Telecooler - Should You Telework?

Written by Erin Rice

Monday, 03 July 2006

A must read with a slightly different perspective.

For those seeking to change careers in order to telework or trying to move their current work home, many questions arise. What are the benefits of telework? What are the tough things? How do I convince my boss to allow for telework? How do I set up my home office?

Can I make a career out of contract work? All of the questions can be summed up: How does one make the best decisions regarding how, when and why to telework? All valid concerns, but let’s move the discussion back one step. Before one can make the commitment to a new work situation centered on a home office, before one can anticipate the concerns of a boss who is being approached with a telework scheme, before one can start to reap the benefits of telecommuting, before all of this, it is useful to know if telework is a likely and positive fit for oneself.

The information that follows is not exactly a “how-to decide” for those considering telework. It is provided more as food for thought. Perhaps it can be the start of a fruitful internal discussion about what could become a major life change.

Many discussions regarding individual compatibility with telework focus on the personality or psychology of the potential teleworker. Does the individual have the needed discipline? The needed capacity to mentally separate home and work? But personality is only a part of the whole picture.

It is very useful to focus on non-personality factors so as to understand the optimum setting for telework, in which many personality issues have minimal impact. After environmental and job factors are thought through, then consider your individual preferences and aptitudes to determine fit.

The three main setting based considerations:

Task set: Telework is possible for almost any office based task and for an increasing range of industrial tasks, the question should be is it appropriate? Or rather, will telework enhance the way this task set is performed? There's no point in engaging in telework unless it will make a contribution to improving results. Task sets that do not lend themselves to telework might prove distractionary, counter-productive and will almost certainly lead to frustration. It is hard to stay disciplined in a frustrating work situation.

Organizational Context: The ideal organization that supports teleworkers is effectively networked, its employees are empowered to act and think for themselves with only loose supervision, and its managers are confident in themselves, the organization and their staffs. Generally such organizations gravitate to a fairly informal approach in which telework is regarded as a quite natural approach for those who prefer it. If this doesn’t sound like your workplace telework might not be a good idea. If you still want to telework, approach the situation with extra care.

Domestic (home and family) Setting: Here there are both physical and emotional aspects to be considered. Physically, the main requirement is the ability to create a defensible work space within the home, meaning an area where as a teleworker you can at least partially insulate yourself from domestic activities when necessary, and such that you can also "close the door on the work" and not have it as a constantly visible presence and reminder when you are trying to enjoy family activities. Emotionally, it’s important that telework should be a "good fit" for the rest of the family as well as for the teleworker. It needs to be recognized that the family may take time to adjust to a teleworker who is physically present but mentally preoccupied.

However, individual psychology/personality is also a factor:

If all the other factors suggest that telework is appropriate, it is still possible that some people may have a personality that makes home-based teleworking inappropriate for them personally. Some examples:

If the work is unsupervised, home based telework means that the individual has to apply self-discipline (or at least self-management) to ensure that an appropriate amount and quality of work is done and that satisfactory results are achieved. Some people have problems with this, and respond better to the clearer differentiation between work environment and home/leisure environment that is provided by commuting rather than an employer-managed workplace.
If the work is open-ended, some people react to the unstructured home-based working environment by becoming workaholics - they find it difficult to switch off from work, needing the externally imposed pressures of "office hours" to assist the transition between work time and private time.
if the work doesn't require regular contact with other people (whether by phone, email, video or other means), some people feel lonely or isolated when working privately at home for long stretches of time; they need the camaraderie of the workplace, even though this may only be a background to the work itself.

This is obviously a very personal matter. One person may well find the main attraction of telework in an aspect that makes it unattractive to another person. Consider the following:

1. Some people find it easier to focus on work without the distractions of a busy office environment, while others need the busy surroundings as a spur to their efforts.
2. Some people optimize their performance when they can work at whatever time suits them personally - early morning or late at night instead of 9 to 5 - while others need the routine of regular hours and external prompting to start and finish work.
3. Some people greatly appreciate the time they can save by not commuting, while others find value in a daily routine of travel, and use the time as a mechanism for transition from work mode to home mode.

Ultimately, it seems that there isn't a "right" or a "wrong" personality for telework. Individual personality, attitudes and work habits can only be considered in the context of a particular setting. Your tasks, home environment and organizational context must be evaluated. After thorough appraisal of all four factors you will be on your way to answering that hugely important question “Is telework right for me?”

A significant portion of the information in this article was adapted, with minor editorial changes, from Is there a "right" psychological profile for teleworkers? a FAQ published on the European Telework Organization website, by Horace Mitchell formerly Director, European Telework Development, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The ETO article credits research by Management Technology Associates and Brameur Limited.

The ETO was a European non-profit telework promotion and resource site that is no longer operating. The European and Canadian governments and business communities have been studying and encouraging telecommuting for quite some time. We can learn a lot from their research and experience.

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