I am thrilled to tell you that my book, “How to Avoid Going to Work without Quitting your Job” is nearly complete. After the many, many months of work on this, and multiple rounds of feedback, I am finally putting the  very last tweaks and touches on it and then will be able to make it available to you, the cadre of telecommuters and would-be telecommuters who are looking to improve your skills and remote work success.

When it’s ready I will be offering a significant discount to those people already on my mailing list for just a short time. But if you’re not on it, you won’t get the discount. So make sure you sign up now (just provide your name and address in the form on the right - you’ll get my free report too).

Watch for my release - coming very soon!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting, telecommuting books, telecommute, work from home, work at home

I’m so excited. I just came across a fascinating article in CIO.com titled “Everyone Works at Home at Chorus“. OK so the title isn’t very exciting. But the article is about a company named Chorus that moved entirely to telecommuting. They’ve shut down all their offices besides their data center and all their employees work 100% of the time from home.

Now the exciting bit is that they went about this, for the most part, correctly. They didn’t just throw all their employees out of the offices and say “Go work from home”. Instead they put together a plan and processes, considering everything from technology requirements, to their home workers’ environments, to ’softer’ issues such as people interactions and work relationships.

The article is broken into 3 parts. The first part focuses more on the technology and, while interesting to folks setting up the IT, probably isn’t as exciting to the rest of us. The second and third parts are how they handled things like IT support for their home workers and then how they handled the communications, relationships, and management of these people. That third part is definitely the most interesting to me.

As I said, they really thought all this stuff through and did it right. They made it easy for their home workers - made sure their needs were addressed and looked at the human factors and not just at the bottom line. One part I read said their workers had a hard time because when they made the switch they did it all at once and the employees found themselves missing the social interactions of being in the office. I immediately thought they should have gone for a more phased approach - starting the employees working a few days at home and then gradually increasing it to full time telecommuting. I was glad to see that the manager of that group said the exact same thing in the very next paragraph. People really do learn!

Definitely worth a read if you want to see how some companies are handling the challenges of telecommuting in a very real way.

Technorati Tags: telecommuting, telecommute, work from home, work at home, work at home moms

I’m really excited. I have been recording interviews with seasoned telecommuters to give away as a free thank-you gift for anyone who buys my telecommuting book, “How to Avoid Going to Work Without Quitting your Job”. (My book is coming summer 2008 - if you’re not already on my mailing list, sign up now in the signup on the right side of this page to get an announcement and special rate when the book is ready).

I just completed a fascinating interview with the CTO of National Semiconductor. Although not a telecommuter in the purest sense of the word, he lives thousands of miles from the folks he works with and works remotely most of the time. I learned a lot from talking to him about how he overcame issues and made the arrangement work.

I’m really close to getting my book out and available now - I have one more interview to do and a few final tweaks to the book and the web pages and then it will be ready for release. Don’t miss it - and the free interviews you’ll get when you buy it!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting, remote work, telecommute, work from home, work at home

Sometimes even a small break from telecommuting can make working from home feel like a bit of an adjustment again. Fortunately, it’s not difficult.

Last week my kids’ daycare was closed all week for their annual July 4th holiday week. My husband and I took the week off from work and my in-laws came down to visit. The house was full - 6 people (and the kids have the energy of 2 apiece), all day. We had fun and got lots of quality family-time.

This morning I got up and hit my email inbox in my pajamas. After a short time the kids woke up and I got everyone dressed and fed and dropped the kids at daycare. When I got back home I was struck by how quiet it was. At first it felt lonely - I felt a shadow of that same feeling when I started telecommuting and when my husband got a ‘regular’ job after running his own business out of our home for a while. I was surprised at how quickly it could come back.

But the good news is as soon as I sat back down to work I was so busy going through a week’s worth of emails and urgent tasks that were needed yesterday, before I knew it the day was nearly over and I hadn’t given a thought to who was or wasn’t in the house.

In fact, if I’d gone into the office I’d have spent half the day chit-chatting with coworkers about how my vacation went, how their July 4th long weekend was, etc and would not have been half as far through my backlog as I am now!

Yes, working from home can even be an adjustment for a seasoned telecommuter. But it’s a small adjustment!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting, telecommute, work from home, work at home, work from home mom