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In support of ditching
the commute
KIRA VERMOND
November 16, 2007 at 3:42 PM EST
For the 1.5 million Canadians who
work out of their homes or in satellite business centres at least a
few days a week, work is not so much about where they go, but what
they do. When instant messaging and Internet-ready cell phones make
it easy to literally slip the office into our pockets, these
employees are turning to telework (or, buzzword alert, distributed
work), as an alternative to maddening commutes, buck-a-litre gas
prices and too much time away from family. Some organizations tout
telework as one of the best ways to boost employee recruitment and
retention and save millions in the process. Here's how.
HAPPY EMPLOYEES
Four years ago Edward Moffat,
solution architect for Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc., packed away
his kids' photos on his desk and disconnected his office phone for
good. Mr. Moffat wasn't being downsized. Far from it. He had decided
to sign on to his employer's open work program, which would allow
him to work from home, or indeed anywhere else that would make his
job easier.
It just made sense. He was hardly in
the office anyway, off travelling for months at a time. Meanwhile,
his desk sat vacant while the company picked up the real estate
costs of that square footage.
Now Mr. Moffat works out of his
Brampton, Ont., home office nine days out of 10 and couldn't be
happier, especially when he thinks of the money he saves. No more
paying over $300 a month in highway toll charges to get to Sun's
Markham, Ont., corporate office. No more gas costs, wear-and-tear on
the car or spending $10 on lunch, things he estimates cost him $50
each day.
“Every day I stay at home, I'm saving
money,” he says.
And he gets to see his wife, who also
works at home as a writer, and his three kids more often. Together
the family has adjusted to having everyone at home under the same
roof Monday to Friday.
“It gets really, really geeky when I
get an instant message from my wife saying, ‘Come up for dinner,'
and there's only a floor separating us,” he says.
FORMAL OR
INFORMAL?
Even though numerous studies show
that younger employees want flexible benefits, including telework,
Sun Microsystems' formalized program is actually still quite rare in
Canada. According to a Health Canada study, only 1.3 per cent of
Canadian companies surveyed have formal job-sharing and telework
programs. In fact, after a push for telework in the mid-90s,
Statistics Canada reported in June, 2007, that the number of
employers offering formalized telework programs has stalled. Other
organizations that offer formal telework programs range from massive
companies such as Bell Canada and IBM Canada Ltd., to smaller ones
like the British Columbia Safety Authority.
Bob Fortier, president of the
Ottawa-based Canadian Telework Association, says despite these
statistics, telework is still growing, albeit informally, with
private arrangements being made between boss and employee.
“It's not going away,” he says. “It's
growing steadily, and in many cases in Canada, silently.”
Nora Spinks, consultant and president
of Worklife Harmony Enterprises in Toronto, agrees, and says that
after the standardized nine-to-five workday of the ‘80s and flexible
arrangements of the ‘90s – in which employees could choose from a
variety of options – we're now starting to see employment
customization. In other words, look closer at these informal
telework arrangements and you'll actually discover they're quite
formalized.
Far from simply allowing an employee
to work from home a couple of days a week, employer and employee
work together on hours, the type of tasks to be completed at home,
job safety in a home office and even career path expectations. It's
all mapped out ahead of time, she says.
Sun Microsystems extended its
formalized program into Canada a few years ago and today over 40 per
cent of the organization's global work force participates in some
capacity. Not all employees work offsite full time like Mr. Moffat.
Many are flex workers who might work off site one or two days a
week.
THE BIG MONEY
One of the main reasons companies
like Sun and Bell Canada have turned to telework comes down to sheer
cost savings. Real estate costs, usually the second-largest expense
after human capital, can be drastically reduced with a formal
telework program.
Susan Garms, senior manager of
telework solutions at Bell Canada, who works from her home office in
Richmond Hill, Ont., just north of Toronto, says when real estate
executives walked around their offices a couple of years ago, they
noticed that at any given time 20 per cent of the workspace was not
being used. Employees were travelling, at meetings or working from
home part time – and their desks stayed vacant.
Bell decided to introduce a
flex-space program to fill those seats on the off days and build
satellite workspace offices. Bell no longer expected employees to
come to them to work. Instead, work went to the employees. These
satellite buildings, scattered all around the country, usually
outside large urban centres, exist so employees don't have to
commute so far. They offer collaborative workspace, IT support and
familiar faces for those who find working from home too isolating.
How did Bell decide where to build
them? They looked at employees' postal codes to find out where they
lived.
Sun Microsystems estimated in 2004
that its flexible office program saved $71-million in real estate
costs alone. Never mind the softer benefits of reduced employee
turnover (Sun says its teleworking employees' turnover rate is half
the company average) and better morale.
IBM Canada Ltd. also offers satellite
offices to teleworkers. Jim Brodie, program manager for national
mobility, says they're perfect for teleworking employees in, say,
Barrie, Ont., who might want to meet face to face, but don't want to
trek into the corporate office in Markham.
“Nor is it appropriate to be meeting
in people's homes,” he says.
GOING GREEN,
FEELING GREEN
Proponents of telework also outline
how it cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. With fewer employees
on the road stuck in gridlock, and energy savings attributed to a
reduced number of employees firing up their computers or flicking on
their desk lamps, Bell Canada's internal studies revealed it saved
11,000 tons of greenhouse gases as a result of its telework program
in 2006.
There's also the issue of continuity
planning. In other words, how do companies cover their butts when
the next pandemic or other natural disaster hits? Organizations with
a pre-existing telework program will be far ahead of those that
don't, says George Horhota, executive vice-president of Suiteworks
Inc. in Barrie, a telework consulting company that builds satellite
work centres.
“The more distributed the work force
is, the more resilient it is to a disaster in a metropolitan
centre,” he says.
SAVING CASH,
SAVING THE PLANET
Saving cash, saving the planet and
saving a headache during times of chaos all sound good, but what
happens when telework doesn't work? And how can a manager be sure an
employee is a good fit for working solo in the first place?
Although many employees might want to
work from home, the truth is, not all of them can hack it. Mr.
Moffat says that before he could say goodbye to the corporate
office, he had to take a lengthy online test. He answered questions
such as: How closely do you work with colleagues on a regular basis?
Do you have broadband access from
home?
How comfortable are you not working
with colleagues on a face-to-face basis?
Employees receive a score to
determine whether they would make better flex workers, only working
from home a couple of days a week, or, like Mr. Moffat, someone who
works primarily from home.
Ms. Garms recommends the best at-home
or in-satellite workers are those who are well organized, have good
communication skills and, despite wanting to be holed up at home,
extroverts.
“You want someone who, when they're
feeling isolated and lonely to reach out and say, ‘let's make a
lunch date,'“ she says.
Kelly Lynn Kassa, director of
corporate communications for Toronto-based Varicent Software Inc.,
who has been teleworking from her home office in Boston since
January, tries to keep loneliness at bay. She tries to get to
Toronto when she can and sometimes stays with family while she
works. The technology, from instant messaging to collaborative
software and robust intranets – which are now cheaper and easier to
use than ever – makes it possible.
“This now feels like I'm more part of
a team than 10 years ago,” says Ms. Kassa who teleworked briefly a
decade ago. “The technology helps that.”
Employees have to be honest about
their situation at home too, Ms. Spinks says.
“If your dog barks every time the
phone rings, how are you going to conduct any kind of business?” she
says.
OTHER TIPS
If you're thinking you want to get
your company on board with a telework program come Monday, take a
step back and think spring, Ms. Garms says. When the fall weather
gets dark and gloomy, it's not the time to start sending people home
to work in isolation.
And if your boss gives you the thumbs
up to work from home or in a satellite work centre a couple days a
week? Make sure you're in the office putting in face-time on Fridays
when other colleagues and customers are usually frantically trying
to wrap things up before the weekend.
If there's a good day to be AWOL,
it's Monday, Ms. Spinks says.
“After spending the morning playing
catch up, it's going to take them until noon to find out you're not
there anyway, right?” she says. |
