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Anne Almond of the U.S. Department Anne Almond of North Stafford settles in for a van-pool ride to her job in Washington. She splits her time between her D.C. office and a telecommuting center. |
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.
In September, Wolf wrote a letter to President Bush saying Hurricane Katrina and terrorist attacks illustrate how fragile government functions can be, and that having a federal telework system in place would reduce that vulnerability.
Since then, the looming specter of a possible avian flu pandemic has added another argument for spreading the government work force out. Wolf's commuter-rich district includes Loudoun County and parts of Fairfax, Prince William and Fauquier counties.
He praised the General Services Administration for picking up the tab at 14 regional telework centers for federal employees including ones in Stafford, Spotsylvania and in Prince William counties.
For the last 10 years, Anne A. Almond of Stafford has worked two days a week at the Fredericksburg Regional Telecommuting Center at Massaponax.
The 41-year-old Almond is a marketing specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service. Her office in downtown D.C. is a four-hour round trip on bad days.
On commuting days, she has to get up at 4 a.m.
Almond, who lives in North Stafford, said cutting her travel time by five to eight hours a week "allows me to spend more time with my daughter."
She picks up her 10-year-old daughter, Allison, early from after-school day care on telecommuting days.
Almond said the Massaponax center "provides all the necessary things that I need to be productive--just as if I were sitting at my desk in Washington."
Her computer links directly into USDA's network. There are printers, fax machines and a copier.
Stafford's Howell, who is now speaker of the House of Delegates, said he's never stopped believing in the potential of telecommuting. But, he said, the same old stumbling block remains: managers who are "real suspicious [that] if these people aren't in the office, they aren't gonna be working, they're gonna be goofing off."
That mind-set remains "a real problem," Howell acknowledged. Today, the difference is that other problems have become bigger.
Politicians have little choice but to get behind the idea Howell was pushing almost a generation ago, said Mark Rozell, director of the Master of Public Policy program at George Mason University in Fairfax.
"Promoting telecommuting is long overdue in this country," Rozell said. "Many private businesses have made changes in work routines to allow for telecommuting, in large part because they see some real benefits. Flexible schedules and less time commuting tend to make for happier and more productive workers. But government bureaucracy always seems the most resistant to change."
Adapting to change is becoming critical for both managers and workers, said Suzanne C. de Janasz, an associate professor of management at the University of Mary Washington's James Monroe Center for Graduate and Professional Studies in Stafford. She teaches commanding officers, federal managers and government contractors.
"If you're the type of manager who has a need to stand over an employee's shoulder, you're not going to do well in a virtual environment," she said. "If you're an empowering, trusting manager, you're more comfortable with the idea of managing virtually because, in a sense, you already have been."
Gary Sarkozi, director of technology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, said the know-how necessary for effective telecommuting has existed for years. And watching that technology go to waste with the country at the mercy of OPEC bothers him.
"As far as the gas crisis goes, if we really made the effort [to telecommute], we could drive the price of gas down today," said Sarkozi, an expert on technology and global environment. "Can you imagine what would happen to the price of gas if, for one week, half the people worked at home?
"We can't do this right away--we have to do it in little steps," he said. "All it takes is commitment."
Sarkozi suggested that telecommuting become part of a national energy plan and a federal transportation package "instead of all that pork going into a transportation bill."
He said the means exist for bosses worried about workers sitting home watching "Oprah" to trust and verify. If work and home PCs are kept separate, managers can monitor their workers' progress electronically without invading the employees' personal privacy, Sarkozi said.
Mary Washington management teacher de Janasz lives in Charlottesville and works 70 miles away at UMW's Stafford campus, so she spends the majority of her time working at home, coming to school only when she has classes to teach.
She said she does most of her work on her laptop in bed.
"It takes a certain kind of person," she said, to be effective working in a home environment. Even managers who work well in a virtual environment need some time with a new employee in the office to establish trust.
She also said that as attractive as working at home can be, there are reasons for employees to be concerned when it comes to pay raises and promotions.
"There's face time," De Janasz said. "Will you be remembered if you're not physically seen?" Broadband allows telecommuters to communicate face-to-face with supervisors via webcam. But is that enough?
"More and more work in organizations is being done by teams," de Janasz said. "You don't get that social interaction you do face to face."
If such problems can be overcome, the Washington area could become the perfect test case to show the rest of the nation what telecommuting can achieve, GMU public policy expert Rozell said.
"There are many real benefits to allowing for more telecommuting options, especially in this region of road networks clogged by government workers all going to and from the office at similar times of the day," Rozell said.
"Here we have a sensible idea that doesn't seem to have any downside. Who can argue with less commuting, less gas consumption, fewer aggravated and stressed workers, and increased productivity?"
But Howell, who is now speaker of the House of Delegates, said that even though the technology to make telecommuting viable is well established, American office culture is difficult to change.
"I'm not sure if you can expect, in the next 10 to 20 years, the [commuting] work force to decline 40 percent," he said. "It's gonna take awhile, even though I do think it has real possibilities."
When Howell speaks to young audiences, he likes to tell them that some day they'll look back and have a hard time believing their parents had to climb into vans at 5:30 a.m. to commute to jobs in Washington.
But 10-year-old Allison Almond is sure to remember what her mother did for her.
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