Careers

Telecommuting/Work at Home:
Knowledge Workers

Low cost, high bandwidth computer information technology coupled with the demands of two wage earner families, differing work/learning styles, the changing nature of business and ecology, have made telecommuting, in some cases, the best way to bolster worker productivity and health. Collaborative technologies allow group teleconferencing; distance learning; Internet based demonstrations and whiteboard sessions; sharing of online knowledgebases, discussions, documents, calendars and customer information; and secure, instantaneous and anywhere email, web, PDA, paging and cellular phone access. Further these collaborative communications can be as structured or unstructured, in depth or superficial, and spontaneous or planned as the participants desire.

While face-to-face team and/or customer meetings are important at times, it may not be cost effective, necessary, beneficial or even feasible on a daily basis.

Office buildings may not become dinosaurs overnight, but with long, stressful city commutes, cramped cubicles, relocation costs, dual wage earner families that have less time for their children, escalating fuel prices and the damaging environmental impact of roads, parking structures and automobiles, telecommuting and work-at-home should be considered as alternatives for many types of workers. While the "digital" handshake may not be as warm, in the long term it may be more rewarding for all concerned. Further, these advantages may apply not only to business, but also education, medicine, science, art and other walks of life. Perhaps the word "tele (far) commuting" is already obsolete since it connotes the necessity of commuting- unnecessary, perhaps even harmful in many instances. Perhaps we are all, in the broadest sense, knowledge workers - wherever we work in the global digital economy.

Some workers have better and quicker computer and telecommunications access at home than at work, making them more, not less productive than if they worked in an office- notwithstanding the already enumerated personal and societal benefits of working at home. It is my hope that given the above, and the death of the factory control, repetitive hyperspecialization notion of work, knowledge workers and companies will increasingly reap the rewards of work at home.

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