Given the cost of gasoline, if you’re a car commuter, it’s not a bad time to consider whether or not you could convince your boss to let you telecommute some or all of the time.
Convincing employers of the benefits of telecommuting is a good place to start, because you may need to do a fair bit of convincing. Here are the off-the-book strategies that have worked for me:
1. Job #1 I just plain asked my boss. I sat across from her office in a cube, and she knew that I was on task most of the time. I also had a history of working out alternative arrangements in terms of hours because I was in graduate school. So she allowed me to telecommute across the country for four years.
2. Job #2 I annoyed my boss. We were moving into a different facility in which we would have had to share a space. I knew she didn’t want to share with me as she had previously had an enormous space to herself. So I just plain asked again, and was allowed to telecommute most days, and on the days I had to come in, I had an alternative non-rush-hour schedule.
3. Job #3 I arranged it from the beginning. One client hired me as a consultant, and that I eventually morphed into an employee for tax purposes. I’ve always worked at home, and continued to do so.
For more tips on convincing your employer, consider reading a full article on the topic.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I successfully convinced my employer to let me telecommute as a contract worker, only to find that when I’m not on-site, they forgot about me and didn’t send me enough work to make it worthwhile.
Now I’m commuting at “off-rush” hours (ha! not in my city) four days a week for a five hour work day…spending probably 7 hours in the car to work 20.
Thankfully this is temporary until I change occupations. But still. Employers are so 20th century.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I found that if I want work, I definitely have to keep reminding people to send it to me. Funny how that out-of-sight, out-of-mind works….
Of course in a recession, perhaps you don’t want to be invisible and off-site.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
that’s why our offsite workers are on IM. And are required to check in daily. it also helps if they come into the office at least once a week.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hubby telecommutes - his employer is several hundred miles away. It’s looked like we’d have to move several times, but (knock on wood), so far so good. He’s at an advantage because he’s not the ONLY person who telecommutes, so even though the CEO would prefer everyone to be where he is, there is a lot of resistance from other higher ups . The disadvantage is that he is always working - he may get a call from his boss on a weekend, on a holiday, at 10pm. Or he might get Skyped. And if he is requested to fly out of town, or drive to the HQ, he never, ever says no.
But I think it’s worth it.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Just ran across an amusing blog entry on this very subject:
http://velcrometer.blogspot.com/2008/05/work-from-home-for-couple-of-months-now.html