Working from home or telecommuting is defined as working either at home or from a remote location in undertaking all or part of your assignments as an employee. This, however, does not include working at home because of some certain reasons such as having a sick child, a newly-born child, elderly parents or even bad weather. Telecommuting arrangements require some changes in the rules and procedures of the workplace.
In the initial phase it poses some challenges such as start-up operating costs, some legal issues, need for improved data security and administrative issues such as supervision and workman performance. Of course, not all employees can telecommute. Telecommuting favours persons like programmers, financial and systems analysts, researchers, writers, etc. Again not all persons are suited for telecommuting as it needs maturity, self control, people who require minimal supervision among other traits.
1Proposal for Justification to Telecommute
An employee who is seeking to present a proposal for telecommuting needs to put into consideration his/her job description and all the tasks he/she is responsible for and how they will be affected by telecommuting. Another important pointer concerns the people or workmates that one interacts with everyday to make certain decisions. Will telecommuting sever the links between them and you and if so what are the measures you intend to use to bridge that gap?
The presentation should seek to indicate how it is that the company will benefit with you working at home. In this, one should state the benefits of telecommuting to the employer. You should avoid mentioning how telecommuting will benefit yourself, i.e., spending more time with your family and other personal obligations. Instead, you should mention how telecommuting will increase your productivity through saving time spent in traffic, for example.
You should indicate your accomplishments which support the fact that you have good potential characteristics of a telecommuter through the use performance evaluations. You can suggest a trial period to show that you are capable of telecommuting. You can also suggest a means of evaluation to show whether telecommuting indeed helps you improve your productivity. For starters, you can propose to telecommute for say two days weekly, being careful to indicate Monday as an office day as a means to appease the boss.
2Benefits of Telecommuting for the Employer
The employer can make savings in premises costs as there is reduced office occupancy. This translates to lessened office overheads in terms of stationeries, tea and pastries etc. The expenses for labor costs in staff relocation, office cleaning and office garbage collection can also be substantially reduced.
The employee is motivated by the company’s trust and confidence in him/her having been allowed to telecommute. This system helps maintain skill security, e.g., a good employee who could have left due to family issues is retained and also workers on leave can continue while being kept up to date with the office.
Up to 40% productivity improvement has been recorded with telecommuting. This is attributed to the saving of time which is spent in traveling and other office interruptions. Operations can still continue amid disruptions such as bad weather, transport strikes, power outages at the office. When there is a lot of work to be done, telecommuting workers can work extra hours since they are not bothered with transport concerns.
3Benefits of Telecommuting for the Employee
- Less travel time and costs - this is one of the main reasons for telecommuting. Research has shown most telecommuters use this time to get more work done contrary to popular belief that this causes laziness.
- Reduced family life disruptions - telecommuting allows one’s family to settle down since there is no need to relocate to different areas to take up job positions there.
- Work and family time balance - one can effectively balance family time and work since there is reduced work based traveling so one can easily participate in family activities.
- Flexibility in working hours - telecommuters can plan their work times according to when they work best. This is advantageous considering that office hours are fixed to the same times every day. However, this favors only certain jobs since some require one to be available at specific hours, e.g., customer care jobs.
4Characteristics of an Effective Home Worker
- Independent - telecommuters are people who do not need supervision to work. These are also people who make decisions on their own and go through with them. This characteristic is important since working at home can be very distracting to many people.
- Reliable - to convince your boss that you can work at home, you need to have a good track record of being reliable at the workplace. A reliable person is known by how he/she handles responsibilities at the workplace.
- Resourceful or imaginative - these are people who can come up with solutions to solve problems quickly. A person who works from home should be resourceful in that he/she will more certainly know what to do if say the computer is malfunctioning. Such a person will not be stalled by small problems.
- Self disciplined - a telecommuter should not be easily swayed by the freedoms that come with working at home neither should he/she let the work-based stresses spill over to family members.
- Other good characteristics include being a good communicator, adaptable and diligent. Others may be found at www.cashthechecks.com and www.allbusiness.com.
