A study released by Robert Half Technology this week shows that IT managers see remote work on the rise. We all have a sense that this is true, but it’s nice to see real data on the matter, of course. RHT surveyed more than 1,400 CIOs in a random sample of companies with 100 or more employees, and found among other things:
“Nearly half (44 percent) of chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed said their companies’ IT workforce is telecommuting at a rate that is the same or higher than five years ago; only 3 percent said IT staff work remotely less frequently today than five years ago”
Interesting results. I think that if they surveyed IT companies with fewer than 100 employees, they would likely find even more web work going on for a number of reasons.
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The team here at Web Worker Daily has covered various GTD apps, methods, obsessions, and what-have-you over the years, but this index card-based system, PoIC (Pile of Index Cards) linked in LifeHack this week, is blowing my mind.
It appeals to so many parts of my psyche…the office supply fetishist…the icon afficianado…the organizational aspirant…the penmanship idealist…
This system is so ornate and yet simple and beautiful at the same time, it seems almost impossible to maintain. This may be one of those cases where the cost of being this organized has reached a point of dimishing returns. And in all honesty, the picture where all the cards are spread out for grouping makes me feel a little nauseated. I feel much better with them categorized and safely contained in the index box.
I don’t know what this says about me. But I do think that the PoIC is a stroke of mad genius.
We know that not all web workers are freewheeling entrepreneurs running growing businesses from the local coffee shop. Many of us are, in fact, real employees of substantial companies that have a mix of virtual and actual workers in various locations, including the local coffee shop. And while we’re big advocates of widespread promulgation of remote work programs for all and sundry, there are some potential drawbacks to letting the freedom flow too freely.
One is the risk of getting in trouble with FLSA with regard to exempt or non-exempt staff. There are much better places to get advice on how staff positions are cast into these two categories, but once you’ve made decisions on your positions, you’ll want to be careful that your remote work policies don’t get you into trouble with this stuff (follow the link for some older, but still very good information on this very subject).
The good news is, like so many HR policies, a straightforward remote work policy that is written down, reviewed by your HR advisor/legal, and then uniformly applied to your staff shouldn’t get you in too much trouble.
So don’t be afraid to roll one out!
It’s no secret to anyone on the east coast that it’s hot. Really hot. And in urban centers, the heat and humidity make bad things happen with pollution. There are a lot of reasons to avoid going into the office, and avoiding the heat and misery of commuting in cars or on public transportation on extreme heat days is one of the best. Even Dr. Gridlock in the Washington Post recommends it:
Unless the air conditioning at work is better than at home, this is a good week to telecommute…
If you’re only an occasional web worker, take a little time today to plan out some tasks that you can work on constructively from home (or at a very nearby coffee shop… or quiet, contemplative swimming pool). Then stay home tomorrow and be cool.
Yes, we know. We’re preaching to the choir. Do you really need another justification for your web worker lifestyle? Yes, you do.
Business continuity and disaster preparedness (or COOP in government-speak, short for “continuity-of-operations program”) is yet another great reason to foster a web-working culture, even in the most traditional businesses. FCW.com, the online arm of Federal Computer Week, reported this week about a recent Juniper Networks survey of federal, state, and local government computing professionals that noted in part:
41 percent [of survey respondents] think that telework is so critical to COOP that all employees should telework occasionally as a form of COOP preparation.
This is key: you can’t know your “emergency only” remote access plans will work unless people are using them on a regular basis to do their regular work.
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There is a dichotomy in home-based web work: we’re more liberated than almost any other gainfully employed professionals, and yet it seems that at times this freedom makes us free to work all day and night in blissful (or not) isolation from our small home offices.
People are looking for ways to counteract the inherent isolation that comes from being a lone wolf. Whether it’s virtual tools that approximate the experience of having people around you, or the group of casual or formal co-working arrangements that seem to be cropping up, there is a growing movement to take web work back into a pseudo-office environment.
But why?
Why are we driving to coffee shops and meet-ups and other places that are filled with the distractions that we’re supposed to be getting away from through the peaceful beauty of our web workerhood? Could it be there is a happy medium between coding for five hours without seeing another human face and sitting in an open bull-pen listening to our colleagues yak about their mortgages, hairdos, man/woman trouble, man/woman success, and beer-drinking plans?
What do you think?
You don’t have to work from home to qualify as a web worker, but if you do, your work habits may be misunderstood by those who work in an office. There are a lot of widely held beliefs about web workers who work from home that simply aren’t true. My favorites?
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Many people with regular jobs look at the digital bedouins tapping away at their laptops in the coffee shop at 10:30 in the morning and think to themselves, “Nice work if you can get it, but I need my real job. Alas.”
And while full-time, slipper-wearing, video-conferencing-from-your-backyard web work isn’t possible for all employees, you may find that you can edge your regular job toward a more web worker-like structure.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
