|
|
||
Have rising gas prices, terrorism and the threat of avian flu made telecommuting an idea whose time has finally come? Date published: 10/16/2005
By MICHAEL ZITZ In 1990, Virginia Del. Bill Howell proudly talked up his telecommuting task force study to then-House Speaker A.L. Philpott. The crusty 71-year-old Philpott leaned back in his chair, puffed on his pipe and said dismissively, "This is for people to sit home and drink all day instead of going to the office?" Howell tried to tell Philpott 15 years ago that the virtual workplace is "a big energy-saver, it takes people off the road, eases congestion, helps reduce the need for highway construction--and our study showed workers were more productive." Even though other studies over the years have seen great potential, talk of telecommuting has generally continued to draw Philpott-type reactions from bosses. But now the notion seems to be an idea whose time has come politically. As gas prices soar and America's dependency on foreign oil becomes increasingly perilous, President Bush has called for federal agencies to meet a goal of 25 percent of each office's workers telecommuting, often referred to as teleworking. That may sound easy enough, with many homes already hooked up for broadband Internet access. Still, it's tough for even the president to budge the glacial federal bureaucracy. "Managers do not know how to manage people from a distance," said Erran Carmel, an associate professor of management of global information technology at American University in Washington. "Good organizations give them training about how to manage from a distance, but it is still difficult." James Thurber, a political scientist at American, agreed that many "midlevel managers don't know how to measure productivity of their employees and are therefore very reluctant to give up having their workers within sight in the office." "A lot of [federal] workers want to do it, but the managers are standing in the way of the president's order," Thurber said. One way to fix that, he said, "is for Congress to say, 'If you don't do this, you won't get all of your money.'" U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican who represents Northern Virginia's 10th District, has done just that, threatening five federal agencies with budget cuts if they don't do better in terms of percentages of workers telecommuting.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
|||||||||||||
