by not commuting is often devoted to their work. "Telecommuters are more productive; they work seven days a week, not 9 to 5, hoping they can sneak out early on Friday," says Franklin Reece, III, president of USTeleCenters, a Boston-based distributor of telecommunications equipment.

USTeleCenters has about 100 employees, and most telecommute two days or more each week. Telecommuting allows employees to better juggle the demands of both office and family life, Reece says, and that helps businesses that want to attract stable employees. "I think that a business that wants to be competitive in the 1990s will have to have an environment that supports family values," he says.

Few companies would encourage telecommuting if there were no sound business reasons for doing so. For example, telecommuting has given USTeleCenters a competitive advantage by enabling it to become the only telecommunications-equipment company remaining in downtown Boston. Because the downtown area's legendary traffic jams are expected to grow even worse during a forthcoming major construction project, many companies are fleeing the area. USTeleCenters has decided to stay, however, because telecommuting insulates many of its employees from traffic problems.

The firm's telecommuters most of them in sales and service, use voice-mail technolocy to conduct weekly meetings and discuss sales activities. Monitoring each employee's contribution is easier than ever because each employee spells out precisely what projects he or she is working on or plans to complete that week, Reece says.

Electronic mail and other ways of communicating through the use of personal computers also help Reece keep an eye on the business without changing the essentials of his management style.

"I do a lot of management by wandering around," Reece says. "I just do it by wandering through remote telecommunications. I think that I am still a pat-on-the-back coach."

When Denny McElroy, president of Carousel Mediaworks in Honeoye, N.Y., set out to launch a company to produce computer-based training programs about a year ago, he did not have telecommuters in his business plan. But business took off immediately, and the frantic rush to meet deadlines did not allow McElroy time to set up an office. Before he knew it, all five of his employees became telecommuters.

"Everyone likes it," McElroy says. "Early on I kept asking if we needed to get an office because I wanted to make sure everyone was happy."

The employees and McElroy keep in touch via an electronic mail center, a computerized version of a bulletin board, and by telephone and staff meetings held once a week as well as whenever needed to discuss new projects.

Not everyone finds telecommuting comfortable. "I lost one employee because she needed the face-to-face time, and we were going through a period when we didn't have a weekly meeting for three weeks," McElroy says. "She became isolated and left. That made me very aware of keeping in touch, so now I call people and meet for lunch. I call everybody every day, some people many times."

McElroy and his employees also use a program called Timbuktu, by Farrallon Computing Inc. It allows him to telephone an employee and electronically look over the employee's shoulder to see what is on the computer screen. This way, McElroy and the employee can work on a computer-based training program simultaneously even though they are miles apart.

"I can count on my folks to give me at least 40 hours a week--maybe not 9 to 5, but I don't try to enforce that," McElroy says. "It has been suggested that they call me or I should call and check on them every day, but I don't need that. I can judge at the end of the week how much work they are doing."

Although it is catching on in some companies and among some managers, telecommuting has not grown as fast as some futurists such as Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, had predicted. Toffler envisioned computer and telecommunications technologies that would enable millions of Americans to live and work in "electronic cottages," telecommuting to their offices instead of streaming into cities in massive platoons.

The experts calculate that fewer than 500 companies have formally established telecommuting programs for their employees. Those that have include Levi Strauss & Co., Pacific Bell, AT&T, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, American Express, J.C. Penney, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

The movement will grow significantly in the 1990s, says Gil Gordon, president of Gil Gordon Associates. His firm, based in Monmouth Junction, N.J., offers telecommuting consulting services and publishes Telecommuting Review, a newsletter.

Gordon and other experts say that telecommuting will be fueled by several factors:

Traffic congestion in urban areas has made travel to and from work time-consuming and stressful for most commuters. In addition, concerns about air quality have prompted many states and the federal government to seek more-flexible working options in order to reduce air pollutants from motor vehicles.

High real-estate costs have affected employers and employees alike. Big-city office space and parking facilities are becoming too costly for some companies, and many workers cannot afford to live within a reasonable commuting distance of downtown business centers.

The thinning of the ranks of entry-level workers following the population bulge of the baby-boom generation is making it harder for employers to attract and retain good employees. Also, many younger workers want to spend more time with their families and less time climbing corporate ladders.

Technology that enables workers to telecommute has become inexpensive, widely available, and easy to use. The facsimile machine and the personal computer with a modem--which links the PC telephone lines--for shuttling work to and from the office have become crucial for most offices at home.

Working mothers of young children see telecommuting as one way to have it all, and companies are more willing to be flexible about working hours in order to accommodate them. In fact, women may be most responsible for driving telecommuting home. Several studies suggest that the majority of telecommuters and home-based business operators are women.

Link, the New York-based market-research firm, calculates that 26.8 million Americans--about 20 percent of the labor force--work at least part time at home. About 3 million are telecommuters who regularly work at home for their employers, the firm says.

A survey conducted by JALA Associates, a Bel Air, Calif., firm that counsels corporations interested in telecommuting, indicates that about half of the work force could work at home or in a regional office; 20 to 30 percent could work part time at home; and 20 to 30 percent have jobs that require that they be in a particular place and thus would not be able to telecommute.

One of those whose work did go home with her is computer programmer Sherry Yeaton. When she decided in 1987 to have a child, she asked her employer, a small life insurance company in Concord, N.H., to let her telecommute after the baby was born.

"No company wants to train someone like me (a COBOL-language programmer) and then lose them, so they agreed," Yeaton explains. "It started gradually, with my bringing more and more work home." Now, Yeaton telecommutes an average of 12 to 15 hours per week.

She uses her own personal computer as a terminal to log into the company's mainframe computer when she programs. The company supplied a modem and telecommunications software. The computer runs at all times, so she can work whenever she likes. Often, that is at night and on Saturdays, she says.

Even some employees whose jobs might be accomplished through telecommuting may be unsuited themselves for such a working arrangement, however. Telecommuting requires discipline and self-motivation. It also helps to have a well-furnished home office or a dedicated area conducive to work.

Telecommuting is solitary work, and not every employee can cope with the sense of isolation. Some telecommuters work too much; they become unable to walk away from the home office in the evenings and on weekends, which eventually can lead to burnout.

In addition, employees are apt to feel that if they spend too much time out of the office, it hinders career advancement or causes resentment among fellow employees who might feel that telecommuters are not carrying their share of the load.

Experts in the field suggest that a manager and candidate for telecommuting work out a comprehensive agreement that details how often the employee will work at home, what will be performed, how the work will be evaluated, and other aspects of the job.

Most jobs still require face-to-face meetings or "time around the water cooler," says James Barry, vice president and publisher of International Custom Publishing, in Peterboro, N.H. "You need to be able to interact with people and toss ideas back and forth, especially if you do creative work," he says.

When the magazine-publishing company recruited Barry to head its custom magazine division earlier this year, he wanted the job. What he didn't want, however, was to pick up stakes and move north or make the grueling 57-mile trek over country roads twice a day to and from his home in Framingham, Mass. The solution? Barry telecommutes about two days a week.

"My job doesn't require me to be in the office all of the time," says Barry, who travels frequently to meet with prospective clients. "I have a small staff--everyone has a clear job and is not supervised closely. Much of what I do is writing and selling on the phone and in person."

When traveling or telecommuting, he communicates with his staff by fax machine and by a laptop computer with a built-in modem to transmith electronic mail. "What difference is it if I am sitting in my office and my secretary is next door or in Peterboro?" Barry says. "Why do I need to drive that far when I can save that time and be closer to [Boston's Logan] airport for countrywide travel?"

One unexpected bonus of not spending all of his time in the office is that he is able to judge the work of his staff more objectively, Barry says. "The arrangement puts a premium on clarity of purpose and direction. You're judging people on whether they got the job done and the quality of their work."

PHOTO : Telecommuting from Vermont, Donna Cunningham of AT&T's Bell Labs confers with colleagues in New Jersey.

PHOTO : In touch from home: Carousel Mediaworks' art director David Michalowski, President Denny McElroy, writer Sheryl Hunt.

PHOTO : Telecommuters together: Mediaworks' Michalowski, left, McElroy, and Hunt.

Michael Alexander is a senior editor for Computerworld magazine, in Framinghan, Mass., and home-technology columnist for The Boston Globe.

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