Telecommuters Phoning It In From Home : Business: 5.5 million workers last year avoided rush-hour traffic and enjoyed greater flexibility. But some supervisors are not sold on the idea.
Chuck Hanson is a new breed of worker indeed: Monday is the highlight of his week.
That is the day Hanson “telecommutes” to work. He leaves his suit and tie in the closet and his car in the driveway, sparing himself a 35-minute battle with Seattle’s rush-hour traffic.
Instead, he ambles down the hallway to his den, sits in front of a personal computer, and begins his job as a market planner for GTE Northwest, a regional telephone company.
Hanson is a guinea pig in the Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration, a yearlong, state-sponsored experiment involving 250 Seattle-area workers. Official study results are not in, but Hanson calls it a resounding success.
He still telecommutes, even though the experiment ended in December. He says it is hard to imagine working any other way.
“Flexibility is the key,” he said. “If things aren’t going well, I take a break and make it up in the evening, or sometimes I go for a jog. It’s a lot less stressful ... and I’m more productive. I can get done at home in a few hours what it takes a whole day to do at the office.”
He is part of a growing trend. An estimated 5.5 million U.S. employees worked in their homes at least part time last year, according to LINK Resources, a Manhattan-based research firm. That’s up 38% from a 1990 figure of 4 million telecommuters, and more than twice the firm’s 1988 estimate of 2.5 million.
By 1995, there may be more than 11 million telecommuters, said Thomas E. Miller, a vice president at LINK.
“Businesses and individuals alike are looking for increased flexibility in how they perform their work,” Miller said. “Meanwhile, computers, fax and emerging telephone services are all developing in the same direction--to give us more control over where, when, and how we conduct our work.”
State agencies in California, Washington, Florida and Minnesota have started programs allowing employees to telecommute, and officials in Arizona are looking into it, said Gil Gordon, a telecommuting consultant in Monmouth Junction, N.J.
Businesses also are catching on. The Travelers Corp. of Hartford, Conn., allows several hundred of its 33,000 employees nationwide to telecommute, spokesman James Kalach said. Telecommuters at the insurance company include data-processing programmers, employee benefits workers, and customer service representatives set up in their homes with phone lines.
Companies increasingly see telecommuting as a way to increase morale and attract talented employees, Gordon said. In Los Angeles and Seattle, there’s another powerful incentive: new air quality laws requiring businesses to reduce employees’ contributions to rush-hour traffic.
But perhaps the greatest reason behind telecommuting’s growing popularity is that employees are asking for it. Miller describes the typical telecommuter as a business executive or professional worker, age 35 to 37. Many workers use the flexibility of telecommuting to juggle the demands of child care in dual-career households, he said.
As telecommuting moves beyond the gee-whiz stage, some limitations are becoming obvious. Some jobs, such as supervisory positions that require a lot of face-to-face contact, are not suitable for telecommuting.
And not all employees can handle the independence of working at home. They may feel isolated, or they may lack the discipline to resist what consultant Gordon calls “the siren call of fresh Doritos in the cupboard.”
Hanson, 40, found his own discipline sufficient, but his 5-year-old daughter, Kelly, was a different story. She’d come knocking at his door, wondering what daddy was up to. “I had to explain that I’m home, but I’m not really home,” Hanson said.
Other distractions can be harder to resolve, said Jack M. Nilles, a Los Angeles consultant who coined the term telecommuting in 1973. Consider the worker whose home office was across from a neighbor’s window where a parrot perched, squawking all day. “It drove the guy up the wall,” Nilles said.
There can be problems back at the office, too. Colleagues who are not allowed to telecommute may grow envious, especially if they’re answering phones and leaving messages at the telecommuter’s empty desk.
But the biggest barrier, experts agree, are reluctant managers who worry that if they can’t see their workers, they can’t control them.
“Organizations around the world still have the Industrial Revolution mentality,” Nilles said. “They just assume, without really thinking about it, that people have to go to the factory to do useful work.”
Allowing an employee to work at home requires a high degree of trust between worker and manager, which for one reason or another is often lacking.
Tina Koyama, 33, can attest to that. Last year, she telecommuted one day a week in her job as a newsletter editor for Seattle Metro, the city’s public transportation and water-quality agency.
She loved her time at home. She could wear sweat pants, and she saved a 30-minute bus ride each way. She believes the lack of interruptions from co-workers made her more productive, and her supervisor agrees. In fact, the biggest drawback Koyama can think of was the Mickey Mouse telephone in her den.
“The first time I talked to someone, I had a funny feeling--I was just as glad they couldn’t see me,” she said. “It didn’t seem entirely professional.”
She got used to it. But when she was transferred to a new department a few months ago, her telecommuting days ended. She believes she could still do it, but her new manager isn’t willing.
Not that she blames him. She had worked with her old manager for several years. “We had established that trust and rapport. I think any manager would want to do that first,” Koyama said. “Telecommuting is definitely an individual thing.”
Managers’ recalcitrance may be eased by a new twist called telecommuting work centers--satellite office buildings shared by several organizations, located closer to where the workers live.
Three such centers opened recently in Southern California, the result of a joint venture of businesses and state and local governments. Officials hope such satellite offices will cut traffic congestion and air pollution.
Employees who work at the centers report other advantages, as well.
Duncan Dieterly, an industrial psychologist with Southern California Edison, works at the Riverside Telecommuting Center one day a week. His usual commute between home in Moreno Valley and corporate headquarters in Rosemead is a two-hour ordeal, twice a day, along some of the nation’s most crowded highways. He leaves the house at 5:30 a.m. and doesn’t return until 7 p.m.
Contrast that to his eight-mile dash to the Riverside Telecommuting Center. “I can get up later and have breakfast with my children before I go to work,” he said. “And I get home at 5:15, so I can have dinner with my family, play with my children, and be relaxed.”
Like most telecommuters, he reports greater productivity at work. But one of the biggest benefits will never show on company ledgers: “My wife thinks I’m a nicer person,” Dieterly said.
