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March 1

Maine telecommuters support work-at-home, with occasional office check-ins

By Jessica Hall jhall@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

Lauren Smith sees her co-workers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., just two or three times a year, but she's constantly in touch with them.

Telecommuting from her home office in southern Maine, she stays in sync with the staff at the travel firm AllTrips.com by working on Mountain Standard Time. She also sometimes works at night or on weekends to troubleshoot problems.

"People don't expect me to be at my desk at all hours, but if I'm available to help, I do," Smith said. "Sometimes that means working awkward hours, but it's a trade-off for being able to work long-distance."

Studies appear to confirm it: Telecommuting boosts productivity, reduces absenteeism and increases employee retention. Also, those who work at home using technology to communicate with co-workers and clients actually work more hours for the same pay.

Those findings don't seem to matter to Yahoo Inc., which surprised many with its recent decision to require all employees to report to the office starting June 1.

Yahoo stirred debate because its decision was made by a female CEO, Marissa Mayer, 37, who last year returned to work just two weeks after having her first child. Some critics said the change would be bad for working parents who want more flexible hours and might prompt some Yahoo employees to quit.

"To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices," wrote Jackie Reses, Yahoo's human resources chief, in the memo issued last week.

"Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussion, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home," Reses wrote.

Telecommuters in Maine said this week that they see both sides of the argument. They see themselves as more productive working from home and away from distractions, but they agree that a certain amount of face-to-face collaboration is helpful.

"Sometimes there's no substitute for hashing things out together on a whiteboard and solving a problem," said Mike MacDonald, of Cape Elizabeth, a software engineer who has been telecommuting since 2005 and gets together with his co-workers four times a year.

His co-workers are spread across five continents, while his boss is in Toronto and his employer is based in California.

"There's something to be said for collaboration. If you're sitting in a room together, you can bounce ideas off each other. But it can also lead to unproductivity -- people getting sidetracked," Smith said. "I found a previous job at an office incredibly distracting."

Don Mackenzie, also of Cape Elizabeth, has been a telecommuter for the past 15 years. He agrees that working in an office can be less productive.

"The things I like about working from home is that I can work uninterrupted and get through those tasks that require concentration. At an office, people have constant access to you," Mackenzie said.

According to a Stanford University study released last week, productivity increased 22 percent at a Chinese travel agency that gave its 16,000 workers the option to work from home.

In December, a University of Texas study showed that employees in the U.S. who work remotely work five to seven hours more per week than those who work exclusively in the office.

Employers such as Unum, TD Bank and Bank of America have workers who telecommute from Maine.

"The obstacles or barriers to telecommuting seem to be more organizational, stemming from the manager's reluctance to give up direct supervisory control of workers and from their fears of shirking among workers who telecommute," according to a study issued in June, called "The Hard Truth about Telecommuting," by Mary Noonan and Jennifer Glass.

(Continued on page 2)

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