Telecommuting is a good thing for both employees and employers in many ways — including less stress for workers and increased productivity, Kim Elsbach, a professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, told Convene Podcast’s Ashley Milne-Tyte. But there are potential downsides for you and your career, she warns, including the risk of fewer promotions and lower performance evaluations compared with more visible coworkers. “It’s to your benefit to be aware of those potential risks so you can head them off,” Eisbach says.
Milne-Tyte also talks to Karen Malone, vice president of meetings and sales for HIMSS, a happy telecommuter, about the nuances of working remotely and how she and her staff make it work.
Listen here:
http://convenesite.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ConveneEp6-1.mp3Intro music composed by David McMillin
Read the full transcript:
Ashley Milne-Tyte: Welcome to the Convene podcast. I’m your host, Ashley Milne-Tyte. In this show we’re talking about telecommuting. The number of Americans who work from home has leapt 100 percent during the last ten years, and the trend looks set to continue. We have advice from a meeting planner who works remotely full-time…
Karen Malone: I think you need to think about your work style as well as your life style. I think the kind of energy you thrive off is really important.
AM-T: And a professor of management who’s studied what your presence at the office can signify…
TK: Just being seen at work during normal work hours is related to perceptions of dependability and reliability.
AM-T: Coming up – the pros and cons of telecommuting. Convene magazine is published by PCMA, the Professional Convention Management Association, and it offers fresh perspectives on meetings and events. You can find Convene online at pcmaconvene.org
Karen Malone is vice president of meetings and sales for HIMSS – the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society. She’s been with the organization for almost 20 years and she used to live and work in Chicago. But her commute from the suburbs was an hour and a half each way. She was getting tired of it, especially of having to waste so much time on the train. So she started off working from home one day a week. Then it went to two, then three. Finally, about a year ago, she and her husband moved to Tennessee, and she now works from home full-time. I got her on the phone at her home office. She says the change was an adjustment, but not a hard one…
KM: For me it’s very easy because I’m pretty much a routine type of person. And so I found that I would keep the same schedule as if I was going to the office, I’d get my coffee in the morning every day…
AM-T: She’d run out, get it, come back, and settle down to work. She tries to take a proper lunch but admits it’s usually a pretty short break. And she says having a dedicated work space – an actual office at home – is helpful. In fact at her organization that’s the rule. To do this, you must have a dedicated space – no working at the kitchen table.
AM-T: What has been the difference between working remotely and working at the office? I mean there are the obvious things like you don’t have our colleagues around you but what are the things perhaps we don’t think about, those of us who don’t do it all the time?
KM: The really funny thing is, it definitely is a lifestyle change for me, but one of the biggest changes is the lack of exercise. I don’t get as much exercise because I’m not commuting back and forth – I used to walk back and forth to the office or walk a little bit to go outside and grab a bite to eat for lunch, things like that. So the lack of exercise has been a challenge for me. So what I’ve done to address that is, because one of the benefits of being home- based is I gain more time in day. I’m not wasting 90 minutes each way commuting. Therefore I take that time and I’ve joined a gym, a health club.
AM-T: She heads there at the end of the day. But it’s not just less moving around that took some getting used to. There’s the whole other people thing.
KM: You mentioned, you know, with the colleagues in the office. But also, the lack of interaction with colleagues outside the office. The meetings, the social interactions, lunch activities and things like that that I’d partake in when I was in the office and in the city. So what I try and do now is I come to Chicago every four to six weeks to meet with my staff and when I do that I try to also schedule time with our suppliers that I can have face time with them as well, and colleagues in the industry.
AM-T: I mean you said you’re a routine person, you’re self-disciplined. Would you say that it’s really important to have those traits before you embrace this as a new work style?
KM: Absolutely, I think you need to think about your work style as well as your life style. I think the kind of energy you thrive off is really important. Frankly if I didn’t have the amount of travel I have and the opportunity to have the level of face time I have with my staff and other colleagues, I would find this work environment very challenging for me because I do feed off and thrive off the energy of face to face interaction.
AM-T: So she says it’s important to consider that aspect of your personality as well as how disciplined you are before you make the switch. And that did make me wonder…
AM-T: Have you ever encountered anyone in your work who has started telecommuting and then thought, ‘Oh, this isn’t right for me, I’m going to go back to the office?’
KM: I actually do. I know of someone in our office who was working full-time telecommuting and is now back in the office three days a week. Because she found it was hard for her to really focus while she was working at home, she just found that she could focus much better, and she needed that office interaction.
AM-T: Interaction isn’t only good for you socially, it’s also good for your career. Kim Elsbach is a professor of management at the graduate school of management at UC Davis. One of the areas she looks at is how perception works at the office.
Kim Elsbach: So what we found in a study of face time in a corporate office context is that just being seen at work during normal work hours, no interaction required, no knowledge of what you’re actually doing, just merely being seen passively, is related to perceptions of dependab...
