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+1 301 431-0500
jscholtz@aol.com
This panel will discuss teleworking experiences. Our panel consists of several types of teleworkers, a manager of a teleworker and a researcher who studied teleworking. The panel will address questions concerning the value of telework, the factors that affect success of telework, and the way in which telework changed their job.
Telework, telecommuting, remote work
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
In following with CHI97's theme of looking toward the future, we look into the future of work. We see telework as one of the major drivers of the evolution of work. Telework has the potential to shift the nature of work, collaboration, relationships, management, work practices and the relationship between work and leisure, home and office.
Teleworkers come in many varieties. A long-distance, permanent teleworker spends the majority of his/her time working remotely from co-workers. The work location for the teleworker can be fixed or the teleworker could travel between numerous designated locations in a nomadic fashion or the teleworker could be a rover, traveling to numerous locations, both new and previously visited. A short-distance, permanent teleworker works driving distance from co-workers but does this on a permanent basis. Again, the location for this type of worker could be fixed, nomadic, or roving. A temporary teleworker works from both short and long distances, and from fixed locations, nomadic locations or roving locations.
Teleworking offers many advantages to workers and companies including closer contact with customers, savings on office space, elimination of commuting time and freedom from geographical constrainsts on personnel location. On the downside are concerns about decreased interaction with co-workers and managers, increased difficulties in coordination, and lack of support services.
This panel will concentrate on the following three issues:
Since teleworking is becoming more and more commonplace, and even essential, these days, the User Experience Research Group, where I work in Apple Labs, is designing systems to support informal collaboration between remote colleagues over low and high bandwidth networks. I conducted a small interview and questionnaire study (home visits were also undertaken) to try to identify why people telework, what they do and what problems they experience at Apple.
Unsurprisingly, most people in the study teleworked to increase productivity whilst gaining flexibility through not having to travel, or be in a particular place in order to work. However, key findings that I did not expect were the marked trade-offs between solitude versus awareness and flexibility versus coordination. Working remotely from colleagues gives people time to think and work, uninterrupted, and the ability to work when and where they wish to. On the other hand, taking these benefits too far turns them into handicaps, through a loss of awareness of colleagues and real difficulties coordinating people and work.
I'm a research scientist at Apple Research Laboratories. I've teleworked at Cupertino, California from my home in Minneapolis for about four years, and have weathered a change in managers and a couple of re-organizations. In addition to research activities, I'm also editor-in-chief of an in-house, monthly research publication. I routinely collaborate with 10 - 16 people.
Adaptations at many levels -- personal, social, organizational -- were
necessary to make telework successful; one particularly useful approach
was to make a gradual transistion to remote telecommuting over the first
six months, enabling adapation to begin smoothly. For me, telework has
lead to many changes in both my work and home life, some beneficial, some
not. One especially noticeable (and personally beneficial) change has been
the superimposition of a rhythm on my work life generated by my periodic
trips to California: much "social work" gets done during those
visits, and that in turn leads to informal agreements that structure the
more focused and personal (though by no-means uninterrupted) work periods
while in Minnesota.
I teleworked for eleven months from a home office in California to the Ameritech Center in Illinois. My duties included designing user interfaces for new products, evaluating existing products, and writing requirements for developers who were building or improving the products. I knew that some projects were going to require a human factors specialist on site. To provide for this, I shared job duties with a contractor at Ameritech.
At the outset, we identified several possible benefits: maintaining consistent support for projects without the cost and disruption of training a replacement; maintaining my career at Ameritech; identifying ideas for new products and services of interest to teleworkers; and taking advantage of Bay Area resources such as professional associations, courses, and conferences. These benefits were realized, thanks to several key factors: extensive team experience maintaining relationships with remote co-workers, managerial support for teleworking and a realistic view of what duties were appropriate for telework. As a teleworker, the most striking job change overall was in the types of relationships that were built with co-workers. Social chatting occurred much more often during "business" calls with project teammates. The result was decreased contact with peers in the Human Factors group, but increased rapport with employees in other parts of the company.
I'm the manager of the Human Factors Group and have been supervising Jenny DeGroot who telecommuted for nearly a year. In addition to the telecommuting challenge, Jenny has been working half time.
What worked was Jenny's ability to continue to work effectively with the teams she supports, and this worked in part because she had strong links with the team before telecommuting, periodically refreshed the face to face bonds, and because much of the work of the relatively distributed teams is done via electronic communication anyway. As a supervisor, I had to make an extra effort to review work artifacts to make up for the lack of "casual" status reports and ensure that appropriate progress was being made on planned objectives for the year. It was difficult to maintain a kind of "emotional bond" between supervisor and employee and there was a feeling that the department's bonds to reach out and support Jenny became weaker over time. As a manger, it felt like Jenny wasn't around to pick up a share of the load of the little spontaneous things that come up, although Jenny took extra efforts to volunteer and actively participate in department projects. Overall, the benefits clearly outweighed the costs. For optimal performance, however, telecommuting was not yet an ideal environment.
Leslie Schirra, Atlanta Gas Light
Heavy traffic predictions prompted Atlanta Gas Light Company's downtown headquarters to practice telecommuting during the 1996 Olympics. Because we work for a natural gas utility company that could not alter its work schedule for the Olympics, it was imperative that all staff develop an extensive communications system to keep in touch. Each staff member reported to a remote location one day a week in order to access corporate electronic mail facilities.
Telecommuting proved to have its good and bad sides. On the good side, fewer interruptions meant that projects I had been trying to complete at the office were easily finished. When writing, I found the lack of diversions refreshing. The work schedule flexibility offered by telecommuting also was great. The bad side of telecommuting was a sense of isolation. As a public relations professional, I am used to interacting with people. Although we talked often by phone and went into the "remote office" one day a week, I missed the day-to-day hubbub of office life. In future practice, I would like the option of telecommuting periodically, particularly when working on a project that demands high concentration.
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