Telecommuting policies that work

HR Magazine, July, 1993 by Barbara J. Farrah, Cheryl D. Dagen

Increasingly recognized as one of the most effective methods for boosting productivity and competitiveness, telecommuting simultaneously provides a means for complying with government regulations and reducing costs.

More and more companies are scrambling to put formal telecommuting programs in place--ones that set groundrules, establish guidelines, provide corporate-wide consistency and ensure equity.

Eighty percent of all the companies surveyed by The Conference Board reported that telecommuting occurs at their organizations on an informal basis, arranged between supervisors and employees without input or approval from either human resources or division management.

LINK Resources, a New York-based research firm, reports that the number of telecommuters and corporate homeworkers increased 14 percent in just one year, rising from 14.1 million in 1990 to more than 16 million in 1991. They estimate more than 19 million by 1995 and projections are that by the year 2000, approximately 25 percent of the entire corporate workforce will be telecommuting either full- or part-time.

If these numbers are accurate, it means that in less than a decade, one out of every four of the employees at your company will be working someplace other than the traditional office, and being supervised in some way other than the traditional management by observation.

Just three short years ago, the questions we were asking about telecommuting were: "What is it? Who's doing it? Why? And should we be doing it too?" Today, we're no longer asking what, who, why and should we. Today, we're asking, "How?"

Three factors are critical to successful telecommuting programs: effective HR leadership, expertise and buy-in from MIS/telecommunications, and support from top management. Of the three, HR leadership is without question the most critical.

Doug Willett, vice president of HR for the finance and information systems group at The Travelers Co. (home to one of the first and most successful programs nationwide), states: "Telecommuting is a flexible work style option. In addition, it's the HR folks who gain the MIS and top management support that's so vital to successful programs."

To make telecommuting a reality, human resources should coordinate the program, gain the necessary support, lead policy-making and implementation teams, develop and provide the training, and create and provide ongoing management and communications support for the program.

Most HR professionals with experience in setting up telecommuting programs say that creating the telecommuting policy is the most important of those functions.

Two parts of making policy

Setting policy involves two primary parts: the process of developing the policy and the actual content of that policy. The process you set up for developing your organization's telecommuting policy will have a profound impact on both the kind of program you establish and the ultimate success of that program.

According to Karen Gislason, former director of telecommuting at Bell Atlantic, which just last year started offering telecommuting as a work style option to 17,000 management-level employees, the process for making policy should begin with the formation of an interdepartmental team.

"Policies made in isolation tend to miss the primary questions and concerns held by those within the organization. Policies made by interdepartmental teams, consisting of representatives of all the stakeholders involved in telecommuting, tend to capture even the most minute of issues that could arise during the implementation of your program."

Making policies that will work on a day-to-day basis requires that all aspects of your program be thought out ahead of time.

"The more representative your team is, the greater the number of potential issues you will identify and address in your policy," says Gislason.

At AT&T, the telecommuting policy was created by the organization's Flexible Work Arrangements team. The team consisted of HR representatives from several business units in the company, as well as representatives of different stakeholder groups, such as labor relations and public relations.

Vicky Banach, chair of the team, emphasizes that the more people you get involved in the policy-making process, the better the policy you generate will be: "After the team developed the policy, we brought in subject matter experts to review each piece of the policy in their area of expertise. For example, we had safety engineers review the safety section, computer security experts examine the section on security, and so on. After that, we ran it by the legal department to ensure approval there. Once they approved it, we sent it to top level managers, vice presidents and directors of each business unit in order to flesh out any potential problems there. The key is to get as many people as possible included in the process. Not only does it assure their approval, it helps in building their support and buy-in for the program."

At The Travelers, a similar team was formed. HR representatives from different corporate departments were included, and were joined by non-HR personnel who were either informal telecommuters, or "advocates" of telecommuting.