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seminar: using the Internet winter term 97/98
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The telecommuting organisation |
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| Successful telecommuting involves management support as well as technology support. IS professionals often need to work with managers to help them understand the needs of telecommuters and the dynamics between remote workers and the rest of the organization. | ||
| Minimizing isolation Companies with large populations of telecommuters will also want to provide services and tools that lessen isolation and promote interaction. Comprehensive groupware packages, such as Lotus Notes, can help. So can affordable desktop and small-group videoconferencing solutions. An employees' WWW site can also be a powerful promoter of group identity and collaboration across dispersed work sites. Where practical, however, home workers, cluster workers, and branch employees should be encouraged to travel to the main office periodically for meetings. |
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| Maintaining good relationships
with on-site colleagues To ensure smooth interactions between remote and on-site workers, managers need to make sure that everyone knows how to contact the telecommuter, their work schedule, the projects they've been assigned, and what results are expected from them. Setting the telecommuter up with good communications equipment and procedures will eliminate the need for them to impose on other employees. |
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| Avoiding telecommuting burnout Telecommuting should reduce employee stress, but sometimes, probably because people who choose to telecommute are often highly motivated, it ends up increasing stress. Without a physical separation between their work and home lives, telecommuters may have difficulty stopping themselves from working. Without the office routines to structure time, they may let work overflow into family and personal time. Managers can help by making their expectations realistic for a normal work day and insisting that on-site employees respect the telecommuter's schedule of work time and off time. |
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written by Wolfgang Höfler, Mario Pichler and Christoph Panwinkler
last modified: 14.01.98
