Many of us know that telecommuters can get more done working from home, both on work activities and personal activities, due to time savings and increased focus. But I recently discovered a specific situation in which I, as a telecommuter, found myself getting less done.

In a typical work-day I get started working early, in my pajamas. I work hard for stretches of time, but like all people, I need the occasional mental break. During the times I need to step away from my work I might read and respond to personal emails, throw a load of laundry into the washing machine, pay a few bills, etc. Because I save at least an hour each day I telecommute from avoiding the drive to the office and because I avoid the gossip and non-work-related chit-chat of my co-workers I have more free time during the day to go the extra mile on a work project or get some personal tasks checked off my list.

So I’ve always felt there are really only up-sides when it comes to personal productivity and telecommuting.

However, I recently spent nearly 2 weeks at home with my husband and children during the Christmas holidays. During quiet moments (such as when the youngest was napping and the older child was watching a movie) my husband would happily disappear into the office for an hour or two to work on personal tasks on his computer. However, I found myself avoiding this as much as possible. Sure, I’d spend 5 or 10 minutes a day glancing through personal emails or handling some paperwork on my desk. But I kept it to a real minimum. I found other ways to avoid going into my home office – any little excuse I could. The dishes needed washing, I needed to work on a grocery list, anything.

At the beginning of the holiday I had grand plans on working on more articles such as this one and all kinds of other tasks. But I managed to avoid almost all of them.

This morning as I laid in bed resentfully staring at the alarm clock that had just gone off for the first time in 2 weeks, I thought about this odd avoidance. I realized that it’s because I associate sitting at my desk in my home office, in front of my computer, with work. I mean my day-job work. I knew I was on a nice long vacation and therefore resisted anything that felt like that kind of “work”.  My husband, who drives into the office most days and only telecommutes once or twice per week, didn’t have such a strong mental association and so he didn’t have that difficulty.

It was an interesting revelation. Definitely something for telecommuters to be aware of, especially if you have some important activities you want to get accomplished during a holiday. I think next time I have a vacation at home I’ll try moving my laptop into my bedroom or the dining room – and see if it makes any difference. Think about it for your next vacation!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, work from home, remote worker, work at home moms

You may have noticed I haven’t posted in a while. Where has Nicole been?

Well the answer is I’ve been commuting! Work has gotten really hectic lately and on top of that, I’ve had more meetings lately where I had to attend in person. So I’ve been driving in more than usual.

This morning I was crawling along on the freeway in heavy traffic and heavy rain. I looked at the clock and it occurred to me if I were working at home I’d have already been working for nearly half an hour - and I wasn’t even at work yet.

It just drove home (no pun intended) how much time is wasted commuting. And when work is busy, the reality is we telecommuters don’t take the time saved avoiding the drive for our own personal use. Rather, we use that time to get our overloaded plates a bit more under control.

So, employers, pay attention. Telecommuting really helps you in tough times get more out of your employees!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, work from home, work at home moms, remote worker

Many telecommuters like to come into the office occasionally to get a little bit of ‘face-time’ with their peers. But if you go into the office only to find your peers are all working from home that day, it can be a frustrating experience.

Companies that make it possible for many of their employees to telecommute are providing a great benefit to those employees, and also achieving the huge gains that I have written about in previous articles. However, when you find yourself in a team where more of your co-workers are working at home than at the office, it can be hard to find opportunities to get the face-time you’re looking for.

In a very diverse team where there are people working from home, or scattered geographically in different parts of the country or world, there will always be a few people who, for whatever reason, prefer to work in the office than at home. However, when these people come in day after day and find themselves sitting in a sea of empty cubicles, even these die-hard office workers will eventually throw their hands up and join the ranks of the telecommuter.

However, these are the people you count on seeing on the few days you are organized enough to get showered and dressed first thing in the morning (as opposed to at 3pm), fight the commute, and get yourself into the office for some face-time. Eventually you find that even the few people left have stopped coming in and now you’re the one sitting in that sea of empty cubicles.

This can be very frustrating as there truly is benefit to getting occasional direct contact with your team members. It helps strengthen relationships, provides opportunities to discuss work-related topics in a more spur-of-the-moment style, and provides you some social interaction to break up the days of sitting alone in your home office. Don’t get me wrong, there are ways to overcome all these issues – but if you have the opportunity to meet with your team in person now and then, it’s one valuable tool.

A simple way to solve this situation is just a little coordination. Raise the topic in your team meeting if your boss approves. Or just send out an email to your coworkers. Work with your team to pick one or two days per week that people will focus on coming into the office. That doesn’t mean everyone has to come in on the agreed-upon day(s). But rather, if you’re going to try to come in, that these days will be the ones you’ll aim for.

Another option if you only have a few local people on your team is to just coordinate on a weekly basis with them. For instance, each Friday you could exchange email with those folks and ask how their schedule is looking and which days the following week they think they’ll be coming in.

While telecommuting can be a huge boon, a cost and time saver, and a way to balance your personal and work demands, a little face-time can go a long way. So when you do plan to go into the office, make sure there are people there to make your trip worthwhile!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, remote work, virtual presence, telework, work from home, work at home

CNN has an article today that may help a lot of people. The title is “Companies that will hire you to work at home“. It gives examples of some large companies that hire people to work from home or offer the option to their existing staff.

And even if you aren’t willing to jump ship and change companies right now, the article includes some talking points to discuss with your own company when trying to convince them of the merits of telecommuting. And having a list at your fingertips of other well-known companies that allow telecommuting is another great piece of info to bring to the conversation!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telcommute, remote work, work at home, work from home moms

The ever-increasing wonders of technology allow us to do some amazing stuff today that no-one would have guessed 10, or even 5, years ago. Technology now helps us in ways that allow us to blur the lines even more between our personal and professional lives. While some people cringe at the idea that work intrudes even further into our personal lives, the same technology also allows for some movement in the opposite direction too – in small ways that can improve our lives significantly!

Yesterday I had to take my minivan in for a minor service. My husband and I both worked from home that day. We scheduled the service for around lunch time.

When it was time to go we both packed up our laptops, hopped in our cars, and met at the service station. We left the minivan, got in our other car, and drove to the nearby downtown area. My husband then pulled out his iPhone and did a search on locations nearby that had free wireless access. After a few moments of tapping on his handheld screen, he found a café/deli and off we went.

We found it quite easily. It was a nice little restaurant, offering sandwiches, salads, coffees, etc. And, of course, the ever-important free wireless access. Since the weather was pleasant we ordered lunch and then grabbed a table outside. Out came our laptops, we got our wireless access working without any effort and then both of us accessed our VPNs to get onto the internal networks of our respective companies. I had all the same access as if I were at home or, for that matter, in the office. We were well into our work when our sandwiches arrived.

We were able to work while we ate, occasionally stopping to exchange a friendly comment with each other (or rather, commiserate over some frustrating corporate politics we were facing). The hour and a half passed by in a productive, yet very pleasant manner.

Before we knew it my husband’s phone was ringing – the minivan was ready. I was almost disappointed to leave the sunny, outdoor seating we had. We packed up, picked up the minivan, and headed home.

Although we’d been gone from the house for over 2 hours, we’d managed to get quite a bit of work done during that time. We’d been online to respond to coworkers’ emails and IMs. We’d completed an important errand so that the following weekend could be spent in quality time with our kids instead of having to schlep them to the service station. Oh, and don’t forget the ever-important fact that we’d both done far less driving that day than if we’d gone into the office – saving gas and helping the environment.

Wow – that’s a win-win-win-win-…uh…-win (did I get the number right?) situation! Now I bet you can’t do THAT without leaving the office!

Think about what kinds of things you could get done while still working productively, if you had more flexibility over where you work. Telecommuting even once or twice per week can make a huge difference in today’s hectic lifestyles.

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, remote worker, work from home, work at home moms

There are right ways and wrong ways to run a meeting that has virtual participants and yesterday I had the privilege of seeing it done right!

Yesterday I went to an all-day face-to-face meeting with a team in my organization. There were about 15 people attending in person and 3 attending by phone. Usually when I attend these kinds of meetings, the people on the phone are on their own. Sure, there’s a polycom speaker and the presenter is sharing his/her screen so the virtual attendees can see the slides. But that’s it. No attention is paid to whether the attendees can here the whole conversation - especially when people in the back of the room, furthest from the mic, are speaking. There is no concern over whether the virtual attendees can hear, can keep up, or can even tell who is speaking.

But this was quite different. Tony, the person leading the meeting and doing most of the presentation, really cared about the folks on the phone. He constantly asked them if they could hear. When someone who wasn’t near the mic was talking he’d either hand them the polycom or, if they were too far, he’d quickly summarize what they said when they finished – speaking quietly into the phone. He also took copious notes on his computer, while sharing his screen – summarizing what each person said.

But it wasn’t all just what Tony did. Apparently the whole team had a culture of taking care of their virtual team members. Someone had brought a small webcam and either she or someone near her always made sure the web cam was pointing at the current speaker, turning the webcam, balancing it on a Kleenex box or water bottle to get it up high enough if need be. They made sure if someone got up and wrote on the whiteboard, that the webcam took that in too.

The whole effort of the team was quite amazing. This is a team I haven’t interacted with very much before, so I don’t know if this was just a fluke – perhaps driven by Tony who seemed to make the most effort. Or perhaps this is how the team always behaves. But regardless, I was very impressed.

So if you’re a telecommuter or remote worker who can’t make it into the office for face-to-face meetings because you live too far away, consider yourself very lucky if you work in a team like this one. If your team is not quite so conscientious, perhaps you can recruit a few friends to take this approach for you and see if they can spread the attitude to the rest of the team.

Most importantly, when you are attending a meeting in person and there are other virtual attendees, make it your business (as much as you can) to be the Tony in the room and take care of those virtual attendees!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, remote work, virtual presence, telework, virtual teams, remote teams

I’m going on vacation tomorrow - and I won’t be bringing my laptop!

That’s such a freeing thing to say. The problem with all this great technology that allows us to work from home so easily is that it allows us to work from home so easily. We duck into the office to check work emails right before we go to bed, or here and there on the weekend. And we see something important so we just “spend 5 minutes” taking care of it. Which becomes 10 minutes, etc.

If you’re really unlucky, your coworker in another part of the world will see your IM go active when you check your email and start to chat with you when you really want to go to bed. I got caught once by a local coworker who was on pager duty and there was a problem with my service. Of course, as soon as he saw me, he pounced on me and then I was on the phone for the next 1/2 hour.

Anyway, enough complaining. I sometimes fail to follow my own advice from my book (shameless plug here - sign up on the right side of this page to get on my mailing list and get access to my book) about shutting down my laptop when I’m done with my workday.

But the nice thing about going on vacation - an actual trip - is that I’m not going to schlep my laptop with me so I *won’t* be able to check email whether I want to or not.

Uh-oh. My teammate just signed me up to get a PDA for work that will allow me to check email, etc - as I have to test some compatibility for my own services on the PDA. Thank goodness it won’t arrive until after I leave for my trip!!!

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

Halloween is a perfect example of when the ability to telecommute helps a parent maintain work/life balance.

I have 2 small children in daycare. Telecommuting today allowed me to stop working at 10:30, be at the daycare for the halloween costume parade at 10:45, and be back home again by about 11:15. Not much time away from work, but being there was important for my kids and I have some photos that I’ll cherish forever.

If I’d had to drive back and forth to work today, I’d have either had to miss a *lot* more work, or miss the parade itself.

I was talking to another dad at the parade who told me he was “working from home” today. He did the air-quotes with his fingers, implying he wasn’t really working at all. I don’t understand this. Why do people think that the occasional telecommuting is an excuse to not work? It gives telecommuting a bad name and makes people think in general that if you’re telecommuting you’re not getting work done.

I think this is, in part, a corporate culture thing. For instance, I have a number of co-workers at my company who worked from home today with the full intention of ducking out to be involved in their kids’ school activities… and to leave work a bit early to get started on trick-or-treating before dark. But these people did work the majority of the day. I’ve been on phone meetings with them, so I know. Perhaps it just depends which company you work for and what your peers do?

So don’t be a sheep! If you tell your boss you’re “working from home” today, please do get your work done. Otherwise if you ever want to start telecommuting more frequently you may be surprised when your boss says no!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, work from home moms, telecommute, telecommuter

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting much lately. That’s because I haven’t been telecommuting much lately! Aaarrrgghhh!

My boss had another 3-day face-to-face where he flew in team members from around the world to meet together. Luckily for me it was, again, in California so I didn’t have to travel. But I did have to commute. I am reminded each time I have to be in the office for an 8am meeting why I like so much to telecommute!

I will admit, the face-to-face meetings were helpful. We’re working on a major project right now with a very tight deadline. Being in person all day with my European counterparts (who I can normally only speak with by phone for an hour or two first thing in my morning before they go home for the day) was a big change. For a frequent telecommuter, all this face-time is really useful. I can really make the most of it to build up relationships - even with those who are in the same office as me.

On the downside though, a few days later I came down with an awful cold - the second reason I haven’t been blogging much lately. The cold, I’m sure, was a direct result of being in contact with so many people (the first day there were about 30 of us in one room!). All that hand-shaking passed around too many germs.  Honestly, I think we have to come up with a new greeting method that doesn’t involve touching palms. How about making brief contact with the backs of our hands. Or our elbows or something? There’s got to be a better way!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommuting secrets, remote workers

Trying to convince your company to  let you telecommute, but having a hard time because you work for a small company that hasn’t figured out the technical details yet?

Small businesses don’t have the army of IT folks to figure out how to create a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and support a remote access software solution. These details can be complicated and need to be done right - to protect the company from potential security threats. So it may be easier for your company to just say ‘no’ than to do the extra work. It’s not that they don’t want to support your work/life balance, or the environment, or save their own money by having you work from home. It’s just that it’s too complicated.

But if you read my last blog post, I found an article that describes some alternatives to make the external access a bit easier. So try taking this article to your head of IT and see if he can use the information to come up with a solution. Once you get past that hurdle, perhaps your boss will be more open to the telecommuting conversation.

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