Fwd: Telecommute Nation: If Half of Us Could Work Remotely, Why Don't We?

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Larry Gross <lpgross@usc.edu>
Date: July 27, 2011 10:58:44 AM GMT+08:00
To: "' (LARRYLIST-L@usc.edu)'" <LARRYLIST-L@usc.edu>, "'Sept11 List'"@listproc.usc.edu
Cc: DnD <DnD@asc.usc.edu>
Subject: Telecommute Nation: If Half of Us Could Work Remotely, Why Don't We?
Reply-To: lpgross@usc.edu

 

Telecommute Nation: If Half of Us Could Work Remotely, Why Don't We?

By Derek Thompson

More than 34 million people -- equal to the population of Texas and Pennsylvania combined -- work from home occasionally. Twice as many could if they wanted. In the next few years, maybe they will.

You know, this would be a good day to work from home. The heat index is 114 degrees today in Washington, D.C. I have to walk half-an-hour to and from work to an office with no better Internet than my living room. Everything I need to write I can fit into a laptop bag, or on a couch.

So why am I writing this article from the desk at The Atlantic's office?

***

Telecommuting, or working from home, is one of those trends that most people talk about as much in the future tense as the present. Only one in twenty formally employed Americans works consistently from home, but the fact that so many of us could work fills demographers' eyes with visions of empty cubicles and broadband-blazing living rooms.

Fully 75% of the workforce will be mobile by 2012, the research firm IDC predicted in 2008. Not to be outdone, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation predicted in 2009 that the number of jobs filled by telecommuters would grow nearly four-fold before 2020. Other studies hold that half of all jobs are receptive to telework, including the vast majority of information technology positions.

That's a lot of stats. In a nutshell: Half of us could work remotely if we wanted. Far less do. Why?

Even if we're technically more productive at home, we feel more conspicuously productive at work.

The answer might have more to do with psychology than economics. Even if we're technically more productive at home, we feel more conspicuously productive at work. You might think a recession would lead to more telecommuting since it reduces overhead and increases work hours. Instead, telework among the formally employed has slowed in the last three years. Ted Schadler, a telecommuting expert who is vice president and chief analyst at Forrester Research, suggests the answer might be psychological.

"Some bosses think if they can't see you working, you're not working," he says. "If you're worried about losing your job, you're going to come into the office every chance you get."

For me, it comes down to people. The best social technology increases social connections. Facebook keeps us in touch with far-flung friends. Twitter broadcasts our internal monologues to the world. Email, texts, and phones keep us connected even when we're remote. But none of these things forces us to not be with real live people.

Telecommuting is a choice to be alone. It reduces connections between workers. It removes us from the world of work and makes it indistinguishable from the period before and after, which we could simple call life.

***

Still, telework has clear benefits. For the employer, it can save office space, utilities and overhead for employee services. From the worker, it creates more hours for life or desk work. It reduces travel costs. It has external benefits, like less traffic and quicker travel for commuters. We talk a lot about building more efficient public transportation, but the most efficient public transportation is the technology that lets you work from where you sleep.

Telecommuting is a choice to be alone.

Widespread adoption of telework requires three things, Schadler tells me. First, you need to work in the right industry. The growth of high-tech information technology jobs should lead to a growth in telecommuting, which would allow employers to hire the best workers in Florida or Oregon. Within industries, management culture matters. "In pharma sales, everybody works at home," he says. "In pharma marketing, everybody works in the office."

Second, to make remote working really work, you need performance metrics, because bosses can't manage what they can't measure. "If employers could measure output [posts per day, tasks per week, etc] they don't care where you work, or how long you work, as long as you produce the output," Schadler says.

The third factor is the most important and the hardest to quantify: it's personal motivation. I could have called Ted and written these paragraphs from my couch, or the coffee shop across the street from my apartment. Instead, I chose to walk 15 minutes through the tropical heat because ... well, I like my colleagues. I like my desk. I like that it is not the same table where I eat dinner and find funny YouTube videos with my roommates. If telework increases work-time and "life"-time, it does so at the expense of a work-life balance.

Tens of millions of Americans obviously disagree. If you're one of them, leave a note in the comments section. Why do you prefer to work without "coming in to work"?

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/telecommute-nation-if-half-of-us-could-work-remotely-why-dont-we/242382/

Copyright © 2011 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

************************************************

Larry Gross

Professor and Director

School of Communication

Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA 90089

213-740-3770

 

Editor, International Journal of Communication

President, International Communication Association, 2011-12

************************************************

 

Summer in Asia quick update

You know the Knight Bus from Harry Potter? Well, the buses here are like that. We just got back from Kawasan Falls last night - it was a 3.5 hour trip there, and another 3.5 hour trip back, and we took a public bus. This bus isn't huge, but it isn't small and agile either, by any sense of the words. I mean, it's a bus. But the road can be completely blocked, and this huge bus will still find a way to get where it needs to be.

Wait, I figured, I should probably blog about our entire Kawasan trip. Or well, my Whac-a-Mole Where-in-the-World-is-Cynthia-going-to-turn-up-next travels thus far.

I've been traveling almost non-stop since July 3rd, where I left NYC and flew to LA, spending about 40 hours there and fitting in a dinner and a brunch (at Doughboys -delicious stuff), and an almost-complete episode of the Bachelorette (we HAD to see what Bentley had to say when he met up with Ashley in HK!) before hopping on a plane to HK. After a rather painless 14 hours, I landed in HK very early in the morn, where I missed the first bus back home, resulting in my poor mom waiting aimlessly for about 40 minutes outside the MTR station where our apartment is.

Upon arriving at home, after lamenting my weight loss since she last saw me, Mama took me to dimsum, where we gorged ourselves with discounted HK breakfast goodies. The next 40 hours or so were laying around lazily and repacking for Cebu, and meeting up with Phong, who I’m apparently chasing around the world (we had met in LA, had dinner in NYC, and now lunch in HK).

Let’s get onto Cebu, because that’s probably more interesting than HK. I was under the impression that my flight was at 1:35pm, because the flight itself was only about 2.5 hours, and my ticket said departure at 0135H, arriving at 0410H. It wasn’t until about a week ago that I looked at the ticket again, and my return flight departs at 2250H. Hrm, I thought. Is this on MILITARY TIME? Yes, indeed, it is. I was going to be leaving at 1:35AM, not PM…and this is their idea of a red-eye flight. WTF.

I whiz thru customs, and Roselynne meets me at 4am right outside the airport entrance. I’ll save you all the sap and mush (unless you really like oatmeal with maple syrup, in which case, ask me privately), but let’s just say seeing her was much needed. Slept for a few hours before she had to get up to go to class. I slept for most of the day, and immediately the next day, we headed to Kawasan Falls for the weekend. The traveling just doesn't stop. Kawasan was amazing, but I'm very happy to be home and still for a while.

So, I'm chilling in the apartment now while she learns some sort of choreographed dance. I've only gotten two mosquito bites so far, but bracing myself for more...

Soreness and Waterfalls

R was laughing at me earlier because I was writhing around in pain from lactic acid buildup in my left leg from hiking and swimming this weekend. Laughing, because she knew exactly what it was, it wasn't life-threatening, and there was nothing either of us could to do make it better. Only time. I'm still limping all over the place.

This weekend was amazing. We (me, R, her cousins, and her friend Maricar and Maricar's friend Joper) hopped on a non-ACed overly-bumpy public bus and rode it to Kawasan Falls. I'm not even sure how to describe it. A resort? A national park? Something like that. Basically, there are 8 or so levels of waterfalls. We stayed in a rather spacious room at Level 1 (the lowest), but hiked up to Level 3 and went swimming in the pool there. Waterfalls everywhere. We also didn't bring swimsuits, so not only did I do some pretty adventurous hiking in flip flops, I also braved waterfalls and fish and iguanas (more on this later) in regular clothes. Long story short, though, lots of activity = lots of soreness = pain right now.

Maximum Punishment, and a new country

Have you noticed those signs that prevent you from doing something? Like smoking or littering? And how they always come with a "maximum punishment"? For example, if you smoke in the airplane lavatory, you'll be fined a few thousand dollars, and possibly spend a maximum of 2 years in prison. I often wondered about why the signs attempt to make would-be criminals feel better about committing the crime. It's almost like saying, "Oh, you can go ahead and commit this crime because the WORST that can happen to you is so and so." Shouldn't the signs be more scary in order to better deter people from doing that which the establishment does not want them to do? Like, "if you smoke in the lavatory, you will be fined a MINIMUM of $200 and do 30 hours of community service."

Anyway. In the Philippines now. Yes, that means I have a Philippines stamp in my passport! Booyah! Oh, I mean, I get to see my girl. Booyah as well. :)

It is hot here (but not overwhelmingly so) and there's an...odor...in the air. And I took one of the very few cold showers I ever have in my life. R says I'm spoiled. I don't disagree. Actually, it's not even a shower. You have to fill up this bucket, which R humorously calls "The Reservoir" and pour water over yourself in order to bath. And in true Asian form, the shower part itself isn't separate from the rest of the bathroom, so the entire bathroom gets wet in the process. Let's just say, for me, a person of much creature comforts, this is a humbling experience.

Everyone's a germaphobe here. There are sinks in the restaurants (not even in the bathroom area) to wash your hands before and after a meal. Otherwise, Cebu feels a lot like many of the Asian cities I have been to, possibly with the exception of Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is....a different experience altogether. But it feels a lot like Taiwan and parts of China. And most everyone speaks English, although R isn't letting me wander the city on my own. Yet. I'm convinced that she can be persuaded...there's a fort and other touristy-type sites I want to visit if I can...

Ok, more about this later. It's time for a nap.