The pros of telecommuting as our company had
found were that oeprating expenses go down while employee satisfaction goes up,
making it a win-win. Add the benefit to the environment by removing commuters,
and it seems like a really good deal.
Well, it is if you get a higher or equal
level of productivity from the workers (because greater worker satisfaction
does not automatically translate to higher productivity) or that if there is a
decrease in productivity it is slight enough that it will be offset by the
reduced operating expenses.
Our conversion was not done lightly. There
were pilot groups, as groups rolled out it was done in stages, and before they
even got to planning that we all took tests that predicted whether we would do
well in the home environment or not.
For our team it seems to have gone pretty
well. That has been common with many companies, though it sounds like it was
not the case with Yahoo. We all had pretty good work ethics all along. When we
were less productive it was usually because a conversation got started and went
on a tangent and pulled multiple people in. Based on that, we are probably more
productive now. Numbers seem to bear that out.
In my case, I got back over two hours a day
that was spent in transit, which leaves me better rested, and with more time to
give to my personal life. That is helpful. It is certainly a money-saver,
because even though it should be really easy to pack a lunch, I was always
forgetting or running out of time. Our bus pass was partially subsidized but
not all. We may use slightly more electricity at home now, but it has not been
noticeable. The financial benefits are fairly small compared to the time
benefits, but they are still there.
The biggest gain is the relative freedom. I
generally did not have specific things to do on my breaks, so I would go to the
bathroom, fill up my water bottle, and it wasn’t particularly restful. Here I
may get some laundry going, or start dinner, or even lie down on my bed for
fifteen minutes. Plus, at random points during the day, dogs come up and nuzzle
me, and some day breaks will involve petting kitties again. All of those things
are more of a boost.
Also, we no longer pass germs around.
There is a downside, such as it is, in that I
am less engaged with the team. I have been thinking about that recently because
it came up in my review with my supervisor. That has not been caused by the
change to working from home, though it helped. What happened was that I started
getting sick of my coworkers.
Actually, it was only three. There are
coworkers I like a lot, and when we have on-site meetings, seeing them is
great. There were just three that bugged me. One is very needy, and she really
thinks she is cute in this, but she is not. She is not a bad person, but it
gets tiresome. Another is friends with my sister, and so at times she would
mention something she had heard from my sister, or my sister would mention
things she had heard from the coworker, and I did not like that. Still, the
biggest problem was the third one.
I had noticed that she seemed to have some
social anxiety, I guess, or possibly that she hated us all, but we started this
new process for contacting people if we found that they had made mistakes. I
hit a run where I forgot an exception that could happen with one business line
that I had not worked with much, and I forgot it at a time when we hit an
unusually high number of incidences of that exception. This allowed me to
notice how amazingly passive aggressive she could be. Like, I thought she had
social anxiety, and all along it was really borderline personality disorder.
I have since learned that she does this to
everyone, so I don’t feel like it is personal, exactly, but it doesn’t warm me
up to her either. I have gotten some others that have been about things that
were not wrong, but she would have done them differently. (Bully for her.)
Still, this was the first time her issues came up for me, and no matter how
clear her own issues were, they coincided with a real failure on my part, which
I am not used to in a job situation.
This affected my feelings for this coworker,
but it also dealt a huge blow to my confidence. I am used to being good at my
job. For a while there I was feeling very vulnerable and insecure, and I just
didn’t want to be doing it anymore. I started really getting into gear on my
writing on my own time, and ultimately, that’s what I want to do. I don’t want
to advance within the company. I want to establish myself as a writer and leave
the company.
It hasn’t changed everything. I still have
good output, in terms of both quantity and quality. I will never forget Idaho
ERISA rules again. That one is burned in my soul. At the same time, I am not as
engaged. I don’t chat as much. If I were still in the office, I know I would
find myself pulled in more easily. At home it is easy to be more reclusive. My
life satisfaction is higher, but it is less intertwined with my job. I think
that’s healthy, but I could probably be more balanced. I am going to try and
participate more.
So there is a definite risk to sending people
out of the office. You can lose that esprit de corps. We did great things with
the toy drive in previous years that were just not matched this year. I mean, I
think we still won, but just the fact that I am not sure shows that it was less
of an issue. There are people for whom losing that sense of belonging could
seriously reduce their motivation to work. There are people for whom there are
too many distractions at home. Those issues need to be looked at.
Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels alone
is reason enough to look at a wider implementation of telecommuting. The
potential personal and economic benefits are good reasons for looking at it
too. The risks to productivity and team spirit also need to be weighed. Okay, I
don’t feel a strong need to be connected to my job and all of my coworkers, but
it may be important for management, and I do understand the need to feel
connected to society at large, and for some people their job might be the
biggest part of that.
So, those are some of the things to think
about. I can only tell you my own experience, and now I have. Your mileage may
vary.
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