Telecommuting
My wife, a very accomplished Project Engineer, works part time from home. More and more people work part or even full time from home. Some of the main advantages are:
- Saves energy
- Saves time
- It is safer
- Lowers stress (My wife might argue against this. Her reason is the “24/7,” below.)
- Can take care of family and work
If you can telecommute full-time you may be able to choose where you want to live, which could be at a location with a lower cost of living.
There are some disadvantages as well:
- You do not have face time with superiors
- Supervisors feel that since you are home, you are on-call 24/7
To get past these disadvantages, it my be best if you telecommute part time. That has worked well for my wife, as well as a few other engineers at our company. Another method that helps is to use a program like Microsoft NetMeeting to directly show your supervisor what you are doing.
Many jobs are obviously not appropriate for telecommuting. Jobs that require hands-on, such as medical doctors or auto repair would not work. But if much of your day is spent on the computer or on the phone, and your job is task oriented, you may be a candidate for telecommuting.
If you think your job is a candidate for telecommuting, talk to your supervisor or human resourses liazon. They can tell you what is in place and whether telecommuting is acceptable for your position. Don’t be surprised if you get a negative answer. Even in today’s connected environment, many supervisors want to see you working at your desk.
If you meet resistance, but not an absolute “no,” you may suggest a part-time trial. It will then be up to you to prove that you can telecommute. To start out, you will have to work harder than you did at the office. If telecommuting works out, you will need to put in the hours and treat work separate from your family life. A home office really does help for this.
Besides rules and resources from work, there are lots of on-line resources for telecommuting. Some can be found at
- Telecommuting: the pitch
- Save gas! Telecommute!
- How to Propose a Telecommuting Arrangement
- Telecommuting
Stumble it!
JB:
Does she feel she gets more work done at home or work? Are there more techinical problems working at home (maybe a program doesn’t work from home or something?)?
21 August 2008, 6:13 amBryce:
@JB – I will try to get my wife to answer about whether she gets more work done at home or at work.
As far as technical problems, the biggest problem is when the VPN tunnel over the Internet goes down between home and work and we can’t get it reconnected. Much of my wife’s work involves being directly logged onto number-crunching servers at work or checking out software licenses from work to allow her to run software on the computer at home. When the tunnel stays down, she has had to drive into work. This is not common, though. Perhaps a few times a year.
21 August 2008, 1:02 pmEmily:
Hi JB- Honestly, it depends on what piece I’m working on. If it’s more the project management side, I get more done at work, ’cause it is a lot harder to chase people down by phone than if you can show up in their office to get what you need. If it is straight engineering (analysis/design), than I probably get a little more done at home, if I am here by myself (the whole equation changes during summer break, as trying to do work and take care of kids at the same time is very difficult).
As for the technical problems, the other one that Bryce didn’t mention is the pulling of files back and forth. Up until about 2 weeks ago, I did not have a laptop, which meant I was contantly pulling files back and forth, home to work. Every once in a while, I would forget to push a file back across to work and would end up with the wrong version of the file at work. Haven’t had that problem now that I have the laptop.
Hope this helps!
22 August 2008, 7:55 amMrs. Save & Conquer