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Telework tools you can't ignore

By Toni Kistner
Net.Worker, 01/22/01

I don't worry about teleworkers in big firms like AT&T, IBM and Merrill Lynch; they're members of well-organized, formal telework programs. It's everybody else that concerns me. According to the International Telework Association and Council (ITAC), the fastest growing segment of remote workers is a grab bag of casual teleworkers, mobile executives and virtual teams. And by and large, the impact of their remote working is ignored by the top brass.

Companies that turn to telework on an ad-hoc basis to save on real estate costs, to overcome retention and recruitment challenges, or simply out of empathy for the harried lives of valued employees do those employees and their companies a disservice by not doing their homework. Telework - no matter how limited or casual in scope - by definition introduces myriad issues across all departments - IT, legal, HR -and ignoring the fact won't make it go away. What's worse, in leaving the issues unacknowledged or minimalizing them, you put your company at risk of everything from employee lawsuits to breaches of network and data security.

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The good news is that some excellent telework tools are cropping up - perfect for companies that haven't made peace with the whole idea of telework. Maybe your organization is small, and doesn't have the resources to hire a telework consultant, let alone a full-time telework program coordinator. Guidebooks and manuals let you do it yourself. Or maybe you'd love to introduce telework as a means of increasing your staff without adding office space, but are afraid of managing workers you aren't in face-to-face contact with. There's a new application service provider that lets you monitor the progress of your remote employees. And for a crash course, there are seminars for managing teleworkers and virtual teams. Here's a sketch of what's available.

* The eWork Guide: How to Make Teleworking Work for Your Organization ($175; available through www.ce.org or by calling (703) 907-7600). Compiled by a panel of telework experts, the guide presents recommended best practices, as a first step towards an ambitious telework certification program ITAC plans to implement within a year or two.

The guide - a spiral-bound 8-by-11 manual - presents a thorough overview of telework issues. Invaluable are chapters on cost/benefit analyses, human resources and environmental concerns. Less useful is the chapter on information technology. Though it does a good job enumerating the technologies and equipment types involved, which will help network managers organize a strategy to handle teleworker rollouts, the section makes no attempt to offer specific technical advice or guidance.

A tip presented under remote access security sums it up: "Consider encryption to keep others from reading your data packets." (Don't cancel your Network World subscription just yet, folks.) Even so, what's there is helpful, maybe more so for business managers than IT. The appendix includes templates for creating telework documents and a lengthy list of additional resources. (One gripe: We found a URL for The Mining Company, a resource site whose name was changed to About.com ages ago.)

* RemoteControl System Pro by Michael Dziak ($149; available for download at Dziak's site: www.inteleworks.com). Flipping through Dziak's manual made me feel guilty, as if a telework consultant's best-kept secrets had fallen mistakenly into my hands. The book is easy to read and engaging, offering plenty of tips and advice for teleworkers and telemanagers. Beyond taking you through the steps of a setting up a formal telework program, Dziak includes a generous number of worksheets and templates that ease the process and make you look like a pro.

But like most telework consultants, Dziak is less familiar with the technical issues network managers are wrestling with. In fact, the eWork Guide does a better job at this. For my money, I'd buy both. (In fact, if any IT pros out there are longing to write a technical manual on telework program implementation, write me and let's talk about doing it together. Clearly, there's a market.)

* Switching gears to software, the first Web-based activities management system created especially for teleworker management comes from Executive Works, a virtual company that has provided business management and consulting for years. The core of the suite of tools is OfficePilot 2.0, which lets managers monitor the productivity of individual employees, teams, even the whole company, using a color-coded bar system. (You can find the tool at www.executiveworks.com; pricing not finalized; probably about $12 to $25 per month per user.)

The system requires remote employees to answer a detailed questionnaire it uses to analyze their jobs and rank the tasks they perform. Workers input daily and weekly tasks and projects on an ongoing basis, and wear different hats, managerial, administrative, student, etc. They assign degrees of importance to each role. On its most basic level, the system monitors workers' progress and displays the data in a color-coded system based on this information. The manager simply pops up the OfficePilot "dash panel," which resembles a team collaboration home page, and at a glance can see what color the employee is today, meaning how well they're handling their tasks. If Bob is violet, he's very productive; if he's melon, he's much less so. (Color-blind managers will have to rely on number codes assigned to each color.)

Beyond basic daily monitoring, managers can analyze employee data over time and create graphs and charts that help identify problem areas. For instance, if a chart demonstrates that a sales manager spends 40% of his time a week on administrative tasks, and only 20% out selling, that indicates the sales manager needs an assistant to free him up to sell more.

While the company is targeting remote workers, it expects OfficePilot to migrate to the entire office.

* Finally, for a concentrated dose of telemanagement, consider attending the American Management Association's three-day seminar "Leading Virtual and Remote Teams" ($1,595; www.amanet.org/seminars/cmd2/2280.htm; runs in major cities. Check site for details). Also, consider Siemens free teleworking seminar (www.siemensrsvp.com) sponsored by APC, IBM, Polycom and Spectralink, which features a keynote address from GartnerGroup. I'll be attending both in the coming months and promise to offer up a full report.