Working from home, why not?

Working from home, why not?

By Maya Kartika

JAKARTA (JP): It's 6 a.m. in Depok, a growing suburb 25
kilometers south of Jakarta.

Pipit, an employee in the busy central business district of
the capital, begins her routine: driving to her office in the
heavy morning traffic.

She has to face the same tiring, but unavoidable episode later
in the afternoon on her way back home, together with the
thousands of commuters and people working in the capital.

On average, Pipit spends three and a half hours on the road to
reach her office every day.

She usually arrives home at 9 p.m. And, she is already too
tired to play with her one-and-a-half-year-old son. Worst still,
at this time, her husband is still not back from work yet.

For many IT savvy, Pipit's rather bleak episode shouldn't
occur if her company had embraced the concept of telecommuting.

Traditionally, work links us to a physical location.

But rapid advances in information technology and
telecommunications now enable work to be independent of location.

The concept of a single assigned place to work is, for the
majority of office workers, obsolete. It is costly, ineffective,
and no longer matches the needs and desires of today's workforce.

The office becomes so central to people's lives that most of
us are ready to dedicate all our quality time to it. In light of
the increasing awareness of a balanced lifestyle, is it really
necessary for workers to spend so much time commuting to and
being in the office?

It is in this context that the telecommuting concept has
emerged as an alternative working arrangement.

In this regard, telecommuting has become an important part of
the way 21st century employers get their work done, meet customer
demands, and attract and retain top-quality workers.

Is it a panacea that works for everyone, everywhere? Of course
not.

It's a work option that is being used by savvy employers who
want to take advantage of today's technology to bring out the
best in today's workforce, and who want to escape the costs and
burdens of yesterday's office infrastructure.

Telecommuting has also gained popularity because it better
meets both business and employee needs, attracts and retains a
diverse and talented workforce, improves productivity for certain
jobs or persons, and reduces real estate cost.

But don't be bought into this idea blindly, because while
telecommuting offers broad benefits, not all employers will have
the kind of business problems for which telecommuting is an
appropriate solution.

Here, we should remember that telecommuting isn't appropriate
for every job. Some job activities don't lend themselves to
telecommuting.

Organizations need to analyze the job activity, not the job
title to determine suitability to telecommuting.

The key is to find jobs with at least a portion of the work
that can be done away from the office -- taking advantage of
technology to get away from the distractions and interruptions in
the typical office.

Even hands-on jobs such as firefighting can benefit from
telecommuting.

For example, a fire chief in Fairfax County, Virginia,
identified report writing as one of his main activities, clearly
a task that doesn't have to be done at the firehouse. When he
began telecommuting from his home to office, he could increase
his productivity by more than 20 percent and produce more
accurate reports.

To start the telecommuting program, a company needs to at
least take these two key steps.

First, conducting a telecommuting pilot, and second, selecting
the right telecommuters. There are two schools of thought on a
telecommuting pilot. One, is to prove or disprove that
telecommuting is a viable work option. The other, to do a trial
run to see if the current telecommuting policy and guidelines are
adequate to support a rollout to a larger number of
telecommuters.

Telecommuting may not be a viable work option for some
employees. A pilot telecommuting program should facilitate two-
way, ongoing communication about policy and guidelines.

It should also learn from the small-scale implementation what
to avoid in a large-scale telecommuting roll-out. Some individual
telecommuters may not be the right employees for the program.
This learning should then be incorporated into the large-scale
rollout strategy.

The second step is to choose the right telecommuters.

Here, many organizations struggle with, "Who is the right
candidate for telecommuting?"

It is usually at this point that an elaborate set of criteria
is developed and the flexibility of telecommuting is immediately
in danger. Gathering a task force to brainstorm on critical
questions potential telecommuters need to answer may be a more
flexible approach.

The telecommuters should have a list of questions to answer,
to justify why he/she is the candidate of choice. The employee
will come up with the answers as a base and then managers can
begin negotiations with the telecommuting candidates of choice.

Everyone can answer the questions, but only the best
candidates get the telecommuting positions, based on the
questions answered.

For some companies in Indonesia, telecommuting might be a
novel concept but one that is still very distant to be applied.

Yet, advancement in technology may propel the rapid adoption
of telecommuting. More importantly, telecommuting has proven to
be a potential factor in improving productivity, reducing real
estate costs and diminishing transportation burdens.

The last reason is particularly compelling as the adoption of
telecommuting by a great number of employers may significantly
reduce transportation problems, thereby minimizing traffic jams
and contributing to the effort of creating blue skies for
Jakarta .

And yes, Pipit does not need to be stuck in the middle of a
traffic jam again and again.

The writer is a manager at Arthur Andersen.