Telecommuting Gains Favor
The persistently high levels of fuel costs are prompting some employers and employees to re-examine telecommuting or work from home options. According to the Society of Human Resources Management, of firms that are providing some form of assistance to employees in response to high gas prices, 24 percent have opted to offer telecommuting as a way to maintain worker productivity and to help reduce the big bite that fuel costs are taking from employee paychecks.
Other top methods identified by employers who are offering help to employees include encouraging use of mass transit by offering a transit subsidy as an employee benefit, organizing car pools, and providing discounted or preferred parking for individuals who carpool or who ride motorcycles. to work. Issuance of gas cards to employees by employers has also been reported.
While the telecommuting practice has been around for a few years, there seems to be a renewed interest, prompted in part by employees seeking to find ways to reduce fast rising commuting costs.
Employers may consider telecommuting for certain jobs on an ongoing or recurring basis. Telecommuting work also may be considered for other jobs on an occasional or emergency basis.
Some jobs may be more suitable for telecommuting or work from home. Generally, job tasks related to manufacturing of products, warehousing of product or material, retail sales, food service and health care require the employee's presence on the job site.
But certain administrative and support type jobs can effectively be performed from a home based office. Jobs involving use of the computer or telephone or administrative processing of certain kinds of records may lend themselves to home based telecommuting work. Data entry, data processing, bookkeeping, computer programming, billing, telemarketing, and field sales, are examples of work activities that have been successfully performed from a home based office.
Telecommuting
But, many employers report concerns about permitting employees to work from home. Such concern may relate to maintaining productivity, coordinating communication, assuring a safe work environment, and protecting confidentiality of records. A highly publicized example of this concern was the recent theft of a government employee's laptop computer containing confidential records of thousands of military veterans.
Human resources specialists recommend that employees considered for telecommuting work assignments be carefully evaluated to assure that the individual has a good productive work record and is able to work independently. Definition of work accountabilities, work schedules, activity reporting and communication with co-workers are issues that must be defined when setting up a telecommuting work assignment.
With a telecommuting work arrangement, the employee's home becomes a workplace, creating an accountability for the employer to assure that the work environment is safe. For this reason, the employer may be come involved in providing or approving use of computer, laptop, phone connections, desk or work area and defining guidelines to protect the security of confidential data.
Telecommuting represents another alternative for the employer to maintain productive results needed while responding to employee concerns relating to the dailly commuting grind between work and home.
About the author: William S. Hubbartt is a human resources and privacy consultant St. Charles, IL. www.Hubbartt.com. He is the author of 8 books on management and privacy issues.
