Work2-0

Poll: Some choose telecommuting over marriage

2012-02-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

Holidays bring out the oddest press releases. Case in point: Valentine’s Day

Would you give up your spouse to telecommute? According to a new poll from TeamViewer, an online collaboration provider, some people would.

Here are their stats:

Give up social media: 34%
Give up chocolate: 29%
Give up their smartphone: 25%
Give up shopping: 20%
Give up a raise: 17%
Give up daily showers: 12%
Give up spouse: 5%

Only five percent of those surveyed said they would sacrifice married bliss in order to telecommute. So guess which stat made the headlines? The lowest number.

What would you give up in order to telecommute?

Santa’s gone virtual

2011-12-17T20:34:00.000-08:00

Now even Santa Claus works from home. This year, a Toronto shopping center replaced its physical Santa with videoconferences via Skype sessions. Kids can have up to ten minutes of Santa’s online time.

The Toronto Santa is free to customers; other Santas cost a bit, ranging from $5.99 the first minute and $2.99 each additional to $29.95 for ten minutes PLUS a personalized note from Santa AND a link to the video recording of the call. For those on a budget, there’s a bargain rate Santa-like chat using a 99-cent iPhone app.

For more information, check the Wall Street Journal’s chart for Comparing Santa Video Chats.

GSA will no longer pay for employee parking

2011-07-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

Finally, a government agency’s parking and telework policies are in agreement

Earlier this week the US General Services Administration issued an email saying that it would no longer pay for employee parking at their federal office buildings in the capital area.

The email was from Cathleen Kronopolus, Regional Commissioner of the Public Buildings Service for the National Capital Region. Kronopolus wrote,

“As of August 1, 2011, all GSA personnel (employees and contractors) who park in a federal building or in a GSA-leased location in the National Capital Region will be required to pay for parking.
GSA recognizes that it has a responsibility to increase the sustainability of the Federal government and can do so by reducing the environmental impact of the green house gas emissions we generate. One way we can do that is by reducing incentives such as free parking. Charging for parking is commensurate with common private sector practice.
GSA encourages other modes of transportation (biking, rail, bus, etc.) and the use of telework/mobile work.”

Now, if other companies and government agencies follow suit, and stop subsidizing people to drive to work, maybe we’ll see a telework growth spurt.

Teleworking: anti-green?

2011-07-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Google sends me a daily email alert with telework news. My hackles came to full alert this morning when my inbox revealed this item: “5 Ways Telecommuters Aren't Green.”

I clicked on the link expecting an anti-telecommuting diatribe. Imagine my surprise when guest blogger Chelsea Gladden (Flexjobs’ Director of Marketing & PR) opened with a 2009 Cisco survey finding that their “employees stopped 47,320 metric tons of greenhouse gases from being released and saved $10.3 million in fuel costs each year by telecommuting.”

She went on to suggest five ways telecommuters could be MORE GREEN – doing things like recycling, having a green plant in the home office, turning off the A/C, etc. All good advice but I can’t help feeling annoyed by her misleading headline. Was pitching a press release to the sustainability audience just a cheap way to get publicity?

Workplace flexibility by the numbers: Buildings

2011-05-31T19:07:00.001-07:00

40% Buildings are responsible for nearly 40% of total U.S. energy consumption. [1]

40 to 50% of unoccupied offices with remote workers are vacant 40 to 50% of the time [2]

50% cut = 20% reduction A 50% reduction in building electricity use would immediately translate to a 20% reduction in overall energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. [3]

3.3 billion sq. ft. If telework increased another 10%, US could save 3.3. billion square feet of office space.

60% of workplace executives predict decreased need for office space as a result of future workstyles [4]

£10,500 ($17,200) cost/desk/year [5]

£6.6m ($11 million) Cost of unused office space in a typical London office building of 150,000 square feet that houses 1,500 workers on a sharing ratio of 1.2 people per desk with cost per square foot per annum of £80 ($130) [6]

Telework by the numbers: Commuting

2011-04-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

9 out of 10 Americans commute to work by car [1]

40 hours An average American spends the equivalent of a 40-hour workweek stuck in traffic every year, wasting $100 billion in time and fuel. [2]

77% Telecommuting can reduce automobile travel by 77% [3]

4.7 million cars Teleworking already takes more than 4.7 million cars off American roads daily [4]

7.2% of GDP For every $14 produced in the US economy, $1 is wasted just getting employees to work (a loss of US$1 trillion or 7.2% of the gross domestic product of the country. [5]

3% fewer cars For every 1% reduction in the number of cars on the road, there is a 3% reduction in traffic congestion. [6]

1 out of 4 miles 25% of all miles traveled in the US is traveled as a commute to/from work. [7]

2,000 miles Reducing the amount you drive by just 2,000 miles can save 1,100 pounds of CO2e a year, or 3% of per capita emissions. [8]

Note: For more about telework’s environmental benefits, see my guest blog, Going Green With Telework, for BROADBAND for AMERICA.

Telecommuting a major draw for IT workers but IT management is clueless

2011-04-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Source: April Dice Report - Remote Control

Dice.com, a US-based online recruitment firm, released the results of a survey asking if tech workers would take a 10% pay cut to telecommute.

A third of respondents (35%) answered yes.

Alice Hill, managing director at Dice, commented on the study: "What's remarkable is that even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home."

"We asked this same question nearly three years ago and got nearly identical results," she added. "Telecommuting is a viable option companies can offer to retain and recruit top talent, while saving compensation costs. Maybe if we called it cloud commuting, CIOs would buy-in."

National Day of Unplugging

2011-03-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

Sundown, Friday, March 4th to sundown, Saturday, March 5th is National Day of Unplugging. It's goal: to encourage people to "reconnect with the real world."

It's sponsored by Reboot, a group that is focused on updating Jewish traditions. One of the tenets of their "Sabbath Manifesto" is to have a day of rest, where you avoid technology. Instead, they recommend people should "connect with loved ones, get outside, drink wine and give back." Sounds good to me.

Sign up to telework

2011-02-15T18:22:00.000-08:00

It's National Telework Week, a nationwide effort to encourage agencies, organizations, and individuals to pledge to telework on February 14-18, 2011. It's not too late to sign up.

According to Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia, “Telework improves recruitment and retention, improves emergency response preparedness, and saves taxpayer money. We just had another snow event in late January where teleworking enabled thousands of Federal employees to keep working even when roads were covered in ice and snow. Telework Week provides an opportunity for managers and employees to pilot telework initiatives in their workplaces and ensure the efficacy of their IT infrastructure to handle telecommuting. It also provides a good opportunity for managers to test and update their business continuity plans to ensure readiness in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.”

The dog ate my homework: Worker’s lame excuses for absences

2011-01-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

As cold and flu season heats up, more and more workers call in sick. And, according to a CareerBuilder absenteeism survey, 29 percent of workers have called in sick when they were actually well.

The number of workers calling in sick with fake excuses is rising -- at least that's what one of every four (27%) employers believes.

Many workers are honest about calling in sick, requesting “mental health days,” time off for doctor’s appointments or even needing to catch up on sleep. But not all employers encourage such honesty. Hence the bogus excuse. Here are some examples the survey turned up:

A chicken attacked my mom

My finger got stuck in a bowling ball

My hair transplant went bad

I caught my foot in a garbage disposal

I have to mow the lawn to avoid a home owner’s association lawsuit

I burned my mouth on a pumpkin pie

I’m not feeling too clever today (duh!)

Holographic Telecommuting

2010-12-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

picture credit: Nature, Nov 4, 2010.

Researchers at Arizona U recently transmitted three-dimensional movies from one location to another in “near real time,” according to Nasser Peyghambarian, research team leader. A movable image can be transmitted via the Internet in less than a second. Users have no need for special 3D glasses or other devices.

The team published a paper describing the technology in the November 4 issue of the journal, Nature.

Will “holographic telepresence” soon be used to add a new dimension to teleworking?

The funny side of working at home

2010-10-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

I love savagechickens, a cartoon series by Doug Savage. I wrote Doug a fan letter, asking permission to post a cartoon and he wrote me back:

"I actually work from home too (for my cartooning work and for my day job as an editor) and I love it - and I'm much more productive than I ever was at the office," he said.

Do you have a favorite telecommute cartoon you'd like to share?

Does Telecommuting Increase your Carbon Footprint?

2010-10-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

A new study circulating like wildfire around the Net alleges that “Telecommuting and Online Shopping Increases Carbon Footprint.” Research from Newcastle University say that online shopping and telecommuting could have negative environmental effects. According to the press release announcing the study, Rebound: unintended consequences of transport policy, “working from home can increase home energy use by as much as 30 percent.”

This seemed pretty high to me, so I decided to investigate. I found a copy of the report and poked around its references. The authors did not conduct original research. Instead, they summarized past research in this area. This is common in academic circles, so raised no red flags.

What was the proof for the statement that home energy use increases as much as 30% when a person telecommutes?

This “fact” was based on a single anecdote, the observations of one of the authors of a study done in 2000 who described the changes he observed within his own household. His home energy usage went up 30%.

More recent studies have countered the claim of high home energy use. For example, a study done by Sun Microsystems in 2008 investigated whether Sun’s flexible work program really saved energy, or just transferred energy cost and load to employees. They found that office equipment energy consumption rate at a Sun office was twice that of home office equipment energy consumption.

Another study, this one by the Consumer Electronics Association, found that just one day of telecommuting saves the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household’s electricity use.

Telework Bill finally has a chance?

2010-08-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Every year I get excited about the prospect of a comprehensive telework bill. Some years it gets stuck in committee; other years it squeaks out but never gets voted on. This year is the best yet. Both houses of Congress have passed versions of the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act. The House bill (H.R. 1722) and the Senate version (S707) are very similar. Speaking on Federal News Radio, MaKeda Scott-Mingo, an aide to Maryland Representative John Sarbanes, said the bill's sponsors are meeting to reconcile the bill into a final version. So, once Congress is back in session, hopefully the two bills get made into one and both houses finally pass the legislation.

The House bill:

Instructs the Office of Personnel Management to develop a uniform, government-wide telework policy for federal employees
Strengthens the federal government’s capacity to effectively integrate telework into Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP)
Designates a Telework Managing Officer within every agency
Provides training and education for employees and supervisors
Requires the Office of Personnel Management to compile government-wide data on telework
Requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate agency compliance and produce an annual report to Congress

The Senate bill:

Establishes telework policies in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management
Designates a Telework Managing Officer
Ensures that telework is part of the agency's continuity of operations planning

For a detailed comparison of the two bills, see Telework for Executive Branch Employees: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Legislation Pending in the 111th Congress.

Office furniture envy

2010-06-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

Three out of four office dwellers admit to having "office-chair envy" and coveting a coworker's chair. So says a recent survey from Staples, the office supply folks.

The online survey also discovered that nearly half of the respondents reported spending more time in their office chair than sleeping in bed. Another 29 percent said they spent more than seven hours in their chairs.

Other results:

Some 57 percent say their colleagues secretly switch to get a better office chair
More than 65 percent did not choose their office chair, while more than 70 percent put in at least some effort in researching and testing their mattress
Nearly a third think a new office chair would be equivalent to a day off

If you envy another's chair, what kind of chair would you like to occupy?

New study: Teleworking can hurt career

2010-06-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

Researchers at UC Davis and the University of North Carolina have just released the results of their study of “passive” face time.”

They found that face time has a direct, and sometimes unconscious, effect on how managers view employees. When bosses and co-workers see an employee at work, they tend to think more highly of that person. And their evaluation is even more favorable if the sighting is after normal business hours.

"Merely being seen—often from a distance and without any interaction or real understanding of what a person is doing—that in itself has value," says Kimberly Elsbach of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. "People notice."

She suggests that managers of teleworkers should become more aware of the face-time dynamics when evaluating employees. For example, stop using "trait-based" performance reviews in which employees are gauged on whether they are a "team player," "good leader" or other vague characteristic.

The study, How passive 'face time' affects perceptions of employees: Evidence of spontaneous trait inference, is published in the June issue of the journal Human Relations.

Earth Day idea: Stay home to work

2010-04-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

Working at home is the perfect way to celebrate Earth Day. Want to find out the impact of your commute on the environment?

According to the people at Telework Research Network, if 40% of the US population with jobs that could be done from home did so just half of the time:

The nation would save 453 million barrels of oil (57% of Gulf oil imports)—a national savings of $31 billion per year.
The energy potential from the gas savings alone would total more than twice what the U.S. produces from all renewable energy sources combined.
National productivity would increase by 6.2 million man-years or $200 billion worth of work each year.
Businesses would save $194 billion annually in real estate, electricity, reduced absenteeism, and decreased turnover.
Employees would gain back an extra 2 to 3 weeks worth of time per year—time they’d have otherwise spent commuting.
Communities would save over $3 billion in highway maintenance because 180 billion fewer miles would be driven each year.

How much can you save by not driving to work?
Calculate your savings from not driving. SmartTrips has a simple calculator where you enter miles, number of days per week and your alternative mode of transportation.

This more customizable calculator determines your savings depending on where you live. Check out this web-based Telework Savings Calculator.

freelance work predicted to grow

2009-12-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

In a press release announcing the winners of its New Ways to Work contest, Elance noted that the field of self-employed professional work is growing. They cite Ray Boggs, a vice president of IDC (a market research firm), who says that full-time, home-based freelancers and independent contractors in the U.S. are expected to increase by 200,000 workers to 11 million by the end of 2009 and another 200,000 freelance jobs will be added in 2010. Good news for some of us!

By the way, the grand prize winner of the New Ways to Work was Benjamin Gran, a freelance writer, who compared the end of the era of office cubicles to the end of the era of phone booths. Phone booths were done in by mobile phones; Gran says the death knell for cubicles will be the flexibility to work anywhere anytime. "Someday," he writes, "people are going to look back at cubicles with the same sense of disbelief that today’s kids have when they look at phone booths."

You can find his essay, “Cubicles are the Phone Booths of the Future” on his blog.

Contest: New Ways to Work

2009-11-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

Elance, a Web 2.0 site for finding online work and online workers, is sponsoring a contest to recognize the most inspirational real-world demonstrations of new ways of working--the kind of work that takes place “completely online.”

Today, an estimated 37 million American workers are independent contractors, part-time or temporary staffers, or self-employed. This represents 31% of the workforce. In June, Money magazine predicted that we're moving toward "The Age of the Temp," where one in four workers will be a contingent worker.

It certainly looks like we're heading that way. Linda Stern reported in Newsweek that "Some 2.5 million full-time jobs have evaporated in the last 13 months, contributing to what's being called the "gig economy." And last year, "the number of people working part-time because they couldn't find full-time work almost doubled from 4.5 million to nearly 8 million."

The fine print: The Grand Prize winner will get a year's worth of health insurance premiums or $10,000 in cash. he contest began on Labor Day, but I only ran across it today. All entries must be posted by 11:59:59 pm PT on December 1, 2009. Details of the contest and how to enter can be found on the Elance blog site.

CES survey shows telework growth

2009-10-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

Almost two in five employed U.S. online adults (37% of the workforce) work from home at least once a month, according to new research from the Consumer Electronics Association.

According to the The Telework and the Technologies Enabling Work Outside Corporate Walls study, the average teleworker plans to spend at least $925 over the next year on technology products to help them work from home. That figure surprised me. It seems to indicate that lots of companies are still expecting their workers to fund their own telework setup. The study revealed that only a third (34%) have access to an employer-provided computer or other IT technology at home and 31% have access to an employer-provided communication device, such as a phone or fax machine.

Your new commute

2009-09-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

I LOVE this poster! I found it on the Facebook page for Commuter Connections, a program coordinated by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Vacation deficit

2009-08-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

There's a great post on the World Changing blog about the need for vacations, family time, time for solitude. A fact that led the story especially caught my attention:

The United States is the only nation other than the Guyanas, Nepal, and Myanmar without a paid-vacation law. Thirty percent of Americans don’t get paid vacation; half of us get one week or less.

What can we do about this? Well, the people at Take Back Your Time are launching a multi-pronged campaign, which includes:

Guaranteed paid leave for parents for the birth or adoption of a child
At least one week of paid sick leave for all workers
A minimum of three weeks of paid annual vacation leave for all workers
Limiting compulsory overtime
Making Election Day a holiday
Making it easier for Americans to choose part-time work

Jack and Suzy’s 20th century advice

2009-06-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

In a recent BusinessWeek column, Jack and Suzy Welch wrote a letter to this year’s graduating college class. They were handing out advice on how to succeed in this economy. Their counsel made sense until they came out in favor of “Being There.” Here’s what they wrote:

And if you're thinking of working from home two or three days a week because "it's so easy" and "it doesn't really matter," slap yourself for being unrealistic. Because if you ever want to be a leader, being online is fine but being there is imperative.

… if you're a new employee hoping to achieve work-life balance, we strongly suggest you hold that thought. Hold it, that is, until you've earned some chits with a nice, long run of great performance. In the brave new world of 9%-plus unemployment, flexibility is a reward, not an entitlement.

Their advice makes me cross. If “being there” is so important, then why do successful companies like Cisco, MySQL and Capitol One have such a large proportion of remote workers? They save money because they need less real estate to house their employees. And their employees are less stressed, more focused and happier. After all, happier cows make better cheese. Can’t this work for humans too?

More information at:

Cisco Study Finds Telecommuting Significantly Increases Employee Productivity, Work-Life Flexibility and Job Satisfaction, June 26, 2009.

TOP 10 MYTHS ABOUT MOBILE WORK, Sun Open Work Services Group, August 2008

MANAGING IN A VIRTUAL ORGANIZATION, Sun Open Work Services Group, August 2008

MySQL: Workers in 25 countries with no HQ, FORTUNE, June 1, 2006

Capital One: Going Mobile, HQ, Winter 2009

Videoconferencing parrots

2009-06-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Joe Sharkey, who writes for The New York Times, commented on the growing use of Skype for videoconferencing in a recent article.

He hoped to convince his editor to meet virtually via Skype and avoid the grueling trip from Arizona to NYC. No luck.

But the section of the article that hit me was the part about his two parrots. They love videoconferencing! He writes:

The parrots are early adapters, following the screen image, replying vocally, dancing with joy when motivated. They seem to get it — except that the chatty African grey evidently believes that I am actually inside my wife’s laptop and marches behind the screen to peck at it and get me out. I mean, they’re birds, after all.

Have you experienced anything similar with your pets when videoconferencing?

What to do with your cubicle on a slow business day

2009-05-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, TIME ran a special report on “The Future of Work: 10 Ways Your Job Will Change.” One of the predictions was, no surprise, the end of the office cubicle. The office will no longer be needed, the reporters wrote: “The need to actually show up at an office that consists of an anonymous hallway and a farm of cubicles or closed doors is just going to fade away. It's too expensive, and it's too slow.”

The NBC comedy The Office invited its fans to send in photos of silliness in their workspaces. TIME published a gallery of some of the best. Most involved papering over every available space with printouts, sticky notes, tinfoil, photocopies--even cardboard. A couple of others filled an office or cubicle with balloons or packing peanuts.

The entries didn't appear all that creative, but maybe that's the point.

What Every Senior Executive Needs to Know about Distributed Work

2009-05-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

The New Ways of Working Network are providing free access to a new white paper, What Every Senior Executive Needs to Know about Distributed Work.

It outlines steps to implement a distributed work program with emphasis on integrating information technology, corporate policies and procedures and workspace planning and facilities. In addition, the report provides lessons learned from organizations that have successfully implemented distributed work programs

Produced by the New Ways of Working Network in cooperation with the Telework Coalition, the guide reviews the advantages of developing a distributed workforce. These include major financial savings through a reduced office footprint, improved employee attraction and retention and the ability to continue operating during major business disruptions.

Telecommuting inspires sci-fi movie scriptwriter

2009-04-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

The world is divided by closed borders, but connected by a worldwide digital network that ties people together. Sound familiar?

In this environment, third world workers connect their nervous systems to the net. Some sell their memories (a sort of brain blog); others control robots that labor on the other side of the border. The node workers, who often labor long hours until they collapse, are called “sleep dealers.” They contribute their cyberlabor but never get to leave their home country.

Writer/director Alex Rivera created the sci-fi immigrant drama Sleep Dealer to investigate the new world of outsourced work. The movie follows Memo Cruz, a geeky young Mexican who hacks into phone conversations and comes to the attention of a multinational water company that has privatized his village’s water supply. Security agents instruct drone planes to blow up Cruz’s home. We follow him as he heads for Tijuana and eventually finds a job as a "node worker," where laborers plug their nervous systems into a network that allows them to work remotely, picking oranges in Florida, driving cabs in London or working construction in New York City.

Rivera was motivated to write the film after reading a 1997 article about the rise of telecommuting, according to an article in the LA Times. His father was a Peruvian immigrant. He imagined how his father's life might have been different if his factory job had been remotely operated and he'd never come to the US. Rivera said the story evolved into "an absurd nightmare of a telecommuting immigrant in a world of closed borders but open networks."

In a Wired interview from Sundance's headquarters in Park City last year (where the film won the screenwriting award) Rivera said: "We are being sold a false bill of goods, that the more connected we become the more equal we will be. Statistically speaking, that's not what's happening. The more connected we become, the more we are divided."

Scary. It certainly would change the nature of napping on the job.

Fed telework numbers decline

2009-03-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

According to the US Office of Personnel Management, the number of Federal teleworkers declined from 110,592 in 2006 to 94,643 in 2007. The principal reason? A couple of big agencies showed significant losses. The biggest losers:

Department of Defense: Nearly a 50% decline. Down from 34,880 teleworkers in 2006 to 17,921 in 2007. According to the report's authors, "DOD is extremely concerned about information and data security" and decided that "in this environment, DOD has determined that its mission is not best served by a growing telework program."
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: NASA reported over 10,000 teleworkers in 2006 and only 825 in 2007. According to NASA officials, these lower numbers "were caused by doing a better job of tracking teleworkers."

You can download the entire report, Status of Telework in the Federal Government: Report to the Congress, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, December 2008.

Survey shows more than 1/3 would take cut in pay to telework

2009-02-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

Most Americans won’t take a pay cut to telecommute, according to a survey from WorldatWork. Its Telework Trendlines™ 2009 Report showed that most (61 percent) would not trade pay for the "privilege" of telecommuting.

In response to the question, ”Would you be willing to be paid slightly less by your employer in exchange for being allowed to telecommute two days per week?”, 61 percent of employed respondents who are not currently working remotely but feel they could answered “no.” Thirty-five percent said they would take a pay cut for the opportunity to telecommute.

Pay cut for telecommuting?

2009-02-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

The New York Times featured an article about of the community of Crested Butte, a remote town in the Elk Mountains of central Colorado. It seems that this spot attracts telecommuters -- for the chance to live somewhere beautiful and take ski breaks as needed.

Stephen Regenold interviewed John Girard, a Gartner analyst, who said that having remote workers could save a corporation money. “Companies investigating operating costs often look to trim office space and real estate,” he said. “One solution is to have people telecommute.”

But it was the next paragraph that hit me: "Mr. Girard noted that some workers were willing to accept reduced pay to telecommute and live where they wanted to live. “In a bad economy, that makes sense.”

Will one of the results of this rotten economy be that telecommuters will take pay cuts to live where they wish?

Open office controversy

2009-01-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

The Open Plan study by Dr VG Oommen "doesn’t reflect changes in the modern workplace." This according to a press release from workplace design firm DEGW. "Open plan versus enclosed offices debate is old news," their press release says.

Oommen reviewed previous studies on the health effects of working in an open plan office, and concluded that the switch to open-plan workplaces causes incresed stress and lower productivity.

More from DEGW:

There is a distinct lack of research in the public realm on the analysis and design of workspaces and their effects on productivity, which makes it difficult to draw accurate conclusions through literature reviews.

DEGW's own literature-based research identifies that published research in the area of workplace design is almost entirely focused on easily quantifiable aspects relating to individual comfort, such as indoor air quality, light levels, noise levels, energy use and cost. While important, these aspects are only part of the impact workplace design has upon organisational effectiveness.

In contrast, little research has been published on the impact of the workspace on overall organisational performance. Despite being more influential, aspects such as the workplace's ability to enable effective communication, support knowledge sharing, foster the desired organisational culture and encourage rapid learning are much more difficult to measure.
Thus, published research to date is naturally skewed towards issues such as noise control and cost comparisons, whereas real engagement with organisations that use their workspace as a strategic tool reveals the powerful impacts workspace design can achieve.

Open-plan offices make workers sick

2009-01-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

"Office life is bad for your health," read the headline in ScienceAlert, a website that covers the Australasian science community.

"The evidence we found was absolutely shocking," said Dr Vinesh Oommen, one of the study’s authors. Oommen and his team work at the Queensland University of Technology's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation.

"In 90 per cent of research, the outcome of working in an open-plan office was seen as negative, with open-plan offices causing high levels of stress, conflict, high blood pressure, and a high staff turnover," Oommen said. "It has been found that the high level of noise causes employees to lose concentration, leading to low productivity, there are privacy issues because everyone can see what you are doing on the computer or hear what you are saying on the phone, and there is a feeling of insecurity."

Oommen observed that " I think employers around the country need to rethink the open-plan environment in their offices." The study appears in the latest issue of Asia-Pacific Journal of Health Management.

What's your experience with open plan offices?

Conference call

2008-12-28T17:08:00.000-08:00

We've all participated in time-wasting conference calls. Watch this spoof of a call that sucks the life out of all participants.

telecommuning

2008-12-12T14:28:00.000-08:00

Renaming telecommuting

Yet another entry in the attempt to capture the essence of telecommuting but update it to today's realities: this one from Intel's Eleanor Wynn.

Wynn thinks telecommuting is "backwards-looking." She explains, "Telecommuting assumes “commuting” as the norm and the “tele-“ part as a variant. That is why I am renaming it telecommuning."

Though she doesn't say so directly, I think she means that work is done by a community, which is bonded together through the projects they work on.

"Two-thirds of our workforce work this way, as measured over the four years," Wynn writes. "We do a lot of telecommuning. And this is one great way to bond the whole global network together. In our original survey of virtuality in 2002, we found that it is important to have both or either: neighbors in the workplace and/or strong virtual team relationships. Basically as long as you have groups that are meaningful to you. It matters less where exactly they are."

Will moofing catch on?

2008-12-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

In the unofficial contest for the silliest word to describe mobile working, I think “moofing” ranks pretty high. Moofing, which stands for "mobile out of office" was coined by James McCarthy, a business manager with Microsoft's UK mobile software team. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that “moofing” sounds way too much like “goofing” to be a good name for the kind of work many of us do.

You can learn more about moofing and McCarthy’s views on next generation working, by checking out his blog, moof.mobi. In addition to blog comments, there are some resources such as the Rough guide to moofing.

Contest to rename telecommuting

2008-11-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

An online contest for the best term to replace “telecommuter” chose “cloudworker” to describe professionals who work beyond the office.

The TeleWho? contest, sponsored by Plantronics, invited people to submit suggestions. After a panel selected the top ten, online voting chose the winner. Cloudworker won with 27.5% of the vote.

My favorite, Robe Warrior, only received an “honorable mention.”

Link to the contest's top ten list

Did the cube improve productivity?

2008-11-18T11:15:00.000-08:00

The office cubicle turned forty this year. Hard to believe that when originally announced, it was greeted as a major improvement in office design. The original concept was the Action Office, the product of Robert Propst, chief researcher for Herman Miller, the furniture company responsible for such iconic designs as the Aeron chair and the Eames lounger.

According to his biography, Propst began studying office worker behavior in the mid-1950s. In those days, offices were typically laid out with a bullpen in the center with rows and rows of desks, surrounded by closed-in offices at the perimeter. Propst believed that the office of that era was “a wasteland … [that] saps vitality, blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment. It is the daily scene of unfulfilled intentions and failed effort."

Working with designers at Herman Miller, Propst’s team developed the Action Office – an open, modular, flexible office. One of the main ideas was that productivity would improve if workers could see their work spread out in front on them, instead of stuffed in an inbox. Thus, the new modular office had loads of work surfaces and shelves to display stuff. It even had a feature that allowed workers to raise their desk level so they could work standing up. Cool.

David Franz, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Virginia, studied the cubicle and says that the thinking behind the design of cubicles was utopian. Cubes “eliminated the hierarchical distinctions between managers and workers; every cubicle had an open door, everyone was equally a worker. Empowering and humane, cubicles seemed to create a workplace with a soul.”

So, did the Action Office live up to its promises? Did efficiency improve? I haven’t found any studies that prove this yet, but they may be out there. Have you run across any?

Barefoot Worker's Jelly

2008-11-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

I love this: When workers arrive at Nancy Hoffmann’s New York office loft, they are asked to take off their shoes and put their business cards in a bowl on the table.

Hoffman is hosting a Jelly, a kind of casual co-working event, where a dozen or so laptop-toting people gather together to work. Unlike a typical co-working site, where people can go any day of the week, a Jelly takes place once or twice a month, often in someone’s home. The goal: network, socialize, get energized, do some work.

What’s a Jelly? Amit Gupta, a young Web entrepreneur started the first Jelly three years ago with his roommate Luke Crawford. In an interview with Josh Spear, Gupta says Luke came up with the name. Both worked from home and “missed the free-form brainstorming, idea sharing, and casual networking that goes on in an office (not so much the office politics.)” So they invited a friend to come over and work with them at their kitchen table. “We ended up having great conversations, came up with new ideas, and felt refreshed.” says Gupta. Soon they expanded it to invite other friends and even issued an open invitation via the Internet.

Why Jelly? It comes from jellybeans. Perhaps all the colors and flavors represent the mixture of people you might find at a Jelly.

Jellies have gotten quite a lots of press, including a piece in Workforce Management Online that described Hoffman’s Jelly, an article in Wired, and coverage on CNN and NPR.

Jellies are spreading around the world. If you want to find one in your neighborhood or start you own, there’s a wiki to answer all your questions.

Acres of empty desks

2008-10-31T17:02:00.000-07:00

New research reveals untapped potential for real estate savings through alternative workplace solutions

Companies are ignoring a largely untapped resource: acres of empty desks.

A new study by New Ways of Working (NewWOW) found that more than a quarter of employees in leading edge organizations work in non-traditional ways (working at home, in third places, client offices, satellite centers Yet, 73% of respondents still assigned a dedicated workspace to these workers, therefore not realizing the full potential of space savings.

In addition, many employees who report to an office, have no assigned workstation. Study participants indicated that, among the number of mobile employees (13%), nearly half (45%) are mobile within the office – attending meetings, working collaboratively with team members, or checking emails while in the company cafeteria.

Joe Ouye, co-founder of NewWOW, said that the actual mobility rate is much higher as employees don’t wait to be formally enrolled in a program, but literally vote with their feet and seats. All they need is a laptop and a broadband connection.”

Ouye says most corporations haven’t caught up with this fact. “Next time you go to a corporate office, walk around and take an informal survey of the seat occupancy. It is typically between 35 to 45%, far below what managers think it is.“

What does this mean for corporate real estate types? If they pay attention to who is working where and when, they can trim even more space from their office portfolios and still provide great places to work.

Public disclaimer: I freelance for New Ways of Working.

The rest of the press release: New Research Reveals Untapped Potential for Real Estate Savings Through Alternative Workplace Solutions, October 29, 2008. http://www.newwow.net/public/press-release-new-research-reveals-untapped-potential-real-estate-savings-through-alternative-workpl

Nappak - sleeping on the job

2008-09-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

I found the Nappak in a list of 19 Really Cool Gadgets for Your Office or Cubicle: A blow-up nap cube that comes in cylinder on wheels complete with an air compressor for easy setup.

I wonder who would be brave enough to drag that into an office, blow it up and crawl in?

Dueling telework surveys

2008-08-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, World@Work, a human resources association, said that telecommuting is way up in both the US and Canada.

A couple weeks back, the Gallup Poll said there has been no growth in US telecommuting in the past two years. See our earlier post on this poll.

Earlier this year, IDC released data saying the U.S. workforce had the highest percentage of mobile workers at 68 percent in 2006. And that number is expected to reach 75% by 2011.

Late last year, Citrix Online, a provider of web services for remote computer access and online meetings, released a study saying that 23% of Americans are “working from anywhere.”

Okay. So they probably had different definitions of teleworking, telecommuting, mobile working, webworking, whatever. Still, the results are widely different. Who to believe?

Gallup says no telecommuting growth

2008-08-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the Gallup Poll released figures showing that there has been no growth in US telecommuting in the past two years. In 2006 the percentage of US workers saying they had telecommuted from home was 32%. Today it's 30%.

More alarming is the statement that only 12% of US workers say their companies encourage employees to work from home one or more workdays per week. In fact, more companies have pushed 4-day workweeks (16%) than encouraged telecommuting.

Gas companies must be thrilled with the news.

Is telecommuting bad for the environment?

2008-07-31T10:08:00.000-07:00

Tecommuting is bad for the environment? Give me a break!
Another article lambasting telecommuting, this time from Forbes magazine, which ought to know better. Klaus Kneale writes:

Kneale then quotes some old studies to support his contention that telecommuters often drive as much as those who work in an office and have to equip and power their own offices.

But more recent research proves him wrong. Last year, the Consumer Electronics Association published a study that found that just one day of telecommuting saves the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household’s electricity use. See Teleworkers use less energy at home for more on this subject.

Another study, this time from Sun Microsystems, specifically explored the question of whether Open Work (Sun’s name for its flexible work program) really saves energy, or just transfers energy cost and load to employees? Researchers set out to determine how much energy is consumed while working in a Sun office, while working at home, and during commuting to and from a Sun office.

By comparing home and work energy use, they also calculated how much of the energy load is shifted from company to the individual. The study found that the average employee saves 5,400 Kilowatt hours/year by working flexibly. Open Workers also saved 2.5 workweeks a year in commute time, and more than $1,700 in fuel and wear and tear on their vehicle.

The Sun study found that:

Office equipment energy consumption rate at a Sun office was two times that of home office equipment energy consumption, from approximately 64 watts per hour at home to 130 watts per hour at a Sun office.
Commuting was more than 98 percent of each employee's carbon footprint for work, compared to less than 1.7 percent of total carbon emissions to power office equipment.
By eliminating commuting just 2.5 days per week, an employee reduces energy used for work by the equivalent of 5,400 Kilowatt hours/year.
Working from home 2.5 days per week saved the employees in the study an annual average of 2.5 weeks of commute time (8 hours/day, 5 days/week).

Pets in the workplace

2008-06-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

June 20 was Take Your Dog to Work Day. Somehow I missed it. One of the pleasures of working from home fulltime is that you can choose to share your office with your pets (in my case, two cats who like me but not each other) or not. Cats can be tricky – their favorite office locations are 1) lounging on my keyboard; 2) sitting in front of the monitor; and 3) napping on top of the phone.

Anyway, the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association says that about one in five US companies allow pets in the workplace and that having pets in the workplace increases productivity. They ran a poll back in 2006 and learned:

55 million Americans believe having pets in the workplace leads to a more creative environment
53 million believe having pets in the workplace decreases absenteeism
50 million believe having pets in the workplace helps co-workers get along better
38 million believe having pets in the workplace creates a more productive work environment
32 million believe having pets in the workplace decreases smoking in the workplace
37 million believe having pets in the workplace helps improve the relationship between managers and their employees
46 million people who bring their pets to the workplace work longer hours

A nation of sleep-deprived workers

2008-06-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

Tired workers cost $100 billion in lost productivity, health care costs, absenteeism, says the National Sleep Foundation.

An article on Sleeping at Work by CNN says that Americans are working more and sleeping less. The average amount of sleep reported by the National Sleep Foundation’s survey was six hours and 40 minutes a night. The average workday? Nine hours and 28 minutes. You do the math.

Want to determine your sleepiness quotient? CNN has a calculator that creates a graph of the number of hours spent working, sleeping, at meals, commuting, hanging out (leisure), chores and unplanned.

Gas pains driving you to telework?

2008-05-31T19:04:00.000-07:00

Americans are finally beginning to change their commute behavior, based on the increased cost of gasoline. A survey this month by Robert Half International found that workers have increased carpooling or ridesharing (46 percent), are driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle (33 percent) and telecommuting more frequently (33 percent). Three in 10 said admitted to looking for a new job closer to home.

When asked what their employers were doing to help them cope with increased commuting costs, 18% said that their employer had increased mileage reimbursement for travel (but I don’t think that will help with the daily commute), 11 percent indicated that their company was stepping up telecommuting and 8 percent noted subsidized transportation. But, most telling of all, nearly six in ten (59 percent) said their companies weren’t lifting a finger to help them with higher costs at the pump.

Survey press release: http://sev.prnewswire.com/publishing-information-services/20080529/AQTH50529052008-1.html

Co-office meets daycare

2008-04-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

There’s been lots of press lately about third places to work--places where entrepreneurs, telecommuters,and nomadic workers of all kinds congregate to work and socialize. These include coffee shops, hotel lobbies, airport lounges and coworking sites like Citizen Space, Jelly and Office Nomads. The latest addition is a coworking space with built-in daycare. Cubes & Crayons, which recently opened in Menlo Park, California, is the first co-working site in the Bay Area—and possibly in the world—that includes a licensed child care facility on site.

SF Chronicle reporter Ilana DeBare visited Cubes & Crayons recently. Located on the second floor of an office building, the front section has five small offices, a conference room, a photocopier room and a kitchen. The back area, closed off by a child-safety gate, contains a nap room, a lunch/art room and a play space. Co-workers using the site said they could sometimes hear the children playing, but it’s not distracting.

Teleworkers use less energy at home

2008-03-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

ZDNet's Matt Loney blogged recently about the carbon effect of telecommuting. He asked if “teleworking was truly green or just naive?” Loney quotes Frank Tudor, speaking at a panel at the European Green IT Summit, who was not convinced that teleworking has any green impact: “I think it just shifts the carbon from the office to the home – it probably costs more in carbon to heat my home for eight hours a day than it does to travel to and be supported at work,” Tudor says.

A recent study by the Consumer Electronics Association sheds some light on the issue. The study, The Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Impact of Telecommuting and e-Commerce, found that just one day of telecommuting saves the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household’s electricity use. Using electronics to telecommute saves the equivalent of 9 to 14 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year — the same amount of energy used by roughly 1 million U.S. households every year. According to the press release accompanying the study, researchers focused on workers who spend one or more days working from home each week and considered the energy consumed by telecommuting compared with traditional methods. Researchers noted that telecommuter home energy levels increased slightly, but assume that businesses offset that use through reduced floor space by having fewer workers in offices.

The connected bus

2008-03-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

San Francisco is piloting the bus of the future, one with wi-fi access, so people can check emails and keep working while in transit. "What's unique about this bus is that instead of going to an Internet hotspot, it comes to you," said Dave Evans, chief technologist for Cisco, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mayor Gavin Newsom thinks the high-tech bus will resonate with riders. "You've got to think that once people start using this, they're going to demand this in every single bus," he said. It only costs about $10,000 for the high-tech gadgetry, so more connected buses are possible.

San Francisco may be the only municipality creating such a bus, but it's not a new concept. According to an article last year in the New York Times, some 1200 Googlers ride company-provided buses daily. These buses are biodiesel-fueled, with comfy leather seats and wireless Internet access. To shuttle its employees to and from work, Google manages 32 bus routes, operates 132 trips a day to 40 pickup and drop-off locations in more than a dozen cities, and logs 4,400 miles every day. The routes cover about 230 miles of freeways, more than twice the extent of the region’s BART commuter train system. Yahoo and eBay also run employee bus lines equipped for online work.

Sleeping on the job

2008-03-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

Today is National Sleep at Work Day. Many people are “stealth nappers” at work, sneaking off to catch a few z’s wherever and whenever they can. According to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF),
Americans are sleeping less and working more. We put in an average of nearly 4.5 hours each week doing additional work from home on top of a 9.5 hour average workday – no wonder we’re tired.

The NSF poll indicated that 20 percent of people who take extra work home say they spend 10 or more additional hours each week and 25 percent spend at least 7 additional hours each week on job-related duties. Almost a quarter (23%) of all respondents did job-related work in the hour before going to bed at least a few nights each week.

Organizations are beginning to realize that sleepy workers are less productive and may even cause on-the-job accidents. Some of the more enlightened actively encourage napping on the job. Among them are Cisco, Google, Pizza Hut, Nike and Union Pacific Railroad.