For Millions of ‘Telecommuters,’ Workplace Is Always at Hand

Magazine editor Nick Sullivan has abandoned the bustle and commuting chaos of Manhattan to live with his family in a converted barn in rural Massachusetts--without giving up his job.

Sullivan edits and writes on a personal computer, sends and receives memos on a facsimile machine and, every couple of weeks, spends a day or two in New York at editorial meetings.

“I like it. I’m living in a spot I ordinarily would get to only on weekends--semi-rural with nice beaches,” Sullivan said recently. “But there are almost no jobs there. If I had wanted to work there otherwise, I’d have had to change jobs.”

Sullivan is one of a growing number of Americans--nearly 25 million by one count--who have taken advantage of a boom in information technology and slowly changing attitudes to quit commuting and work full or part time at home.

Basic Tools

The computer linked to the office system through a telephone modem is the basic tool of the home worker. To that, add the facsimile--or fax--machine to transmit printed matter by phone, the multi-line phone, and “voice mail” systems that allow co-workers to leave recorded messages for each other.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a one-time survey in 1985, found that 18.1 million people out of the total work force of 97.7 million worked at home at least some of the time.

By 1987, 23.3 million people worked at home at least part time, and the number climbed to 24.9 million this year, according to Link Resources, a New York consulting firm that has begun surveying the trend. The 1988 figure amounts to 23% of the non-farm work force of 107.1 million.

Alvin Toffler, the futurist who for a decade has been predicting the rise of the “electronic cottage” as a combined home and workplace, says he’s pleasantly surprised to find the times are catching up.

The author of “Future Shock,” “The Third Wave” and “Previews and Premises” noted in a recent interview that just a few years ago, he considered estimates that the home work force would top 15 million by 1990 optimistic, yet they already have been surpassed.

Changing Times

The futurist was in Los Angeles recently to speak to an audience of the converted--a conference for businesses that sell electronic gear to those who work at home. That itself is a measure of changing times, he said.

Home workers tend to be entrepreneurs, consultants and otherwise independent types, because many of those who run big organizations are reluctant to give up control over their employees. But traditional corporate accounting fails to note the savings home work could bring society by cutting the time spent commuting and the amount government spends on roads and public transit.

“What we’re discovering is that the major institutions in our society--hospitals, prisons, corporate bureaucracies--are very expensive ways to get anything done,” said Toffler. “A small investment in encouraging the creation of decentralized workplace would be a far more effective way of cutting down the cost of the transportation than any amount of mass transit.”

The government data from 1985 show about 54% of those who work at home hold managerial and professional jobs, while 28% are in technical, sales and support occupations. A variety of other categories, including crafts, service and manufacturing, account for the rest.

The government found that only about 7% of those who worked at home in 1985 did so full time. The Link survey found that 21% of the home workers were full time in 1987, and 24%, or 6 million, considered themselves full-time home workers this year.

Tend to Be in 30s

Link’s survey of more than 2,500 households found that home workers tend to be in their 30s--support, says survey director Thomas Miller, for the notion that the phenomenon is an outgrowth of changing attitudes toward work.

“Home-based work styles are really catching the eye of the baby boomers,” said Miller, himself at “telecommuter” who has fled his company’s Manhattan headquarters for a computer-equipped home in the hickory woods near Ithaca, N.Y.

“They’re settling down, they’re moving into the responsible years of their careers, they’re having babies,” Miller said of the generation born in the 1950s and early 1960s. “They’re facing pressure-cooker life styles and child care issues. . . . They’re looking for their personal solutions for juggling home and work life.”

Miller and editor Sullivan both left the office, in part, to spend more time with their children. Both are married to part-time home workers: Miller’s wife, a classical singer, is a researcher-writer for Planned Parenthood of New York, while Deborah Sullivan, a former children’s magazine editor, writes children’s books.

It isn’t always easy to blend work into the home.

Kids Provide Breaks

“With the kids around, they provide natural breaks (from work), and most of the time it’s welcome,” said Sullivan, a senior editor with Home Office Computing magazine. “Every once in a while, they interrupt you at the wrong time.”

Another home worker, Diane Simpson, who runs a consulting business out of her home in New York, finds that work can demand more of her time now. Simpson, who advises American companies on dealing with the Japanese, often awakens at odd hours to the sound of her fax machine accepting a transmission from Tokyo.

“Work always overflows,” Simpson said in a telephone interview. “Right now I’m working at my dining room table instead of my desk.”

But even the most sophisticated electronic gear can’t always substitute for the face-to-face contact that spices the workday and stimulates new approaches to problem solving.

Miller, who admits to suffering a bit from “creative isolation,” says: “Even with all the communications tools that we have, they don’t substitute entirely for the water cooler, for rubbing shoulders with someone who’s working in a similar area and talking about problems.”