Telecommuting: Just A Matter Of Trust?
Every time someone mentions that he will work from home instead of being in the office, I get visions of the Dilbert comic in which Dilbert is walking around in his bathrobe, unshaven while [TAG-Tec]telecommuting[/TAG-Tec]. I know, my bad. I have got to have more faith in humanity and find a cure for my cartoon-operated mind.
Nevertheless, when one of my team members is asking if he or she is allowed to work from home, I have the bath-robe flash. And the answer is not an immediate "yes" (unless the request is for one afternoon). I know of all the great benefits telecommuting has (assuming telecommuting is used as a employment benefit and not to reduce labor cost):
- Flexibility
- Degree of self autonomy
- Increases the productivity
- Solution to child and elderly care
- Reduced commuting time
- Saved cost in company real estate
- Reduction of absenteeism
All in all [TAG-Tec]motivational[/TAG-Tec] factors for the employee, and some cool benefits for the company.
But not everything can be fine and dandy. Otherwise I should not have any doubts. There are problems associated with working at home:
- Boundary control: boundary control is the ability of a manager to affect how an employee divides their time between work and non-work.
- Isolation: there is a tendency for full-time telecommuters to quickly feel a sense of alienation due to their isolation from fellow workers and the organization.
How do you counter those problems? Is it just a matter of trust and having the right collaboration tools? It cannot be that simple.
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Bas de Baar, blogging as "The Project Shrink", is taking his message to the International Project Management community with a vengeance: "Projects Are About Humans. Now Deal With That!" ... 
It isn't. There's one very important problem with telecommuting - impact on teamwork. You can't just come to the desk of the telecommuter and ask about something. You can't invite him to an ad-hoc meeting which is about to start in a quarter. He won't hear a hot discussion about solving an issue which has just been submitted. Etc, etc.
The issue isn't just connected with telecommuter - it affects the whole team. Unless the whole organization is built to work that way this is always be a problem. Collaboration tools won't help much as far as we don't have some good virtual substitute of physical presence of person (and it's not going to be very soon).
Of course there are other issues (boundary control, efficiency, motivation, isolation) but these are mostly the matter of trust. I know people who I trust they do their job well either way, although I the impact on teamwork still can't be compensated.
Generalizing a bit telecommuting works well in specific situations when there's rather insignificant need of cooperation between telecommuter and the rest of them team (e.g. development of well-defined, closed component with documented interfaces which is treated like a black-box). Usually everywhere outsourcing works well it should be the same to move the workload to telecommuters.
I think it depends on the type of the project, on its complexity, on the schedule pressure, and many other factors. There is a great doze of risk when you work with telecommuting team members but it's possible. I've done successfully several small projects before and the main reason for the success were the trust I had in my crew and the slack schedule of the project.
I am going to undertake another project of this type and this time it will be much bigger than before.
I'll keep you informed how it is going if you are interested
Thanks for the comments guys. @Mike: yes, i would love to hear how it will progress.
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I believe a successful virtual team does have a great deal to do with how actively the members of the team work on their inter-relationships. I worked for a major IT company where our entire team was virtual… I only met them in person a handful of times in the year the project lasted. But I believe we were successful because the PM and I (I am a BSA) made sure we were meeting often & communicating the progress of the project at least bi-weekly. Without this conscientious communication, it would have fallen apart. I personally work better in my own office at home than having to travel everyday to another location, which breaks up the continuity of my schedule.