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I was reading the recent CNN article "Next phase of working at home: Leaving home" which got me to thinking a lot about telecommuting and remote work. Since I had never heard of coworking it intrigued me.
Telecommuting is no longer a fad and the evolution of it all shows us that there is more than one way to bust out of the corporate cube. What was once a total oddity "(whispering over the cubicle wall...) Did you hear, Sally is working from home today, yeah right she's working (muttered under their breath with immense sarcasm)" is now much more commonplace.
You either see remote and alternative work arrangements as a viable solution or you don't. I've been in organizations where from one person to the next the entire telecommuting policy changed. I guess that is what the catch all policy word "at manager's discretion" means. Or as I translated it to mean "at the whim of the personality at hand". As someone who is full time self-employed I am reminded each day of the proof that I was always cut out for remote and independent (with collaboration of course, I'm not a hermit) work. Too bad it was so hard to convince many previous corporate managers of that. Although to be fair I had a few folks that were progressive and flexible. But again, to illustrate the manager personality point, in my most recent corporate job I had been working one day a week at home and the arrangement was working splendidly for me and my team. Then, in one fell reorganizational swoop, our team reported to someone else with a much more micromanaging personality and whoosh, privilege gone.
If you work for a company and feel that telecommuting is a good fit for you, you need to sell the idea. Even if you think it'd be great for you, you need to show some benefit to the organization as well. Valerie Fitzgerald shares in "Working Women: Performing the Balancing Act - Telecommuting Part 2":
Well, the best way to get your boss to go along with letting you give telecommuting a try is to sell the idea to them. By that, I mean show your boss exactly how both you and they will benefit from you telecommuting a day or two every week.
You can also try suggesting to your boss that they allow you to give telecommuting a try on a trial basis.
Assuming you don't have a personality roadblock that is insurmountable (like a micromanaging dictator) or a job that doesn't lend itself to remote work, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot and sell it. I know for me it made a world of difference in my productivity, stress level, and motivation.
Today's gas prices are motivation alone. There is a green angle to telecommuting as well. In the April 22, 2008 online version of the San Francisco Chronicle the article "Group touts telecommuting's green benefits" gives us some staggering facts about the effect telecommuting could have on the environment:
The Environmental Protection Agency calculates that conserving 1.35 billion gallons of gas a year through increased telecommuting would prevent 26 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the environment.
If your company is concerned with its environmental impact, be sure to work this point into your sales pitch.
What if you get what you asked for and suddenly find yourself isolated? What if you work remotely 100% of the time and simply need more group synergy? That's where the questions "Is Coworking the Next Stage of Telecommuting?" comes in as Laura Spencer at Work from Home Momma asks:
Are the coworkers returning to the traditional office setting? Not on your life!
Instead, the coworkers are headed to central locations with officelike environments. Driven by isolation and the need to interact with others, some telecommuters are embracing coworking as way to overcome feelings of isolation and benefit from the camaraderie of an office-type environment.
There are as many options to working beyond the cube as there are people. Each person is different. I know I personally like being alone in my space but I relish the network I've created to tap into both remotely and in person. I couldn't survive without it. I truly enjoy getting out and about for networking and speaking, but I also love being alone working productively with no
