There’s No Workplace Like Home : Employment trends: More companies in Orange County and nationwide have begun programs that allow certain employees to do their jobs outside the office.
Each Friday at 4 a.m., Brice Black climbs out of bed, pulls on jeans and a T-shirt and takes a seat in front of his home computer. The computer systems analyst, who says he can concentrate best in the pre-dawn silence, then works until 6:30, when he takes two of his small children to school.
On other workdays, Black commutes from his home in Whittier to his office in Anaheim, a half-hour drive. On Fridays, though, Brice works at home. When he takes a break, it isn’t for coffee or chit-chat with co-workers but rather to care for his 1-year-old daughter, Meagan, or to catch up on household chores.
Pacific Bell, Black’s employer, is one of an expanding number of private and public employers in Orange County and across the nation that are allowing employees to spend part of their workweeks at home.
Link Resources Corp., a New York firm that studies the impact of emerging technologies, reports that in 1990, there were 34.3 million people working at home either full or part time, up from 10 million in 1985. It estimates that the number will rise to about 51 million in 1994, which would represent about 40% of the U.S. work force.
Pacific Bell, one of the first large employers to endorse telecommuting, started its telecommuting program to help reduce freeway traffic during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The program has gradually expanded to include 1,500 Pac Bell employees statewide, several hundred of them in Orange County.
Other companies have begun-- albeit cautiously--to experiment with this non-traditional working style. Most have begun by permitting a small number of employees whose jobs can be performed at home to work away from the office, and most carefully monitor the effect of telecommuting on their organizations.
Those selected to participate in telecommuting span a wide range of occupations--from secretaries to planners, from analysts to executives. Generally, however, they are trusted employees who would benefit from time away from telephones and meetings to tackle paperwork or reading.
The work-at-home population is dominated by entrepreneurs who run their own businesses, and it also includes employees who take work home after office hours. But telecommuters--those who do company work at home during regular working hours--represent the fastest-growing segment, said Thomas Miller, a Link Resources vice president. In recent months, pilot telecommuting projects have been launched locally by the County of Orange, the Orange County Transit District, the Unisys Corp. facility in Mission Viejo and the Southern California Edison Co. Another will start this summer at the Costa Mesa office of the Automobile Club of Southern California.
Next month, transportation planners from businesses and public agencies throughout the county will be invited to attend the first official meeting of the Orange County Telecommuting Advisory Council, an offshoot of a similar organization in Los Angeles that offers guidance to employers on how to establish work-at-home programs.
The meeting will be at McDonnell Douglas Electronics Systems in Santa Ana, which is considering starting a telecommuting program later this year. Other telecommuting advisory councils have been formed in San Francisco, San Diego, Honolulu and Washington.
Another sign of growing interest in the home as a workplace was evident in the Home Office/Small Business Conference and Expo at the Anaheim Convention Center last weekend. It attracted 50 exhibitors, home computer hardware and software manufacturers among them, and about 10,000 people.
For employees, say researchers in the field, working at home can relieve the stress and cost of commuting and allow more time for family life.
Employers, however, are looking at the bottom line.
“The No. 1 reason why telecommuting is offered is to get more work done” by eliminating office distractions and commuting pressures, Miller of Link Resources said.
Margery Gould, manager of Los Angeles County’s 18-month-old telecommuting program, said the productivity of the approximately 1,000 people participating has increased about 20% on average.
Employers also say a telecommuting program can also help in recruiting and keeping workers as well as cutting expenses because less office space is needed.
Ed Clifford, coordinator of support services for the Orange County Transit District, said he would be reluctant to change employers because he likes the agency’s telecommuting program. By working at home, he said, he avoids a 42-mile trip between transit district headquarters in Garden Grove and his house in Mira Loma. “It is a tremendous benefit to me,” he said, adding that commuting typically involves three to four hours of tense freeway driving.
Southern California employers have another motivation too: the South Coast Air Quality Management District requirement that all employers of 100 or more people reduce the number of trips their employees take during peak commuting hours.
Antonio Thomas, AQMD senior transportation specialist, estimates that about 10% of the firms submitting commuting plans have proposed telecommuting as part of the solution.
The greatest resistance to telecommuting, researchers say, is from managers who are concerned that employees at home will not concentrate on their jobs, will lose touch with supervisors and lose sight of corporate goals.
“Our No. 1 challenge is to convince the managers,” said Wendell Joice, personnel psychologist for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The federal government began a pilot telecommuting program six months ago in which 300 employees are participating. Joice says the number would probably be higher but for the reluctance of department supervisors.
Virtually all telecommuting programs depend on voluntary participation by both employees and managers. Some also require the consent of labor unions, which want assurances that employees working at home will retain the same rights and benefits as their office-bound counterparts.
Gil Gordon, a New Jersey consultant who helps companies establish telecommuting programs, concedes that they are not for everyone. Employees who lack self-discipline or adequate work space at home are bad prospects for telecommuting, as are those whose jobs require personal contact with customers or co-workers.
The Fluor Corp., the Irvine-based engineering and construction company, decided not to allow its engineering staff to telecommute because it would undermine the company’s “team approach to working on projects,” said Mark Krause, Fluor director of human resources.
The cost of equipment can be another hurdle. These can include dedicated telephone lines to link offices with employees’ homes and the purchase of computers and fax machines, consultants say.
Gordon estimated that half of all telecommuters use computers at home. Others make do with a phone and a pad of paper. Some companies will spend as much as $10,000 to outfit a worker’s home with electronic gear, he said, but others will spend much less or may even require employees who want to telecommute to buy their own computers.
As for the productivity concerns, Chris McKeever, an OCTD research analyst who had a hand in designing the agency’s telecommuting program, said rules have been established to avoid any pitfalls.
He said all OCTD workers who telecommute must be in the office at least two days a week to lessen the potential for feelings of isolation from the company and co-workers. They are also forbidden to baby-sit children while working at home. “If they have children under 12 in the house, they need to have somebody else there to take care of them,” he said.
Also important, McKeever said, is training for managers to supervise and evaluate the performance of at-home workers. “We have to make sure managers are well-versed in managing by results rather than by the appearance of effort,” he said.
REASONS FOR TELECOMMUTING
A 1990 survey of 708 work-at-home households nationwide found that telecommuters’ chief reason for working at home is that it enables them to do more work.
Get more work done: 32.6
Earn more money: 25.3
More flexible schedule: 21.1
Be their own “boss”: 15.8
Prefer home as workplace: 13.7
Family care: 13.7
Start own business: 8.4
Reduce commuting: 8.4
Source: Link Resources
