We have such ready technology that would allow pretty much most job positions to work from home, including consultants, content developers, programers, etc.

how should a work from home program be implemented to ensure management can track performance of their employees and make sure the work is getting completed. any suggestions? (software, report, teleconferences, etc. )

If you work from home, how do you report to your managers, is there a more effective way in your mind?

I work for a quasi-state agency that allows me to work from home at least one day a week. Other staff here also Telecommute. I am the Training Coordinator, so my original request for working at home came because I was trying to do voiceovers for training and could not get people to keep quiet in our cubical environment. My first training vo's had faint printers going and chatter, so my request was approved.

Some of the things we do is to have an annual Telecommuting Agreement. It specifies what equipment the employee will provide at home (ergonomic work space, adequate lighting, home telephone, etc.), what the company will provide, the hours to be worked at home, how they are available, how they report what they are working on, where they will be located and more. This document is signed by the whole chain of command, up to the top of the agency, so everyone is on board. We are supposed to send our manager an e-mail report of what we work on at home. That is generally effective, but is still a pain.

Another thing that we do is to work through a VPN that can be tracked. If the management really wanted to check up, they could look at those logs. We also are issued a computer to use at home. We have a lot of sensitive data, so our IT Director wanted to have control over the machines hitting the VPN. They may also have some snooping software on there that I don't even know about.

You might also want to take a look at BestBuy's recent corporate change. Here is a Business Week article
about the radical changes they are making.

Regards,
Andrea

Your company definately took the next step. We have a combination of teleconferencing, weekly status reports (since we all predominantly work from home), and several in-person meetings monthly. We work from personal computers so there is no central server being monitored.

I think a lot of employers are hesitant to let employees have so much independence. It seems that if they are able to track your work logs and your entire computer system it would make them more open to having more people telecommute.

The first thing that MUST happen is that people, especially managers, need to let go of the concept that productivity has anything to do with the number of hours one is chained to a desk/computer. You make sure work is completed by looking at the completed work (including its quality, whether or not it was done on time, etc.).

If people cannot accept the basic principle that "hours at a desk" is not what productivity means, then it will not work.

There's an article in Business Week about Best Buy corporate headquarters. The employees have flex time/flex place and are measured by their performance, not by how many hours they spend in the office. (oops - just noticed that someone else mentioned this article... well - good to know others are spreading the word)

Hi,

I completely agree. The key elements that help you work from home seamlessly are: phone with teleconferencing facility, internet connection, VPN-enabling, some sharing tool, such as Netmeeting, and file and space sharing utlity, such as Webex. There you have your home office ready.

I am based out of India. Though technology is still a challenge to a certain extent here, I run a firm where many of my employees work from home. Initially, it was difficult to change the mindset that working from home DOES NOT affect productivity and quality of work adversely, now things have fallen in place. I have happier employees who manage work and home in a balanced way and have always met schedules and quality parameters.

Hope this trend increases and we have happier workforce and organizations.

Sabari Roy
Development Head
Thinkbrik