Working from home earns positive results

Send your employees home so they can get some work done.
It’s the way to go, said Virginia Tax Commissioner Janie Bowen, who oversees a teleworkforce of 616 — or 62 percent of the Department of Taxation’s nearly 1,000 statewide
employees.
“It turned out to be an incredibly good business decision,“ she said.
Bowen joins a growing number of top managers nationwide who have implemented a telecommuting, or work-at-home, program.
In 2007, 21 percent of corporations surveyed by the Alexandria-based Society for Human Resource Management let their workers telecommute full time, up from 19 percent in 2006.
Part-time telecommuting grew faster — 33 percent in 2007 from 26 percent in 2006.
Sending employees home to work can produce impressive results.
“We estimated cost savings of $141,000, primarily the result of decreased turnover,“ said Robin Mack, the tax department’s telework coordinator. The department analyzed the program for a year.
Recruiting, hiring and training costs plummeted. About $45,000 of the cost savings came from a jump in productivity.
“We’re able to take more calls and do more work” because teleworkers are happier and more productive at home because they can work without disruption, Mack said.
“Eighty-one percent reported increased job satisfaction,“ department spokesman Joel E. Davison said.
“I absolutely love it,“ said Crystal Alston, a tax specialist and mother of a six-year-old who teleworks five days a week in Chesterfield County.
The 10 hours that Alston figures she saves a week not having to trek back and forth to the office enables her to spend extra time with her daughter and devote attention to the accelerated online college course that she’s taking.
She doesn’t miss the traffic jams, gas and toll costs, coffee shop stops, dressing up, potential car problems and vehicle wear and tear.
Implementing a telework program made perfect sense, Bowen said.
Compelling factors were the increasingly high cost of gasoline; the ever-present challenge of attracting and retaining good workers; the potential for operational cost savings; employees wanting a flexible work schedule; and the many jobs that could be done better at home.
The trick is to do it for the right reasons, Bowen said. Plan carefully, get middle management on board, do a practice run, roll out the program in phases and tweak it as needed, she said.
“The biggest thing is you have to make a business case for doing this. If you look at it as strictly an employee perk, you’re going down the wrong road.“
Sending 616 employees home to work didn’t happen overnight. Rolling them out in waves enabled the department to observe how things worked, what workers needed and what changes were needed.
Phase one began in 2001 when major government cutbacks forced the department to close eight district offices and send home to work 22 percent of its full-time work force — 219 field auditors and collectors.
Phase two started in November 2006 when 80 customer service reps and data capturers began working from home full time. They comprised 8 percent of the department’s workforce.
“We trained them and sent them home and we monitor their performance” by computer, Mack said.
Phase three rolled out in groups of 50 starting in January 2007. This group of 317, or 32 percent of the work force, performs various jobs. Unlike the first two groups, these workers buy their own computer and broadband service, and they work at home only one day a week.
Obviously, not all workers in a company can be sent home. Tax department teleworkers are selected based upon their job duties and work performance.
Not all workers wanted to work from home.
Teleworkers can be called back into the office if they perform poorly at home.
Support for a telework program starts at the top, Bowen said.
But, middle managers must be brought on board, too, or they could “torpedo the process. It’s difficult if management is not supportive,“ she said. “It requires a little more thought up front in terms of how to do things.“
How, for example, will managers conduct staff meetings if their workers are at home? “Maybe you have to have people meet via conference calls,“ Bowen said.
Alston, the Chesterfield teleworker, said she gets called “every couple of months or so into the office to come in and catch up on things.“
How are managers coaxed out of the mindset that they can’t effectively operate unless they see their staff? Managers were told that “they have to move to management by results, not by seeing people in their seats,“ Mack said.
Managers were offered online training about how to manage teleworkers.
Then, senior managers tried teleworking. “We all did it one day of the week,“ Bowen said. “We learned that you have to plan your work” and what you can and can’t do at home.
“I thought it was wonderful,“ she said. “I have a lot of technical stuff that needs to be read and signed. In the office, I’m constantly getting interrupted.“
The managers, “for the most part, have been on board,“ Mack said.
In one poll, 71 percent of teleworkers stated they are more productive at home and 66 percent of managers concurred. Thirty-two percent said they remained as productive as they were in the office.
Teleworkers are 10 to 20 percent on average more productive working from home, Davison said. They perform higher than those who work in the office.
The tax department is supportive of its teleworkers.
For the first two groups of teleworkers, it provided all their office equipment. All call costs are billed by the phone company directly to the department.
Team leaders in the office are available when any teleworker needs assistance. All have access to the Intranet and freely participate in discussion boards with co-workers.
Data security is a critical component of the program. The department must protect taxpayer data. “Remote workers connect through a secure system,“ Davison said. Their data gets encrypted.
What’s next? “I have not decided,“ Bowen said.
Maybe sending more employees home to work. Maybe expanding the days of the one-day teleworkers.
“Hopefully, as time goes on, we won’t need as much office space.“