Telework Attitudes Lag Behind the Reality

You may be surprised to learn that most executives say those who work from home for an employer are less likely to get promoted than their desk-tethered counterparts.

Julie Kampf isn't. Kampf, the president of Englewood, N.J.-based executive search firm JBK Associates Inc., knows first-hand how tough on a career telecommuting can be. She tried it and suffered, and she has seen qualified job candidates get overlooked because they dared to inquire about working from home -- even for one day a week.

"For me, working at home was detrimental," says Kampf, who declined to name the employer. She says that when she worked from home in 1993, she put in about 15 hours each workday, and still couldn't please the boss. "Even though I was extremely productive, I was pretty much told `I need to see your face here' by my boss at the time," she said. "It was miserable."

In a recent survey of 1,300 executives, search firm Korn/Ferry International found that 61 percent of them said telecommuters were less likely to get promoted than workers who show their faces at the office. Yet in the same survey, some 48 percent of executives polled believe telecommuters are at least as productive, if not more so, than those who trek to the office.

Kampf doesn't think things have improved all that much in the 14 years since she tried telecommuting.

"As far as we think companies may have come in making work-life balance more of an issue for people, the truth is, we're not seeing it," Kampf says. "This (survey) tells us there's a real distrust of telecommuters, when in reality, you're either a worker who produces or you're not; where you work from isn't the issue. It shows work-life balance issues are in many cases just a touchy-feely thing a lot of companies talk about, but don't take seriously enough."

It's difficult to determine how many Americans telecommute, in part because companies define it differently. But by some estimates, the number is rising. In 2003, for example, about 7.4 million Americans worked from home during business hours at least one day a month, according to the Telework Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy group. The U.S. Census Bureau tallied 4.2 million telecommuters in 2000.

Kampf, now a small-business owner, says one of her four employees telecommutes.

"The work gets done," Kampf says. "I don't have to police anybody. When you have mature adults on your team, you never think about it."

Failing to consider carefully how to measure performance is part of the reason telecommuters might suffer in terms of their career, says Jeffrey Faue, owner of Fauecast Management Consulting in New Brunswick, N.J.

"Companies are used to measuring time, not productivity," Faue says. "If you come in early and stay late you must be a good worker. Forget about if you get the job done."

Faue says it will take a strong, conscious effort to change the longstanding tradition of equating face-time with performance. But, he says, some companies, such as Minneapolis-based retailer Best Buy Co., are making the shift.

Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics seller, embarked on an initiative called ROWE, an acronym for "results-only work environment," that seeks to end the belief that equates physical presence with productivity. There are no schedules or mandatory meetings.

"The company is actually encouraging its workforce not to come to work, and production has gone up," Faue says. "The bottom line is it's not about being there eight hours a day. It's about getting the job done."

The Korn/Ferry survey results come at a time when companies are increasingly being encouraged to figure out how to stay in business without having access to the office in case of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, a terror attack or a national health crisis.

"Business continuity is important," says Nicole Belson Goluboff, an attorney and advisory board member of the Washington-based Telework Coalition. "Even if things such as terror attacks or a bird-flu pandemic don't happen, there's a threat of lesser emergencies like a transit strike, where working remotely would be important to still keep client's and customer's needs fulfilled," she said. "Telecommuting enables that."

Not valuing telecommuters is shortsighted, says Goluboff, who wrote "The Law of Telecommuting," a book that addresses the legal consequences of telecommuting for employers and workers.

Employers tend to save on real estate costs associated with running a business and on productivity lost to commuting to and from an office, she says. Concerns about global warming and the need to reduce oil consumption are mounting.

"These executives in the survey need to be educated about the benefits of telework," she says. "The idea that it could hurt someone's chances of advancement speaks to tremendous prejudice."

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(c) 2007, North Jersey Media Group Inc. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via Newscom.