By Michele Peterson on February 21, 2012

A fellow "Soho'er" Kathy Keating just provided a great insight to one of my previous Sohojobs.com blog post. I hope she won't mind if I replicate it and discuss it here. Kathy's comment was:

“I think telecommuting is now officially a part of my life. I'm even telecommuting when I'm *in* the office because I have meetings with people all over the world and I honestly don't care if they're at home or in an office as long as they're getting their work done.

We discussed this at length, because Kathy's insight is into the very nature of telecommuting itself: telecommuting or telework means "a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours.", not just "working at home". Home is not the centre of the universe, rather there is no center, just lots of locations, all some distance from each other. So your work organization could consist entirely of one-person home offices, or like Princess Cruise Lines, the offices could be cubes in one of many floors in one of several buildings on a campus, as part of a large multinational. Most companies are somewhere in between. But the crucial point is the shift in the basic, underlying assumption, from:

The business world is basically centralised, and anything that's elsewhere is a special case

to:

The world is basically distributed, with co-location of entities being a happy convenience.

Translating this into practical terms, organizations that wish to fully embrace teleworking should ensure that all their staff are as fully equipped as the homeworker with phone, computer, webcam and headset, so they don't end up with the situation where our teleworker can't use the power of the communications at her disposal because her co-workers back at the ranch don't have the same kit.

I hope this doesn't sound like a rant but the difference in thinking is huge.

What's your opinion?

If you think you have a pretty sweet deal because you're allowed to work from home one or two days a week, consider the arrangement SOHOjobs subscriber Natalie Swanson managed to make with her employer.

She worked for 13 months telecommuting from Spain— yeah that's right, the site of glorious architecture, canals and delicious pasta.

Swanson says her was a work at home arrangement that many SOHOers can emulate.

She argues that if you can telecommute five or 25 miles from your office, why can't you telecommute from another part of the world? "When I returned to the U.S., I had a renewed sense of vitality toward my job and my life," he says. "When you experience life outside the U.S., you get to look at life from a different lens. You then realize that you can look at everything differently. I even came back and looked at problems at work differently."

So at a time when many Americans feel overworked and stressed, could telecommuting from Spain — or another desired location — be possible?

First you have to do a little planning. Swanson's advice:

Start slowly. Swanson has been working for a communications company she found on sohojobs.com part time where she is still employed for over 3 years. She began working from home one day a week, found a way to send large files then eventually increased that to full time. This tactic helped convince her bosses that a full-time telecommuting arrangement wouldn't hurt her work.

Natalie's advice: Don't discount the part time positions found on sohojobs.com “Of course I wanted a full time position but I wanted to work at home immediately”. She told her employer her intentions immediately, “He couldn't promise a full time position but was open to the idea” she said.

There have been many part time telecommuting jobs that sohojobs.com subscribers have not applied for simply because they are “part time”. Natalie is a prime example of working your way into a full time gig.

People who have worked from home for any length of time know that past performance it what allowed them to be home based, and steady performance while in their telecommuting role is what allows them to stay at home. perform well at it, must be appalled by survey data showing that a top management objection to the arrangement is the inability to know if any work is actually being done.

If a company's top sales force was out shopping instead of calling on clients, they won’t be top performers very long. And if they’re getting the job done, who really cares anyway? Yet the perception of work-at-homers as pajama wearing lazy bones persists. .

Recent data shows:

45% of the U.S. workforce holds a job that is suitable for part-time or full-time telecommuting.

50 million U.S. employees who want to work from home hold jobs that can be done from home, though only 2.9 million say home is their primary place of work.

The 2.9 million U.S. telecommuters save 390 million gallons of gas and prevent the release of 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gases annually.

If those with compatible jobs worked at home 2.4 days a week, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be the equivalent of taking the entire New York workforce off the roads.

There is no question that working from home makes sense in many cases. It can be good for the environment. It can save companies money on real estate. It can afford a better work/life balance. If you’d like to give it a try, but your employer has reservations, here are some tips from SOHOjobs to make the transition.

Easy does it — Your request to work at home will raise questions about your motives and ability to be productive. Suggest a trial period of one day a week, and then bowl them over with results.

Show the positive — Your manager should know that when you work at home you start your day earlier and end later simply by subtracting commuting time.

Constant contact— Given a chance, make sure you stay in close contact with the office. If your co-workers can’t find you when they need you, it’s over.

Keep the company in mind — Urgent matters will arise that may be best handled right away by someone in the office. Make sure to designate someone to assume your role when you are unavailable.

One thing you can do right now to get the Telecommuting train rolling is to make it part of the conversation. Talk openly about your desires and be forthright with you superiors. Good Luck

Once again I find myself reading emails inquiring about about a particular company's commitment to telecommuting. This nameless company made a broad announcement offering telework options for its 1200 employees. Then unexpectedly revoked the option. The concept of working from home has taken a beating during the last few years, many executives question their companies’ ability to take advantage of the wired world. This setback also throws a bit of cold water on the hopes of older workers hoping to phase into retirement.

Overall, the number of folks working from home at least one day a month was 26.2 million at the end of last year, down from 33.7 million two years earlier, according to a WorldatWork report.

Some of this decline stems from overall job losses during the economic downturn. However, a more striking result of the report was the suggestion that psychological barriers are playing a much larger role. Working at home once in a while may be seen as slacking, but few are willing to chance being viewed in that light in the tight labor market. Three-in-four employers say they embrace some form of remote workplace, which cuts their real estate costs and has other benefits. But you have to wonder if some companies aren’t just paying lip service to the value of flexible schedules. Less than 20% of employers have an established training plan for home based workers. That’s not much of an embrace.

I hear it all the time from federal workers who are growing frustrated by the lack of motivation in their supervisors to embrace flexible work options. Even though 80% of U.S. Government employees fall under the telework requirements.

One of the most striking finding was the dramatic shift in those employee who are taking advantage of home based situations. The typical telecommuter is 40 years old and has a college degree, and more likely than not is a man. Which pretty much dispels the stereotype telecommuter as a working mom juggling family and a job from home.

I am sure this will hit a note with some of you. Don't be shy, let the rest of the SOHO community hear your experiences.