| Depends on the situation When I moved up to Albany to be near my fiance (now wife), I was working for Winmag.com. I made arrangements with them to set up a home office in my apartment and work from home. It wound up working nicely. I didn't have to get up extremely early anymore since my "commute" to work was a two minute lazy stroll to the next room. I would typically sign in at about 8am, get some work done, take a quick break at around 10am to shower/get dressed/etc, and then work until 4 or 5.
I'd say that I was just as productive with that setup as I was in the office. Unfortunately, Winmag.com was shut down a few months later and I got another job where I had to be in the office from 8-4:30. My boss is nice and lets me telecommute sometimes when I can't get in. For example, if there's a blizzard out and the roads haven't been plowed yet. I'll do some work in the morning, shovel the snow, and then drive in.
I've found, however, that my telecommuting productivity isn't as good as my office productivity now. I think the reason for this is that my family life has grown such that there are more distractions at home. At Winmag, my fiance-at-the-time would be out in classes nearly all day, so I would have the apartment to myself. Now, my wife is at home with our two kids (4 years and 6 months). It's so easy to take "just 2 minutes" to help her with one thing. And "only a minute" to help my son with something else. But add up all of those minutes and you don't get any work done.
Still, this is a case-by-case situation. If a manager believes that an employee could do their job via telecommuting and the employee wants to do this, then the manager could allow the employee to do one day a week telecommuting. The manager could monitor the employee's productivity and either increase or decrease the telecommuting time depending on how productive the employee is. |
