I’ve been telecommuting frequently for about a year and a half now. Some weeks I’ll do only one or two days at home, and the rest at the office. Other times, I’ll spend very few days in the office. There’s no fixed schedule and it depends on things like meetings and events. For the most part, it’s an arrangement that has worked extremely well.

My commute is roughly 50 kilometres – a little more than 30 miles – which is, looking at averages, not out-of-line with a lot of other people who do drive in to work every day. If I got into the habit of slogging through it every day I’d probably adjust and get used to it. It would just become part of my life. Like so many others, I’d spend two hours of my life on the highway every day.

But I made a promise to myself that I would never do that. If I was in another field – something that required the use of specialized equipment or demanded person-to-person interaction every day – maybe I would do it. But my job generally involves little more than me in front of a computer answering email, writing documents and creating concepts.

I challenge anyone to logically explain why that kind of work – the kind of work that millions upon millions of people do every day – would ever require people to drive to some arbitrary building every day.

So I won’t do it.¹

Telecommuting, like any other mode of working, presents its own unique set of challenges. Over the past 18 months I’ve developed a pretty good groove, but there were definitely obstacles to overcome. As a service to all those who telecommute, manager telecommuters or who are considering giving it a try, here’s a quick list of five things I’ve observed while working at home.

1. People will think you’re ‘cheating’

It doesn’t matter how productive you feel you’re being at home, there will inevitably be people in your workplace who think you’re somehow ‘cheating’ by working-at-home. Often they’ll make subtly snide comments, insinuating that you’re not working, that you’re sleeping in, watching TV or getting household chores done. The under-the-skin message seems to be that if you were REALLY committed to work, you’d be AT work.

Combatting this is hard. When I started, I used to be so aware of this kind of attitude that I’d specifically send emails to people before the start of work hours (so people knew I was awake) and would literally dive to make sure I answered my phone on the first ring. The goal was to let no one think I was doing anything BUT working.

2. You’ll work longer hours than you would otherwise

In an office, the people around you kind of set the tone for your day. If they’re working, you’re working. If they’re by the water cooler chatting, then maybe you’ll join them. When lunch comes, you eat because everyone else is eating. When people start to pack up for the day, so do you. It’s very much a herd mentality, and it’s effective in setting an underlying schedule to your work day.

At home, there’s nobody but you. Instead of having a quick chat with your co-workers first thing, you’re diving right into email and projects. And why would you stop for an hour at lunch? Might as well keep going as you’re eating your sandwich. There’s nothing to break up the day.

My biggest bad habit lately is pushing certain items into the evening. I’ve started setting aside 11 p.m. to midnight as a ‘work hour’ and using it to do things. Often I like this strategy – no one’s emailing or calling during that hour, so I can focus and complete work faster than I would otherwise. The downside is when I end up accidentally working to 1 a.m. and then need to get up the next morning.

3. People will get jealous

This one is hard, especially if your workplace doesn’t have any kind of ‘telecommuting policy’² – inevitably co-workers will start to quietly resent that they’re in the office every day and you’re not. They’ll start wondering why they can’t work at home too.

Of course, there are lots of reasons why someone wouldn’t be able to work at home. Maybe they’re a receptionist. Maybe they’re a teachers. Maybe they’re a firefighter. These are not long-distance jobs. Maybe their manager hasn’t developed enough trust with that employee yet. Maybe the manager just flat out DOESN’T trust that employee because they’re irresponsible. Maybe the manager is an old-school jerk who defines ‘management’ as walking around catching glimpses of employee computer screens. Maybe the employee just hasn’t asked yet.

Whatever the case, it’s not your fault. Don’t dwell on this one.

4. It helps to be a computer nerd.

If you’re considering telecommuting, it’s important that you don’t become the telecommuter that everyone hates. The one that’s always calling in every 20 minutes asking if someone can email them a file they need to work on. Or that you’ve forgotten your VPN password again. Or that your laptop is just sooo slow. Or that your Bonzi Buddy isn’t dancing as well as he used to.

Cardinal rule of telecommuting: your doing it cannot create MORE work for people in the office. You need to make it effortless for all your co-workers, which means knowing how to troubleshoot your own networking problems, shelling out for a faster home internet connection if you need to and making damn sure you have access to the files you need to get your work done. Being a tech nerd is absolutely an asset.

5. You’ll feel left out sometimes

Even though I’m a bit of an abolitionist when it comes to the traditional office, I can’t deny that offices – when they’re staffed with good people who like each other (and isn’t that always the dream?) – can lead to great camaraderie. Even friendship. And no matter what kind of allowances you try to make for yourself as a telecommuter, the very act of removing yourself from the office on some days is alienating. Suddenly you’re not there for the hilarious thing that happened at lunch yesterday. Or for so-and-so’s birthday cake. You miss out on the moments, both large and small. And that kind of sucks.

So, is telecommuting worth it?

Is it worth it? Again, that depends on the kind of person you are, and the kind of office you work at. For me, it was worth it – without this arrangement I’m not sure I’d have stuck with the job as long as I have. And I’ve definitely learned how to mitigate the negatives and focus on the positive: the stuff that makes the work I do fun.

The take-away? Don’t be knee-jerk about telecommuting. Just because one person can’t do it doesn’t mean everyone can’t. As we move forward into this crazy new generation of mine, recession-addled as we are at the moment, the managers who success will be the ones who stop obsessing about the modes of work and instead direct their energies toward quality outcomes delivered on time.

Photo by langui. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. It was a lot easier to make sweeping, declarative statements like this when the job market was better and unemployment wasn’t at 1-in-10 people, but screw it – we must not sacrifice career principles just because the stock market is slumping hard. [↩]
2. And I’m not sure your workplace should have a telecommuting policy. Every person is unique and has a different work style – stop pretending otherwise. [↩]

One of the things I missed during my month of sickness was the publication of a series of five articles from IT World Canada about a new report called Freedom to Compute: The Empowerment of Generation Y. The articles’ author, Shane Schick, interviewed me via phone for portions of the articles, and I think he did a bang-up job of putting everything together.¹ They’re well-worth reading:

• Why Gen Y workers bypass IT usage policies
• How Gen Y workers turn CIOs into IT watchdogs
• Gen Y workers: We know all about this IT stuff
• CIOs: Learn the wireless workaholic ways of Gen Y
• One in five choose relaxed IT policies over money

Shane also followed up with a really good blog post about the series. He asks:

Much in the way we try to encourage bookworms to take up sports, and get the jocks singing and dancing in high school musicals, wouldn’t employers prefer a Gen Y that was a little more well-rounded in their approach to work and IT? There could be young employees who tap into social networking services, but who also keep a log of what they’re doing for potential audit purposes. There are those who use mobile computing devices, but who also demonstrate leadership in backing up data and ensuring antivirus software is updated. Imagine a Gen Yer who not only thinks they’re computer-proficient but can identify areas about technology they still need to develop.

To which I responded:

I really like your last point, and I think it’s an important one. Am I, as a 25-year-old guy in the business world, fully developed? As much as it’s tempting to throw to the ego and say ‘Hell yeah; I’m the best at everything there is!’ I’ve been smacked down enough times in my three years on the job that I know that I still have a lot of things left to learn and a lot of skills to acquire.

It’s a bit of a cop-out answer: but the solution here really is a matter of balance. Gen Y will try to convince managers to throw out all their policies and just go with the groove. The other side will just tell Gen Y to shut-up and be thankful they even HAVE a job. There’s a ton of value in the middle: in questioning long-standing probably nonsensical policies, in exploring new technologies and ways of working (’going with the groove’), and, then, synthesizing all of that into something that can work, and make money, and be tracked, and shared vertically.

I’m biased, sure. And I have a strong voice. But I think strong, sensible voices in organizations are always valuable, even when they’re wrong. Or thought wrong.

Lots of interesting stuff here — and much of it very positive. There wasn’t even any real, solid examples of someone saying “Let’s ban all fun websites from work!!! For productivity!!” Granted, I think that might be because IT companies are a few steps ahead of other sectors when it comes to understanding these kinds of things, but it’s good to know that the leaders in the race are running in the right direction.

1. He even spelled my last name in a couple of totally awesome ways — it has too many l’s and t’s as it is. [↩]

I’ve been sick for a month. Ever since I vomited on New Year’s Eve. This wasn’t your normal ring-in-the-new-year ten-shots-of-tequila vomiting, though: this was hardcore “I am mostly sober – why is this happening to me?”-type vomiting. It was the first major sign that something wasn’t right.

So I tried to ignore the fact that my body was rebelling against me for a number of days afterwards, but that ended up being futile. I went to the doctor and the doctor said ‘pneumonia’. And that has been my story for January 2009.

Pneumonia.

I’ve had worse things happen to me, medically-speaking. But this was definitely the most frustrating. Just when I’d start to feel better, the symptoms would come rushing back. It’s an illness that will actually trick you by playing dead, only to wait until your back is turned and then it strikes. Again and again and again.

Through the fevers and the coughing and the general aches all over, I missed a number of days of work this month. And that got me thinking: if my workplace weren’t so wonderful that it allowed me the flexibility to take the time I need to get better, what the hell would I do? From the people I’ve talked to, it seems that the majority of HR policies out there these days dictate some sort of fixed number of sick days per year. For most people, it’s a number between five and ten. These are, apparently, separate from vacation days. (And sometimes there are also ‘personal’ days – which makes me wonder what happens if you get sick while on vacation and THEN something personal comes up.)

There are a lot of HR policies in effect in a lot of businesses today that I find ridiculous, but this whole limiting sick days thing is near the top of the crazily-insane list. It’s akin to trying to set a limit on the number of snow days employees are allowed per year¹ or how many times the office server is allowed to crash in any given week. You can’t count things that are beyond anyone’s control.

The bottom line is this: when you’re sick you’re sick. There is nothing an HR policy can do about that.

Limiting employee sick days sends two very dangerous messages. The first is actually a message employees subtly hear all the time from HR policies. It’s the we don’t actually trust you kind of message. It comes from a place where employees will always – always – lie to their superiors for their own benefit. And that if you give your employees some sort of “carte blanche” to take as many sick days as they want, they’re bound to just take HUNDREDS of them.

The ironic part about this is, of course, that employees are way more likely to lie to their superiors if they’re put in an environment where everyone expects them to lie. It’s self-fulfilling.

The second message this sort of policy sends is more dangerous. It’s one that calls on employees to be TOUGH. Seriously, it says, so you got a little cold? A little sore throat? Your temperature a widdle bit above a hundred? Boo Hoo! MAN UP. We got work to do!

People often think this at an almost visceral, subconscious level. I think it dates back to hostile gym classes in elementary school when the person who couldn’t do a chin-up was destined to failure in life and love.

The problem here — and I know the logical part of everyone’s brain KNOWS this — is that sicknesses tend to be CONTAGIOUS. And so the “TOUGH IT OUT” attitude tends to lead to whole offices of people passing sicknesses around-and-around like some sort of demon carousel for months on end until finally the summer hits and people start going on vacation.

So what’s the upside of limited sick-day policies? That it keeps people from faking sick to go hang out with their buds all day? I doubt it. In fact, it probably encourages exactly that behaviour as people get close to the end of the calendar year and realize they’ve got some sick days they need to burn.

I will add my standard disclaimer that, yes, there are positions that are entirely about physical presence and in those positions, someone being out sick for more than a couple of days at a time can be devastating to overall productivity and output. I don’t really think an HR policy is going to help in these situations, either, though — if you’ve got an essential-presence staff member who’s got a serious illness, you’ve got to deal with that REGARDLESS of your policy.

But, still, I understand some people like these policies and find them useful. I respect that. Because, after all, studies have shown that 40% of sick days are taken on Mondays & Fridays, which tends to point to not everyone being honest about being sick…

Right?

Photo by thegirlsmoma. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. This probably only makes sense if you in live in Canada or the Northern US. Snow days are days when there is so much snow that it becomes dangerous to drive in to work. [↩]

A simple thought for this week: if you’re a young worker coming into an organization with policies — whether they involve start time, sick days, internet use, music playing, dress code, whatever — that you don’t agree with, don’t just demand that exceptions be made for you because that’s the way you like to work. Instead, start by doing work, and doing it incredibly well. Show off those abilities that make Gen Y a force to be reckoned with. Make yourself uniquely valuable. The best way to get exceptions to longstanding policies to be exceptional.

Because employers are wary and only getting warier. John Barwis of the Holland Sentinel in Michigan in a in a familiar-sounding column called “Generation Y meets real life” writes:

Our Generation Y professionals regularly met in groups to share and track each other’s salary and performance-bonus information. Many expressed the feeling that everyone should receive the same bonus, and that it was impossible or even unethical to differentiate performance. Where did they learn to expect reward for effort rather than results?

I believe as much as the most militant member of Generation Y that old work paradigms need to die off to accommodate this new generation at work, but when you get away from that macro level and down to the micro level, it does become all about results.

Does this require sacrifice on the part of young workers? Sure. In some organizations, it could require many years of sacrifice. (And in some organizations, due to institutionalized bureaucracy and lame duck management, differentiating yourself could prove impossible — or dangerous. But let’s not go there now.) But, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t need to be that difficult.

Even with the economic downturn, employers across the globe are hurting and will continue to hurt in their search for qualified people. That initial period right after you get your foot in the door is CRITICAL, because if your boss or manager starts to see you as expressly and keenly qualified for your job (and, hey, it doesn’t hurt to make it clear that you’re qualified for OTHER, more important jobs within the organization, too) suddenly you’ve made yourself very valuable. You’ve become a rare commodity: a talented knowledge worker in an era where fewer exist.

Don’t screw it up. Remember that, until you define yourself in your organization, there’s very little difference between you and the five candidates they interviewed but DIDN’T hire. So don’t go in and start making even reasonable demands in week one. Because while you know your skill level and know that you, say, can get just as much work done listening to your iPod or working four ten-hour days as opposed to five eight-hour days, your boss doesn’t.

Start slow. Remember the order of operations. Prove to your employer that he or she doesn’t want to lose you, then start defining (with your employer) the work environment you’d like to have to ensure a positive, long-lasting employment. In short: be exceptional, then start asking for exceptions.

Photo by Wayne’s World 7. Licensed under Creative Commons

Just an idle thought to keep this site going this week: do people who exhibit so-called “workaholic” tendencies inevitably end up out of touch with the the latest goings-on?

I think they do. I don’t see a way around it.

One of the first things people sacrifice when they get overwhelmingly busy is their intellectual curiosity and inventiveness. When you’re stressed, you stop learning, and just start relying on the things you already know — the old chestnuts that have worked in the past and will, presumably, continue to work.

Further, this kind of work environment kills any kind of cultural connection. And I don’t just mean that in the “let’s go look at paintings or listen to beat poetry” sense. I’m speaking more broadly: of tech culture, of greater trends and shifts, of people and how they think and what they do.

It may not seem like much when your overworked co-worker tells you they haven’t seen a movie in years, haven’t finished that book they started five years ago or that their RSS reader has over 40,000 unread items in it, going back months, but these things don’t just happen in a vaccuum. Any employee that far removed from the world at large is, at best, going to be operating at a diminished capacity for creativity.

It’s an odd situation we find ourselves in with work culture, because while we’re finally starting to understand on a macro level that people working themselves to death isn’t a very good thing, we still tend to see honour in burning the midnight oil (or the candle at both ends, or whatever you happen to be setting afire) to get work done.

We need to get away from that. It’s not a good idea in mental or physical health terms, and it’s not a good idea in the knowledge economy, because working all the time impedes knowledge.

Take a break. Read a book. Go to the movies. Learn something. It’s important.

Photo by truthlying. Licensed under Creative Commons