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Workforce Wonk

By Alyah Khan

Blog archive

Are you living with your biggest telework obstacle?

You're teleworking one day, 10 minutes away from a conference call with your manager and a couple of engineers on your staff. It's time for an update on a knotty technology problem you've been working to solve, and it's taken close to a week to find a time to meet that works for everyone.

That's when your doorbell rings. Eying the clock nervously, you open the door to find your 25-year-old daughter there with your 2-year-old grandson in her arms. She hands you the baby with a cheerful, "You don't mind watching him for a couple of hours do you?" She puts the question mark on the end, but you know it's not really a question.

Teleworkers face problems like this every day. Someone in your orbit — a spouse, child or neighbor — sees that you're home and assumes it means your time is free to do something other than your job.

This week, federal agencies faced a deadline under the new telework law to inform employees about their telework eligibility. However, a survey shows that although three-quarters of agencies have created the mandated telework plans, relatively few employees eligible to telework are doing so.

Because it seems that reluctant managers and recalcitrant agency leaders are less and less of a problem, we wondered if maybe some federal employees simply don't want to be home during work-hours.  

A handful of reader comments in the past year or so have indicated that some don’t think telework is a feasible option for reasons having little to do with their manager's micromanaging ways or an agency's outdated policy.

“For me, I can’t imagine that I could work at home,” one reader wrote in response to a July 2010 FCW Insider blog entry. “There are too many distractions there.… Also, I can’t seem to get people motivated by e-mail and have to visit them and talk to them face-to-face to get them to do their jobs for me.”

Have you experienced obstacles to telework at home? What are they? How do you make telework possible when you’ve got a busy family life?

Posted by Alyah Khan on Jun 08, 2011 at 12:23 PM



 

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Reader comments

Mon, Jun 13, 2011

Like everything, telecommuting is a mixed blessing and curse. I spent several months working from home after a severe illness. The benefit to working from home is the quiet and ability to concentrate on the job at hand without the office gossip stopping by on his daily rounds. The downside eventually becomes the cutoff from office life. Not being able to stop and talk with a co-worker about a problem without a phone call or IM stream, being out of the loop when it comes to quick decisions that "everyone" knows about. As said by another poster, it is something that can be done once a reasonable workplace policy is put into place and all co-workers think to include their remote peers in decisions; while the remote workers have to be more forceful in keeping abreast of changes and diligent in their work patterns.

Thu, Jun 9, 2011 Julie Washington DC

For me it is a matter a sanity. My home is my sanctuary and unless it's snowing outside and I'm a prisoner; I am not bringing work home. Life is too short!

Thu, Jun 9, 2011 BossLady Bay Area, CA

I was fortunate enough to be able to work remotely for an entire year due to my husbands temporary job transfer. It was a WONDERFUL experience for myself and my family. I enjoyed being able to thaw out dinner while on a conference call, wear sweats, and never wait while the restroom was being cleaned. I am an extrovert so not having co-workers around eventually became a drag, but because I knew it was only temporary I worked through it. The key for me was having a dedicated work area. One with a door works best because there were many times when the gardener was there and mowing or blowing that I had to shut it while on a call. Telework is the future and here to stay.

Thu, Jun 9, 2011

Discipline is the key to successful work whether at home or in the office. The ability to say "NO" goes a long way to curing distraction issues, but is so frowned upon in the "go along to get along" team player mentality that you find in most federal bureaucracies that most successful government employees just can't say NO.

Thu, Jun 9, 2011

I simply set goals for my work at home time and eliminate any distractions that interfere with those goals. I take my responsibilities seriously and do allow myself to be deterred from fulfilling my responsibilities, pretty much the same way I approach work in the office.

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