Yesterday on NPR’s Morning Edition, there was yet another story on what companies and employees are doing to battle the cost of commuting.
Morning Edition, June 18, 2008 · As gas prices hover around $4 a gallon, surveys show that more companies are making changes to help commuters cope. That includes more telecommuting and even condensing the work week from five days to four days of 10 hours each. Workers and employers are trying to cut fuel costs but still remain relevant in their workplaces.
We’re dealing with the same question, and we want to know your opinion. There are a lot of issues to consider. The most important question is how do we continue to provide the absolute best product and service for our clients, and do the very best for our employees and mother earth? How do we do that in the best, most cost-effective way? What do we need to consider?
(Here is something interesting from CNN.com. A few links there as well.)
The floor is open. The world is listening.
13 Comments
In no way under estimating face time, I think in this day and age of cyber everything, working from home seems much more realistic, more green and more efficient. At least in some capacity.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea. I’ve heard other people in the office talking about it too. If things could be worked out between departments and it wouldn’t disrupt the service we provide to clients, I’m all for it.
That’s a tough one… In order to be more “mobile” generally, I think teams are a key component. If you have dedicated teams working on accounts, then that team can figure out the best way to manage workflow while in or out of the office. At my previous agency, we had a “retail” team and we were able to work from wherever (home, or on the road, or in the office). The team consisted of a copywriter, 3 ADs, and 2-3 account people. We managed 5 or 6 high-volume clients. As long as the work got done and clients could contact me anytime on my cell phone, my boss didn’t really care where I was. Trust was a huge factor in the success of this arrangement. My boss trusted that I was constantly and consistently accessible.
Other benefits of teams:
-the members of the team learn the brand in detail
-work is handled more efficiently
-members of the team learn to work together more efficiently
-information in general (as it relates to the client) is handled more efficiently. Less information is repeated.
-clients can build relationships with the creative team members in addition to the account team
-members of the team are more easily located if you work together all the time
Doe could also reward employees for biking, carpooling, taking the bus. The reward could be monetary or other (vacation time, gift certificates, etc.).
Interesting question. In previous positions, I’ve seen telecommuting, compressed workweeks, and other non-traditional schedules implemented with varying degrees of success.
As Kate mentioned, trust is a major element.
I spent two years commuting almost 40 miles each way, and even now my commute is about 25 miles one way (which isn’t unusual where I live.)
On the few occasions when I’ve had to telecommute due to bad weather, those days were actually quite productive. It probably depends largely on the person in question and their role.
I will say that I’ve felt like a bad global citizen on a few occasions because of all the driving I do.
I’m in one of those positions where I could probably do 95% of my work from anywhere in the world, so telecommuting makes a lot of sense to me. However, I think we get into a danger of quality and quantity loss by not working in groups, together, face-to-face. I would think the creative folks would need the in-person interaction much more urgently than most, even.
But let’s look at the free tools available. A site called ooVoo, which I’ve been testing a bit for the IT gang, allows you to video conference up to six folks at a time for free. We could do this from our homes and still have face-to-face and visual interaction. ooVoo allows you to share files, chat and more while in a session as well, so we could easily go back-and-forth from wherever we are. When David is on a client trip to Albania (or wherever), he could still make that creative review for a client with the team.
We can also be smarter for our clients by using tools like this. Imagine the cost savings for both Beam Global and the environment if we used free (or even cost enterprise versions) video conferencing and cut out 50% of our trips to Chicago? We teach them a valuable tool that saves them money across their portfolio and we save the environment a little while we do it. How much more valuable are we to them at that point. (Sure, you don’t measure cost savings in quarterly reports, but certainly we could make an impact on their bottom line that would help.)
Telecommuting makes a lot of sense and there are great tools out there that make it even more appealing now.
Still, we have to be honest. How many of us would spend the same amount of time truly working if we were doing it from home? I’ve got two kids. There’s no way I could. Of course, a two-minute jaunt to Panera is still better on the environment than what I currently do each day.
I actually tele-commuted for the first time yesterday. My office is about 20 mile/40 min. away (depending on traffic), but our team, while based in CA, is spread throughout the U.S.
I think it depends on the individual company. I am usually on the phone or e-mail, and never have clients/visitors in my office. Since we are spread out, most of our meetings involve conference calling to some degree.
Overall, I think it’s good economically, environmentally, and is refreshing to work outside of the office from time to time.
While I groan along with everyone else about rising gas and energy costs, I am secretly excited that the side benefit is a higher level of consciousness about resource management. Costs are forcing efficiencies and that is a great thing! With the accessibility of virtual tools such as web conferencing, twitter, skype, etc, it has never been easier to manage a distributed work force and client relationships. I love the idea of van and car pools (not limited to one company but can be shared in a local area), incentives for biking or public transportation and a shorter workweek. As a telecommuting vet I have found that I get more work done in a shorter period of time not working in an office.
I work for one of the top “IT” organizations in the globe, and we have a heavily mobile workforce. Over 8,000 of our 64,000 employees are full-time telecommuters and have all of the normal office functions enabled at home : corporate laptop and dual LCDs, direct connectivity to the corporate network, office phone(number works in physical office and home!), fax via email, and even the corporate wireless SSID.
With a mobile workforce, we see more productivity from our employees, less turnover due to their increased flexibility and an increased balance between their work and personal lives. Its amazing how morale improves when you remove the morning and afternoon commute and the need to jockey for parking spaces in crowded parking garages and enable your workforce with all the tools to do their job effectively. And yes, we do hear the occasional dog barking on a conference call, but hey, that ultimately brings personality to the call!
David, if you and your team would like to see the hardware that enables me to be mobile, send me an email and I can head downtown for a demo.
Last year, I freelanced for a San Francisco interactive agency and did all the work from home over a month and a half. I was friends with the CD, so it saved us both money and time to work that way. I did have to set aside two hours each week for an agency conference call but that was no big deal. The rest was done over email or over the phone.
Now with the gas prices, it makes even more sense.
I love the idea of four 10-hour days, not for the environment but for the extra time with my family. The reality is, my spending and consumption would probably increase with the extra day away from the office.
I’m not big on the idea of telecommuting though, at least not for me. For some people it can work great, I prefer to keep the line between my home life and work life clearly defined. I don’t have an office in my house, nor do I have room for one, and working from the kitchen table isn’t likely to be productive.
I’ve read other pieces about this issue and one interesting idea I’ve taken from them is that these questions can sometimes depend on the workplace. I read one study where some employees in a company were allowed to start telecommuting more frequently each week, and it made other employees in the company jealous and angry at management. The resulting blowback was a decrease in overall productivity.
Of course, there are many ways to handle these issues. Some employees have positions that simply don’t lend themselves well to telecommuting, depending on the situation. The study I read also found that workplaces that have healthier interpersonal and management relationships were more successful when telecommuting was introduced. I would wager that leveraging technologies like audio and video chatting would also help maintain the face-to-face time that helps human beings to develop more personal relationship; there are just some things that don’t get conveyed in e-mail and text chat.
Longer workdays can be difficult to pull off; we already have one of, if not *the*, longest workdays in America. Stretching that day out could lead to anger from employees or increased fatigue, which brings down productivity and the overall morale.
As someone who has been a 100% telecommuting writer for two different publications over the last three years, I can definitely attest to the fact that relationships don’t build quite as well as if my coworkers and I worked in an office. We’re all Internet and tech savvy and share similar senses of humor, but the human element is inarguably diminished just a bit unless you use all the telecommuting tools at your disposal to help bridge those interpersonal gaps that arise.
Change is difficult, but I believe that as a creative organization we should lead the way in workplace innovation whenever possible. We experiment now with flexible schedules and the like. This kind of benefit will be the demand of younger people coming into the workforce and a tremendous recruiting tool for more experienced professionals looking to achieve a better work/family balance and save money. I also believe it would increase employee satisfaction and ultimately productivity.
Best case scenario, I believe, would be a largely virtual workplace. Dramatically reduce our real estate - say one floor of space with open work stations for anyone to plug into when they’re in the office and everyone telecommutes, everyday. Essentially, your presence at the office is optional unless there’s a meeting scheduled. That doesn’t, however, mean your availability is optional. We could soup up DoeAnderson.com to provide a virtual agency tour - pictures of everyone, etc. Prospective clients want to come in and kick the tires, so we’d need to be mindful of that.
Short term I think 4 extended days (with flexibility as to how you work those additional hours hours in - early, late, through lunch, etc. - maybe even from home???) and Friday’s off completely would be the safest bet. I know we all worry about “coverage” because we are in a service business, but here are my retorts: 1 - We are doing this for a very good reason that I believe any client would appreciate, 2 - That said, with cell phones and blackberries, your AE is never far away in an emergency, 3 - If we were to stagger who’s off, I believe those staggered days would ultimately be less productive. We would sit down to kick off a project or review work and someone critical to the team won’t be available. So we end up rescheduling anyway or calling the poor person when they’re supposed to be “off”… Keep It Simple Stupid. 4 day weeks are likely to become the norm eventually for many of our clients anyway. We thought summer hours would be the end of the world, and look where we are now.
All that said, I think there needs to be a low tolerance for anyone taking advantage of the opportunity, and we should remember that nothing is forever. If something doesn’t work, try something else.
I can speak from some real experience here. The company I work for now is ENTIRELY virtually run.
Yes, I see that it has its benefits…but personally I do feel overall that face time is necessary.
In an ideal situation I would see a team meeting with face time several times a week. Maybe 3 days in office and 2 days out. Or 2 days in office and 3 days out.
Although I love not having to deal with gas prices, I do miss the creative flow that comes with being a part of a team….and although you can create teams virtually, the bond there is totally different.
Could go into great detail about this one….I see the advantages and pluses to both. Think the future is in the combo of both. Like an oreo cookie tastes good without the filling—it aint an oreo without the white stuff.
You can craft a team a hundred ways—but without SOME element of face time, it just don’t taste the same….At least to me