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Telework SUCKS Big Time

Jul 5, 2011 » by Jody

Back in the days when dinosaurs walked the earth, someone came up with the brilliant idea to allow some people to telework.

In 2011, people are talking about telework like it’s the most awesome, latest and greatest INNOVATIVE idea to hit planet earth in centuries!

Here are the top 10 reasons Telework SUCKS big time.

10.    Telework is not a new idea no matter how many fun and catchy marketing spins you put on it (‘My Work’, ‘iWork’, ‘My Mobile Workplace’ etc).

9.    It’s not flexible. If your telework days are Tuesday and Thursday and now that doesn’t work for you anymore, you have to write a new proposal and get approval to change your days. And the answer will most likely be ‘no’ (You should be grateful you got to tele-work in the first place. It’s a privilege, not a right).

8.    Everyone is Sludging the teleworkers. “I wish I could sit at home all day eating bon bons like the teleworkers. Those of us in the office do all the work!”

7.    Telework has limited access – it’s only for the special people. Haven’t been at the company a year yet? Tough. Too low on the totem pole? Tough. Your boss decided your job isn’t right for telework? Tough. You don’t have the appropriately designed home office? Tough. I don’t like you. TOUGH!

6.    Nobody believes you’re really working if you’re TELE-working.

5.    In order to telework, you need to ask PERMISSION. Where are we, grade school??

4.    People who telework aren’t seen as dedicated as those who spend 60+ hours each week in the office.

3.    People STILL believe the best and only way to build great relationships is face to face. It’s a sad fact those poor tele-workers do not get enough dosage of face time – therefore their relationships are sub-par.

2.    Tele-work is a label we put on people who are not working where they should be. The office!

1.    It’s all about management controlling where you do work. And that SUCKS big time.

My dream? 50 years from now nobody will be talking about flextime, compressed workweek, tele-work, reduced hours, remote working, virtual working or home-officing. We will not be segmenting people who do work through lame labeling.

LIFE will happen. Work will happen. Wherever. Whenever. Period.

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  • Jennifer

    AMEN!!

  • Anonymous

    The conversation usually begins with “How can we make our employees more productive?”

    Of course, that’s the problem. You can’t make people more productive. Instead, you can make tools available to them which have the potential to help them get more done.

    Wait, isn’t one of those tools the ability to telework? Nope, not if it’s some kind of perk. Unless it’s available to everyone, without reservation, then it’s a crutch.

    The problem is that working remotely is characterized as some kind of big deal. If it is, that must mean you by default don’t expect anyone to get much done unless you watch them. Distrusting your employees, even a little bit, is a fantastic recipe for a demoralizing, unproductive and unattractive workplace.

    • KellyK

      I think you’re totally right that the ability to work remotely should be seen as a tool, not a perk.  I think that would get rid of a lot of silliness in discussions about telework.  No one would feel the need to say that telework isn’t appropriate for doctors or receptionists, any more than they’d need to specify that a scalpel isn’t an appropriate tool for fixing a car, or that you can’t do surgery with a toaster. 

      All the policies and rules around telework treat it as a perk that you have to “earn” rather than as a tool whose use is based on the task you’re trying to accomplish with it.

      I also really like what you said about trust.  Distrust is a huge demotivator, and you can’t actually make people better workers by not trusting them.  Sure, you’ll catch the guy who’s downloading illegal music and naughty videos on his company computer (and I hope you would some other way regardless), and you can make sure everyone “looks busy,” but you’re not making sure people put out good quality work or keep customers happy or make good decisions. 

  • http://www.noregretsconsulting.com Kurt Buehlmaier

    I have teleworked and have experienced many of these things. I work from home, because it actually allows me to be MORE productive! Also, people act like attendence is performance…WRONG! “I was at work for 10 hours.”–So what?! What did you DO during those hours? I could’ve been more productive in half the time at home, but because of antiquated perceptions about what “work is” people act like teleworking is like the tree that falls in the forest when no one is there to hear it; does it make a sound? If you are not “at” work (meaning the office) are you really “doing” work? It is not about where or when, it’s about what you produce!  

    • Maru Yakalskovich

      Sometimes, nomenclature will make a difference. I’ve consciously stopped saying ‘I’m at work’ or ‘I’m on my way to/from work’ etc. as if work was a place. Work’s something I do, either from home or at the office. So ‘I’m at my computer’ (home) or ‘I’m in the office now’ (as opposed to at my computer at home, or on the train in transit, etc.) Being in the office for 10 hours doesn’t automatically mean I claim I’ve been working for 10 hours. It could have been an office party…

  • http://twitter.com/jefflin Jeff Lin

    Telework should be a part of everyday life

  • Cris

    To me, having to come into the office everyday and face a monitor to represent productivity operates much like a hazing ritual.  The club ‘o management has deemed they had to do it, so everyone else has to follow suit. Its a power crutch and fear based – they get an office, you get a cube et al.  Especially in this time, there’s not much reason at all to force this to play out the way it continually has.  

    Telework is more like throwing a shiny thing in front of a favorite employee. Somehow it has to be earned and rewarded appropriately.  Again, not much actual sense involved.

    • http://www.gorowe.com Cali Ressler

      @Cris – great to hear from you! “Not much actual sense involved.” Nope. Your comments remind me of all the conversations we hear at client sites about who has an office and who doesn’t, who sits by windows and who doesn’t, who’s moving to which cube, and on and on. How about “Who’s reaching their *results*??”

      And now I’m going to get on a tiny soapbox (I promise – it’s tiny): Many organizations that claim to have “open offices” or “no offices” still aren’t focusing on results. In our experience, you can do whatever you want to the office configuration, but it isn’t going to affect the ability to produce results if no one knows what the results are or how they’ll be measured.

      Come back again – we want to keep hearing from you :)

      • Cris

        Definitely Cali! that soapbox can be as big as it needs to be ;) Actually, has change ever happened without a soapbox? hm…

        ROWE is so instinctual, I can’t emphasize that enough. It aligns with human nature, whereas corporatism goes directly against this.  At all levels (from sitting all day to the degree of constant stress our adrenaline has to satisfy…)  Of course, i’m relating to ROWE in a physio/anthro sense, but i certainly it applies.  We hunt and we gather, but even modern (albeit, not enlightened) day work structure derails us into artificial hunting causing anti-motivation, and gathering non-result focused objectives. Logically work today doesn’t even fit with our basic notions of survival, let alone the happiness component, sadly. What kind of statistic needs to be apparent to realize happier people actually ‘do’ more? 

        (btw, I have that vision of Joe vs. the Volcano w/Hanks sitting under the flickering fluorescent lighting and deadened grey desk as I write this…:)