Currently, less than 2 percent of U.S. employees telecommute for the majority of their work time. An estimated 40 percent of those employees hold jobs that are compatible with telecommuting, however. The savings available if all 40 percent could work from home for at least half of their work time are impressive. These are just a few of the savings that make up that $500 billion bottom line:

• Businesses could save over $100 billion — that’s $8,300 per employee — in real estate, electricity, employee turnover and absenteeism costs. There are other potential savings in security, maintenance, parking, ADA compliance and, of course, coffee.
• More than 218 million barrels of oil could be saved which, at the price of $80 per barrel, translates to a savings of $17 billion, and could reduce Persian Gulf oil imports by 28 percent.
• Employees could save between $3,400 and $10,500 in transportation and other work-related costs, not including eliminating daycare or taking account of the home office tax breaks that many telecommuters are eligible for.
• More than 73,000 people could avoid traffic-related injury or death, together with almost $8 billion worth of accident-related costs. Telecommuting won’t wipe out traffic accidents, but it could make a dent in the numbers.

The calculator does account for factors like the increased costs associated with working from home and those employees who may make the switch to telecommuting but have already brought down transportation costs by using public transport or car pooling.

Of course, the likelihood that 40 percent of employees will make the switch to telecommuting in the near future is very low. But it’s important to keep in mind the savings available both for the country as a whole and for individual companies. These numbers can make for a compelling argument if you’re working on convincing an employer to let you work from home on a regular basis, or you’re trying to get a corporate telework pilot plan approved by senior management.

You can read more about Lister at her site, the Telework Research Network. She also provides a variety of telecommuting resources, including information on telecommuting opportunities.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

Image by Flickr user Sean Dreilinger

Your organization needs to understand that is just not the teleworker who can wreck a telework program. Management, executive sponsorship and fellow workers can also do damage to your program. Here are the primary ways an organization can wreck its telework program:

1. It forgets about communicating and documenting expectations. Management, teleworkers and in-office staff are all going to have their expectations about how the telework program should and should not work. This is no time for “delegate and desert” management or mind reading. The communication and documentation of expectations is why I am such a fan of corporate telework plans.
2. It won’t alter business processes (if needed). Using teleworkers on a project team for the first time may require some alterations of existing business processes. Project managers, teleworkers, and other staff may need to work together to analyze and adapt to the impact that teleworking may have over their day-to-day team workflow and processes.
3. It fumbles expense reports. Teleworkers fudging their expense reports; management and accounting belaboring expense reports; and a corporate telework pilot plan ambiguous about what home office/business expenses the company will reimburse are all certain to contribute to the sinking of your corporate telework program. Put the right accounting and program controls in place up front so finances aren’t even a slight worry for teleworkers and their management.
4. It isn’t accessible. While it is easy to point to the teleworker always having to be accessible, the same rules need to apply to management and office-based staff. As more communications get lost in email inboxes and voice mail, there is a greater impact on productivity which could give rise to the end of the program. If email and phone call dodging is part of your corporate culture then you can expect these problems to contribute to the downfall of your telework program.
5. It forgets the business value of teleworking. After digging myself out from the recent record snowfall that hit my area, I came across many stories of businesses with telework programs where the home office workers didn’t have to work if their employer’s office was closed due to the weather. These businesses didn’t take didn’t take advantage of a natural event where formal and informal teleworking had the chance to really shine. The U.S. federal government and a number of non-profit organizations and companies shut down for more than a week where even a case-by-case teleworking plan could have meant that at least some business could have taken place, despite the record snowfall left by back-to-back storms. On top of any organization’s list of advantages for teleworking should be business continuity and to forget that is selling a telework program short.

What tools and processes is your organization putting in place to ensure the success of your teleworking program? Share your advice below.

Photo by stock.xchng user bamcopau.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): 

Enabling the Web Work Revolution

While it is not possible to list all of the potential kinks that you’ll need to eliminate during your pilot in this post, I am going to outline some of the basic considerations you should shoot for in your organization’s corporate telework pilot plan.

• Employee selection. Not everybody is cut out to be a web worker, so you need to determine the criteria for employees to be included in the corporate telework pilot. Factors like employee performance, position, network/information access requirement can all be part of employee selection.
• Employee home office. Organizations vary in their approach to equipping their employees’  home offices, from employees relying on their own computer equipment, software, printer, phone, and broadband access, to the employer supplying everything the employee requires, and everything in between. You’ll need to determine and document, as a minimum, the equipment the company is providing; technical support processes for the company-provided equipment; employee responsibilities for the company provided equipment; and how employee home office expenses are to be handled.
• Telework employee communications plan. Project communications are going to change as people start to work from home. The communications plan should detail access to the corporate network, email and applications, as well as any redundancies in place in case there is a communications failure. There should also be an understanding of core business hours and any processes an employee needs to follow in order to modify their core working hours so they don’t appear to be “off the grid.”
• Pilot period/metrics of success The plan should also include a documented period of time for the pilot, together with an understanding of the metrics of success your organization’s management is looking for to judge the pilot a success and move the telework program from a pilot to an actual live program.

What elements are you including in your corporate telework pilot plan? Share your advice below.

Photo by stock.xchng user furnishu.

Finding a Telecommuting Opportunity

Debra Yergen is the author of “Creating Job Security,” as well as the creator of the Green Light Scoring Model, which helps job seekers translate their experience and education into job security. She points out that while the telecommuting job market doesn’t currently have many opportunities, due to the economic situation, if you expand the definition of telecommuting to include contract and freelance staff, there are actually many more positions available.

“Telecommuting has generally differed from contract work based on how a worker is categorized according to the benefits delivered as part of compensation,” says Yergen. “It’s critical to make that distinction in light of the current economy, as a higher percentage of companies are looking to outsource positions that were formally filled by in-house employees. If telecommuting is expanded to include contract-based and freelance positions, the market is wide open as many employers that are reluctant to increase their workforce are more often looking to outsourcing and using freelancers as a stopgap solution. Until the economy and health-care insurance situation stabilizes, look for these opportunities to continue to grow.”

In order to find a position that may be a little more stable, Yergen suggests searching through industry-specific job portals. They may not have as many telecommuting opportunities, though, while larger sites, such as Monster.com, offer more results.

Building Job Security While Telecommuting

Landing a telecommuting position isn’t enough — you’ve got to keep it. Creating job security is a matter of taking charge of your own situation. Yergen suggests demonstrating your employer’s ROI for having you as a telecommuting employee: “This can be a monetary benefit such as a reduction in overhead, or it could be immaterial benefit. For instance, if you had access to files out of traditional office hours and as a result could immediately deal with a situation in a way that was more advantageous to the company than if you had only been allowed to maintain a traditional office during traditional hours.”

However, it’s important to note that job security is never a guarantee. It’s easy to slip into a mindset that you have to be available to your employer at all hours of the day since you’re not heading into the office at all — but while boundaries may not increase your sense of a secure position, they are necessary. “While increased availability may enable you to provide more value to your employer, it’s important to have boundaries you set. It one thing if you choose to offer increased availability. It’s another thing entirely if you are expected to be on call but are not paid to be on call 24/7,” points out Yergen.

If you establish those boundaries early in a working relationship, the times that you go above and beyond will mean more to your employers.

Where do you look for telecommuting jobs?

Image by Flickr user Fabio Bruna

Some companies already have policies in place to reimburse telecommuting employees for high-speed Internet access. While there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to get a similar reimbursement for office furniture, there is rarely any harm in asking. If you can make it part of your initial negotiations in a move to telecommuting, you may have a better chance of convincing your employer to give you at least part of the money towards your new office equipment. Thinking outside of the box can make that money stretch, as well. A set sum of money that might only pay for half of a brand new chair will go further if you purchase that chair used.

If your employer isn’t willing to help you out with money towards new furniture, there still may be a way to make the purchase less expensive. Some companies make a practice of selling off old office furniture and equipment they no longer need. If your employer fits into that category, you may be able to get a deal. You may even be able to buy the desk you used to use at the office! Loans of office furniture are less common, although companies that sign out computer equipment may be more willing to consider signing out a desk as well. Another option is to find out where your employer purchases office furniture. If you work for a larger company, you may find that it already has a standing agreement to buy office furniture for less than you can on your own, simply because it buys chairs and desks on a regular basis. Even being able to buy through your company’s supplier can cut your costs.

Unfortunately, not all telecommuters will be able to get their employers to help with office furniture costs. However, it’s worth a try, especially when you realize that even an inexpensive desk will top a hundred dollars.

Share your cost-cutting office outfitting tips below.

Image by Flickr user William Hook

Unclear Instructions

There are some managers who just don’t make a project’s specs as clear as you might hope. I’ve run into situations where a project was completely changed over the course of a single phone call, but even the manager didn’t seem to know what it had been changed to. What makes the problem worse is that if you aren’t in the office, it’s harder to clarify information: there’s no record when the discussion is handled over the phone and it’s easy for an email to be misinterpreted.

A good practice to combat these sorts of misunderstandings is to restate what you understand the instructions to be and send it back to your manager in another email. Not only do you make sure that you’re both on the same page, but you’ve got documentation of the exchange if there’s an issue down the road.

Your Progress

One of the biggest dilemmas about telecommuting is that your manager may not have a clear idea of exactly what you do during the day. There tends to be less communication about accomplishments, which in turn can delay bonuses or promotion. That means that you have to be keeping track of your own accomplishments in a way that allows you to demonstrate them to your employer. That may mean keeping a count of new clients you’ve brought in, or demonstrating improved efficiency — just what your accomplishments may be depends on your job, of course.

Once you have a record of what you’ve done, the next question is how to get it into your manager’s hands. It may seem forward, but simply telling him that you’ve prepared some materials for your annual review (whether one’s on the calendar or not) and you’d like to send them in is a good option. It’s best if you can time it for when you do have a review scheduled, but if you’re company doesn’t routinely schedule reviews, just the fact that you’ve taken the time to prepare some documentation and send it in can be a good way to get it reviewed by your manager.

Work-related Problems

There are potential employee-employer problems far beyond misunderstood that are harder to resolve from outside the office. It’s possible to have a poor working relationship with a co-worker even if you never see him in person, for instance. If there’s a problem and you’re not sure what’s going to be needed in the way of a resolution, it’s worth creating some clear documentation in the meanwhile. Keep a copy of any emails demonstrating the problem, make a note of any phone calls where there’s an issue and track the frequency of the situation you’re dealing with. Whether it’s a matter you need to take to your boss or to HR, having documentation will make most problems easier to resolve.

What kind of documentation do you keep?

Image by Flickr user Scholz

After spending a few years as a self-employed web worker, I’ve assembled a list of a few traits that should be part of the optimal web worker personality. And there is good news, because they are traits that can be acquired through discipline and practice.

• Flexibility. It is extremely difficult to maintain the extremely structured ways of the corporate world when working out of a home office. Web workers have to be able to roll with interruptions, and learn how to get things done without the backup and resources of a whole office. Sometimes this takes creativity and the willingness to do things a little differently.
• Self-motivation. Successful web workers are the workers who are motivated from within to excel in their work, not by the fear of a boss who could be staring over their shoulder at any moment. This trait is especially important for self-employed web workers who don’t have to answer to even a distant boss in an office somewhere.
• Focus. Being a web worker typically means being faced with lots of distractions: uncompleted personal tasks that are visible during work hours, social media, and email. The ability to focus on the task at hand despite distractions is critical to web worker success.
• Organization. Web work means being entirely responsible for keeping track of large quantities of information, and for planning your own schedule. Being self-employed, in particular, requires detailed record keeping for financial purposes even if an accountant is doing the actual calculations.
• Independence. Remote workers can’t ask the boss for direction on everything they do. Web workers have to be willing to take initiative on things themselves without asking explicit permission from a superior every step of the way.
• Confidence. Co-workers aren’t easily available for web workers to ask for backup or a second opinion on their decisions. Along with the independence to make their own decisions, web workers then need the confidence to believe in the correctness of those decisions. Otherwise they will quickly be paralyzed by uncertainty and indecision.

All of these traits can be learned by a person who is self-aware and cares enough about their goals to make a serious attempt at change. Depending on the desired trait, helpful resources might include productivity sites like this one, self-help books or even a career coach. And you don’t need to set out to overhaul your personality completely. If you have a problem focusing, the goal should be to acquire just enough focus to function in your web work setting, not to be able to stare at the head of a pin while the ceiling crashes down on you.

Web workers who love what they do and who are naturally productive might find it hard to imagine that there are people who would actually prefer the more structured life of a traditional office. Yet there really are downsides to web work, especially for certain personalities. Pamela addressed one of these when she encouraged web workers to join groups to fight isolation.

The perceived freedom of being a web worker appeals to almost everyone from the outside. But the reality is that not everyone is suited to it or will actually be happy doing it. It is wise to take a hard look at your strengths and weaknesses, and what you really need to be a happy and productive worker, before jumping into something that is rewarding but challenging.

What traits have you found valuable as a web worker? What traits do you wish you had?

This post is going to look at some of the organizational considerations for building, launching and supporting a successful remote work program. While some of these points may seem obvious for the seasoned web workers in our audience, they do need to be factored into the overall corporate decision-making process when implementing an employee telecommuting program.

Selecting Employee Candidates. While some large corporations, like IBM, have full-blown remote working plans for employees, there are plenty of other companies with programs that allow workers to telecommute a couple of days a week. Choosing employee candidates for such a program can be challenging, because the employee’s job and performance have to be taken into account. People in occupations such as sales, marketing and knowledge workers (like writers and programmers) are ideal candidates for remote work on a full-time or part-time basis, but companies need to ensure they only select proven performers. Choosing the right employee candidates could be a post in itself, but is often the first question large organizations take into consideration when the issue of telecommuting arises.

Appointing a Telecommuting Plan Project Manager. Companies taking the first steps into a telecommuting plan need to appoint a project manager, and treat the plan just like any other important project or corporate initiative. This project manager’s role should include:

• Being the central point of contact for the program, including being an interface for telecommuters and their managers.
• Being the escalation point for any telecommuting program issues, including managerial, technical and communications problems.
• Evangelizing the value of telecommuting for the corporation and its productivity.

Hardware, Software and Security. There are two camps when it comes to providing the required equipment for telecommuting. In the first camp, the employer provides all of the hardware and software for the telecommuting employee. The second camp relies on the employee’s own gear, with minimal investment from the employer. At the very least, employees using their own equipment need to be outfitted with the applications they will need to do their work (such as Microsoft Office) and company-approved security software.

Remote Access. Establishing a corporate telecommuting plan is the ideal time to revisit the existing firewall and VPN provisions and ask the following questions:

• Does the corporate firewall and VPN have sufficient capacity to accommodate all of the telecommuters in the program?
• Management of operating system and software patches and updates for remote users is another remote access requirement. Is the infrastructure in place to push the patches and updates to them remotely? Alternatively, will the telecommuters manage the updates on their own?

Communications Strategy. Telecommuting workers may lack the face-to-face communications opportunities of working down the hallway from their coworkers but have a bevy of tools available to keep them in contact with their colleagues, company clients, and partners:

• Corporate Instant Messaging (IM) services, like Microsoft Office Communicator, can provide secure IM communications and “presence” (showing when a user is available to communicate).
• Commercial IM clients like AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger have less security but still enable “presence” and can be useful to companies who have yet to implement a secure corporate IM solution.
• Many of today’s current-generation laptops include video cameras, which can be paired with an IM client or Skype to give telecommuting staff video conferencing capability, either one-on-one, or in small groups.
• Company meetings can take on a new dynamic when telecommuting employees are involved, so companies should check out Web conferencing solutions. WebWorkerDaily has covered a number of such solutions, including present.io and Tinychat. Adobe Acrobat Connect is another economical web conferencing solution.
• Companies should consider loaning or subsidizing BlackBerrys, or other smart phones, to telecommuting employees.

Training. Corporations should expect certain training requirements from their telecommuters. Some typical requirements are:

• Basic hardware/software troubleshooting.
• Basic home network/Internet connectivity troubleshooting.
• PC Security, including anti-virus, firewall, VPN, anti-spyware and anti-malware tools.
• New processes developed for the telecommuting workers.

Revisit Paper-Driven Processes. Many companies are rife with paper-driven processes like Paid Time Off (PTO) requests and expense reports. These processes can be problematic for remote workers, so should be replaced with online equivalents. Here are some examples of ways to retool such processes:

• Use electronic forms software like Microsoft InfoPath, Formatta eForms Manager, or Adobe Acrobat to put corporate forms online and make them available to remote workers. The capability to sign forms electronically is also necessary.
• Look to Microsoft Word’s track changes and commenting tools to make document reviews electronic.
• Consider Adobe Acrobat for online document reviews and collaboration.

Online Collaboration. With the advances in online office and collaboration tools, companies may want to revisit their software choices for telecommuting workers:

• Google Apps Premier Edition can be a potential collaboration solution for remote workers, if the organization is looking towards the cloud for online collaboration.
• SharePoint may already be in place in the organization. The IT group should test and ensure ready access to the SharePoint server via VPN.

While working remotely may seem like old hat to many of us, there is a lot that goes into rolling out a telecommuting program, particularly in larger organizations. It requires the support of management, IT staff and the prospective telecommuters themselves.

Have you implemented a telecommuting program in your organization? What challenges did you face?

Image by stck.xchng user Teak Soto

Data Security Basics

The biggest concern for many employers is just how safe their data is. An employer can put some very specific safeguards in place in an office environment, controlling just who has access to specific computers, and so on. But it’s reasonable for an employer to be a little worried about just who has access to their information at your home.

Wireless networks are often a concern. Many telecommuters take advantage of unsecured Wi-Fi to do their work, whether they’re at home or at the local coffee shop. For many businesses, this situation is the start of a nightmare: What if someone malicious manages to get your passwords through one of those unsecured networks, or just copies all of the company data on your laptop? While that sort of scenario may not seem particularly likely to an experienced web worker — especially one who knows to take a few precautions — it remains a concern for employers.

Equipment Concerns

Some companies provide computer equipment to their telecommuting employees as a matter of course. Along with your laptop or other equipment, you’ll likely get a training manual or other guidelines setting out how your employer expects you to use this machine. They pretty much boil down to the fact that this is a work computer and should be treated as such.

But you may also find that you’re doing work for an employer on your own computer. While an employer can’t require you to use your computer in any specific way, they will feel more comfortable with a telecommuter who takes a few precautions. Letting your kids use your computer can be a big concern from an employer’s point of view — they’re worried that a child could download a virus or some spyware that endangers not only your data but even your ability to work.

Reassure Your Employer

These sorts of worries aren’t insurmountable, though. Just taking the time to discuss the issue with your employer offers you a chance to demonstrate that you won’t place company information at risk and that you are aware of potential issues. If you can tell your employer about the precautions you take, you may even be able to skip a lecture from the IT department. The precautions many employers care about, whether or not they’re providing you with hardware and software, can include several different expectations. They can vary depending on the company and the sensitivity of the data involved, but taking the following steps can help to ease a manager’s worries:

• Maintaining up-to-date virus protection
• Connecting to the Internet through a secure network
• Limiting the people who have physical access to your computer
• Only using applications that have built-in security measures, such as using SSL

What measures have you taken to reassure your employer that its data is safe?

Image by Flickr user Steve Garfield

In a recent post, I blogged about the telecommuting trend, including a data point from a WorldatWork study that found a 39 percent increase in the number of telecommuters in the U.S. between 2006 and 2008. Many businesses are actively seeking to embrace remote working, and Simon’s post on GigaOM Pro, “Enabling the Web Working Revolution” (subscription required) describes some of the other benefits and research on telecommuting.

Today, Cisco Systems released the results of its Teleworker Survey, in which the networking giant surveyed almost 2,000 of its employees to better understand the social, economic and environmental impact of telecommuting.  Here are a few highlights from the research regarding telecommuting statistics:

• $277 million per year in estimated cost savings for Cisco and employees.
• 47,320 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions saved by reduced travel.
• 69 percent of the employees see increased productivity.
• 67 percent said that their work quality improved.
• 80 percent had an improved quality of life.
• On average employees telecommute 2 days per week.

I talked to Rami Mazid, Cisco’s VP of Global Client Services & Operations, about the research and he said that one of the biggest surprises from the study is that people actually spend more time working when they telecommute. Of the time saved by not commuting, 60 percent was spent working more while only 40 percent of the time saved was consumed by personal activities. Mazid also described his personal use of telecommuting at Cisco. Based on his calendar and work scheduled for the day, he decides whether or not he should spend the time working from his office at Cisco or from home. Even when he goes into the office, most of his team meetings are conducted online using WebEx to accommodate employees working from other locations.

Cisco is also redesigning some of its office buildings with the remote worker in mind. Employees who work almost exclusively from home can opt out of having an on-site office altogether. The offices have areas where workers can drop in to work for a day without having an assigned space. A little over a year ago, Intel did something similar in one of its buildings in Oregon. It was a pilot office focused on open spaces and better accommodating remote workers. The company created a bank of first-come, first-serve offices for people who spend most of their time working from home, complete with storage lockers. Most employees still have permanent cubicles, but this is a great way to make better use of expensive office space when many increasingly spend little to no time in an assigned corporate space.

Cisco has several products that are designed to make it easier for people to work remotely, so it’s clear the company has an interest in encouraging telecommuting. But Cisco walks the walk in addition to talking the talk, and are seeing tangible benefits from encouraging employees to stay home.

What have you seen companies do to encourage telecommuting and support remote employees?

Image by flickr user Tim Patterson

“Most of the best jobs will be for people who manage customers, who organize fans, who do digital community management. We’ll continue to need brilliant designers, energetic brainstormers and rigorous lab technicians. More and more, though, 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.”

Photo by Ste3ve

Godin also points out that this will be a stressful time as many people struggle to find essential, valuable work that is less likely to be outsourced to other locations. This isn’t really a new feature of the work landscape. Peter Drucker was talking about the focus on knowledge workers from the 1950s, and outsourcing has also been a concern for many years.

While outsourcing isn’t new, the rapid increase in the number of remote workers is. According to WorldatWork, “the number of employee telecommuters in the U.S. increased 39 percent, from 12.4 million in 2006 to 17.2 million in 2008.” Businesses are actively seeking to embrace remote working as it lowers overheads — see Simon’s post on GigaOM Pro, “Enabling the Web Working Revolution” (subscription required). Anecdotally, I seem to see more and more people working remotely from home offices and coffee shops.

What does all of this mean for us? As a culture in the U.S., we have moved away from a traditional worker mindset where 9-to-5 office jobs were intended to last for decades and many aspects of our lives were tied up with our employer (pensions, health insurance, etc.). Now we need to embrace a freelancer mindset, with a focus on the work rather than the employer.  This puts many additional burdens on the worker: health care and retirement, for example. Work may last only days, weeks or months, rather than years, and we need to be able to demonstrate our value regardless of whether we are working remotely or in a cubicle. We need to be flexible and ready to embrace new jobs, new work, new technologies and new business models at any time.

I always try to keep an eye on the future by looking for new opportunities and clients. I also make sure that I’m keeping my skills fresh by learning about new technologies and continuing to tweak the services that I offer for clients as the business environment changes.

What do you do to prepare for changes in your work life?

Last summer, we cheekily covered the Macro-1, a kind of lockable and movable cubicle for coworkers and hotdeskers.

A similar product, but perhaps stranger still, is the recently launched OfficePOD, a self-contained office space intended to create a high-quality office space for employees at home. The OfficePOD is intended to help companies minimize the need for centralized, serviced offices and for employees to have a discrete working space within their home property.

Curiously, rather than a one-off capital purchase, the OfficePOD is being made available as a managed service to employers and workers. The pod is envisaged as being situated outdoors, with electricity and connectivity piped to it from the worker’s home. With just over six 45 square feet of floor space, it’s certainly a cozy workspace!

Though an interesting piece of product design, and bearing claim to some green credentials, the OfficePOD seems to be a slight oddity, providing a solution to a problem that most telecommuters and web workers simply don’t have.

Increasingly, as families begin to accommodate multiple web workers and telecommuters within the home, house design will need to explicitly accommodate permanent working areas, rather than repurposing a dining area, spare bedroom or cramped study for work. I can’t help but think that the OfficePOD isn’t a good solution. If you have little space within the home to work, chances are your property doesn’t have a garden or yard that can accommodate a “parked office” outside!

As a design study and exploration of the changing nature of work, the OfficePOD is interesting. As an option for working from home, it’s kinda gimmicky. And at £5,000 ($7,000) per year, it’s expensive.

Other companies, such as IKEA, are probably providing more practical workspace solutions. Personally, I have a VIKA OLEBY tabletop and a couple office chairs at home (less than £150!) that provide me a with a ton of space for a pair of laptop users to work together.

Read more at the official OfficePOD site and at TreeHugger’s The Home Office Shed Goes Big Business.

What do you think of the OfficePOD?

At its heart, the concept of coworking is very attractive to many web workers. You get to work in a creative environment with other professionals, freed from unhappy workplaces, with the option to be as flexible as you choose.

For those unfamiliar with the subject, we thought we’d take you on a brief tour of some highlights from our coworking archives.

• The Coworking Revolution: Your Office Away From Home

Aliza’s introduction to the world of coworking.

• Coworking Evolved

A roundup of interesting developments in coworking, from large companies such as Timbuk2 giving up space for external coworkers, to the roving Jelly monthly “workathons” for coworkers without a permanent physical location to share.

• Design Patterns for Coworking

A handy “recipe book” of wiki-based guides to managing, establishing, marketing and operating coworking communities and spaces, Joseph Holstein’s “Patterns for Coworking” is an invaluable distillation of the collective knowledge of the global coworking community.

• Coworking or Noworking

An exploration of the downsides to telecommuting and coworking, focusing on the experiences of a coworking community founder.

• Coworking, Childcare, Cubes & Crayons

An interesting discussion on the potential of providing childcare facilities to coworkers – with the coworkers themselves dedicating a portion of their time to caring for the children of other community members.

• Creative Classes, Civic Regeneration & Coworking

This post speculates on the potential to revitalize decaying and vacant urban centers with new creative areas, by replacing discount stores, vacant properties and unused public libraries with coworking facilities..

• Coworking in Africa, San Francisco & Bath

A look at the underlying value structure of coworking communities, how they’re evolving in different countries, and the issues existing coworking communities face as they outgrow the space available.

I’ve chosen to focus on posts that are specifically about the mechanics of coworking. If you’re really interested, do delve into our full archive of coworking posts where we have also explored more philosophical issues, such as the design of cities and the impact of telecommuting on society.

On a lighter note, please do bear in mind the  immortal words of The Bugle…

Do you work from home but miss the office atmosphere? Then simply hire a group of people you don’t really like and would never otherwise spend time with, to mill around your living room for nine hours a day.

Share your coworking experiences in the comments.

Ask any telecommuter for a downside, and they’ll likely start talking about the isolation. It’s more than discussing last night’s game around the water cooler. When you’re physically in the office simply doing your job, your presence is a constant reminder to the rest of your team of the value you add to the company. No virtual project management site can replace the spontaneous collaboration that happens in the hallway. And when the boss is looking for someone to play a role on a key project, odds are her first thought isn’t going to be that guy sitting 200 miles away.

So how do you sit in your pajamas all day and stay connected to your peers?

It depends on the company, and it depends on you.

It Depends on the Company

It’s not about you or your job. It’s about the culture. How much conversation typically happens in the hallways? Do folks tend to work from home in the evenings or take their work on the road? How much work is planned in advance vs. what happens spontaneously?

If you want to work for a telecommuting-friendly company, consider working for a nonprofit organization or a vendor that services nonprofits. In general, you’d be hard pressed to find an industry more conducive to non-traditional work environments than the nonprofit sector. I’ve attended a number of nonprofit conferences where I continually meet folks who, like me, work full-time for geographically-distant causes.

Of course, if you are working to provide a direct service you need to be where that service is. However, there are opportunities to work for organizations where they may be grateful to have your expertise without the overhead of having you on site. While nonprofits do traditionally pay less than comparable jobs in the for-profit world, the compensation is not as bad as you might think. And you have the warm fuzzies of working for the greater good. Check out the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) for more information about working in the nonprofit technology world.

Regardless of the sector, whatever you do, don’t expect the culture to change to suit you. If your co-workers rarely log in to a project management/collaboration web site; if they never have conversations via IM or Twitter; if emails are rarely longer than 5 words; if their idea of an impromptu conference call involves a cell phone in speaker mode…they’re not going to change for you.

Last week I was visiting my office, as I do each month, and I asked my co-workers to share with me any challenges they’ve had working with a telecommuter. They expressed that they feel bad that I miss some of the casual hallway conversation, but for the most part not much is different. They IM with me just as much as they IM with each other. In fact, after over three years we’ve developed our own shorthand language that works well for SMS and IM. We use a variety of web-based tools to keep in touch and stay organized. It’s just part of our culture, regardless of where everyone is physically.

If you can’t figure out a way to comfortably work in the culture of the company even when you’re not there – without expecting anyone else to change their habits – then you may be wasting your time. Even if you are perfectly comfortable with telecommuting, have an ideal home office, and have your supervisor’s buy-in, you will probably feel frustrated and disenfranchised in the end.

It Depends on You

So you work for a progressive company that loves to communicate via instant messenger or Skype. They use web apps or VPN and nothing important happens in the office anyway. Home office here I come, right? Not so fast.

Your coworkers can’t see that you’re busy. They can’t tell when you’re in a good mood. Except for scheduled or impromptu phone calls or web conferences, you have to be comfortable showing who you are almost entirely in written communication.

There are some people who are able to comfortably write emails that aren’t too long, aren’t too short, and it’s the same as if they were standing in front of you. They make ideal telecommuters. And there are others who have difficulty coming across as they intend in writing. Those folks should stick close to the office.

Here’s something you don’t want to hear: The successful telecommuter practices Inbox Zero. That’s right, you need to make sure that every email is read and dealt with in a timely manner. You’ll need a system for quickly responding to IMs and other messages, even if it’s to say you can’t deal with it at the moment. Superior electronic organization skills are key to a telecommuter’s successful relationship with peers.

If you can’t keep up with your email and other electronic communication when you’re face-to-face with your coworkers, forget working remotely on a regular basis. You’ll have all your typical email from the outside, plus additional communication from co-workers who can no longer just shout at you from down the hall. Imagine how your coworkers would feel if they asked you a question in person and you routinely ignored them for a few hours…or a few days? Whether it’s IM, Twitter, Skype, the telephone or the inbox, you need to get on top of the communication tool that’s as readily accessible to you and your coworkers during business hours as conversation. It’s not always realistic to expect people to call you for everything.

Fellow telecommuters: any advice you’d give to someone just thinking of taking the leap?

One of the main things to be aware of is that working styles differ across cultures. For example, I’m so used to working with people from the UK and the U.S. that I forget that I can’t be as upfront and straightforward with some of my Filipino colleagues. For us Filipinos, the first few minutes of a business meeting or phone call is usually devoted to idle chit-chat. Also, I can’t give them negative feedback without sandwiching it between positive statements. While I love working with people from different backgrounds, this kind of variety requires some adjustments on my part. As I work with a greater variety of people, I often have to increase the adjustments I have to make.

But doing this has its benefits. When you’re used to your own working culture, you overlook its flaws and weaknesses. By working with people who have a different working style from yours, you’ll be able to see your own flaws more clearly. The first time I worked with local colleagues, it made me see a more personal side to business interaction. This was something I needed at that time, since my communications with international clients were too matter-of-fact. The personal touch I added later allowed me to differentiate myself.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that two work cultures will create conflict, or even clash. The best way to avoid this is by managing expectations from the start. Here’s what fellow WWD blogger Pamela Poole had to say about this:

“If you find yourself working with people from other cultures, my advice is to be very explicit about your expectations and make sure you know theirs from the very start of your negotiations to avoid any misunderstandings down the line.”

Another effect of web working with an international team is that geography becomes a less important factor in business. We can increasingly focus on other factors such as quality of work, experience, and cost. This shift should allow for more equal opportunities for people to compete professionally, where they aren’t judged on nationality.

Also, working with an international team requires you to consider a new factor that you probably rarely thought of before: timezones. This is usually less of a problem for one-on-one meetings, but what if you have to organize a group conference call with members in three different timezones? At least one person on the team will have to make a major schedule change just to accommodate the majority.

To prevent such group sessions from being unfair, it’s important to conduct them only when necessary. No one wants to stay up three hours later than usual just to do collaboration that can be done using a wiki. The good news is that if your team is picky when scheduling conference calls, you’re less likely to waste everybody’s time.

Working with international colleagues may be a challenge, but this has its own rewards. As technology improves and as the global community gets more comfortable to international web work, these challenges will hopefully become non-existent. Do you work with an international team? If so, what effect does this have on your process and working style? Share your tips in the comments.

Image by Miguel Ugalde from sxc.hu