Telecommuting Revisited

In my previous post I talked about the benefits of working from home. Just when I was researching on quantifying the benefits, I spotted a recent article by Ted Samson on Infoworld about telecommuting. Interestingly, Ted covers the same points that I mentioned in my post but has given references to some telecommuting experiments and quantified benefits. 

He drives the point from the perspective of sustainable IT. Ted lists out the benefits:

1. Increase employee productivity

2. Save companies money

3. Benefits the environment

4. Incentive for current and prospective employees

I would also include business continuity as another benefit with incidents like WTC attack or  worst snow fall in the UK having tremendous potential to affect the operations.

For productivity, he cites the example of American Express:

American Express teleworkers produce 43 percent more business than employees at the office, according to Colorado Telework Coalition. Productivity increased 31 percent among the 9,000 telecommuters in British Telecom's workforce of 80,000, according to the Telework Foundation.

 When he talks about productivity boost, he does not mention every single employee. It is critical for the company to have right recruitment structure to hire right kind of employees, set expectations and manage them effectively.

He also has provided data from Canadian Telework Association and ITAC The Telework Advisory Group of WorldAtWork around the cost savings by implementing telecommuting.

According to the Telework Advisory Group of WorldatWork, employers can realize an annual per-employee savings of $5,000 through telecommuting.

... AT&T reports savings of $3,000 per office, for approximately $550 million, by eliminating or consolidating office space. Meanwhile, about 25 percent of IBM's 320,000 workers worldwide telecommute, saving Big Blue some $700 million in real estate costs.

He also refers to Sun's telecommute program where Sun employees benefited by saving on fuel, time and wear and tear of car. He also refers to Cisco's Virtual Office package which gives remote workers and in-the-office experience.

What about India?

All said, this works very well in the US and Europe, but how does it apply in India? 

Accenture, IBM, Texas Instruments and Wipro were planning to start telecommuting on a war footing basis. Cisco is also known for encouraging telecommuting and one of the pioneers in the field. 

Let me try some math here. 

Considering an average of Rs. 1500 is spent on travel per month by an average employee (which would probably on the lower end) and with 2500 employees, the collective expense to be at work in a month is Rs. 37.5 lakhs and close to 85000 litres of fuel. Over and above this, there is wear and tear of the vehicle, traffic jams, health issues due to pollution and climatic conditions.

This is just a very basic idea of the savings. Having said, all this, telecommuting is not something that can be implemented overnight. Careful planning along with responsible behavior from employees is very critical is successfully running a telecommuting environment.

Do share the experience, benefits and challenges that you or your company had while implementing telecommuting. 

Working From Home

Let me say ... I love it.

Working from home is not a new concept but in India, probably it is not encouraged. I am not talking about people who are into free lancing. This about those people who work for large enterprises and works along with a team to deliver services.

Now, why I love it?

1. Freedom: It lets me operate the way I want to and the pressure is far less compared to being nailed down to a ergonomic (or not so ergonomic) chair and the manager or team lead breathing down your neck.

2. More productive: Given the freedom and environment that I am most comfortable with, I get more work done than when I am in office. In fact, I log into start work earlier than what I would do when I am in office. Moreover, when I am at home, I somehow feel more responsible towards what needs to be delivered and does not feel that I am stretching myself.

3. No distraction: Working from home is a bliss if you need long hours of concentration. It is next to impossible to get that level of concentration if you are in office where people bump into you and end up in casual conversations that you sometimes cannot escape and ultimately lose time.

4. Other benefits:

• No commute
• No traffic jams ( and no heart attacks)
• Save fuel
• No pollution
• Not stuck with canteen food (especially when Chinese Combo has banana and curd rice)

These were personal benefits. But, for corporates, there are huge benefits by promoting this culture.

1. Save on the infrastructure - Reduce investment in power, desk space, desktops, phones and other company utilities. Instead divert fraction of this investment to setup better servers and connectivity infrastructure (VPN, Bandwidth, 3G etc.)

2. People care - Employees benefit out of less travel (health, time and monitory benefit). The concerns of work-life balance by employees get addressed as they get to be at home and they feel responsible for their own time.

3. Business Continuity - For any incidents like 9/11, this kind of operation model always helps with such attacks never affecting the services because you don't station all you employees at one place. One recent incident was the snow fall in the UK where most of the services were disrupted. But there was one case where Silicon.com ensured business continuity by having people work from home.

Working from home has its own set of challenges which corporates may dig out. I am going to try an give some answers here for those challenges.

1. Collaboration & interacting with a team - While this may be one of the prime concerns, instant messaging (IM), VoIP and collaboration tools like Google Docs are always there as a solution to this. For the conference facilities across geographies, there are virtual platforms like SecondLife that can be tapped to reduce travel.

2. Monitoring the staff - Yes, this is a problem. Working from home culture is not going to start working just like that. Unified Communications Technology can be used to create monitoring mechanisms. Clear roles and responsibilities need to be defined for the employees who form a team and thereby creating accountability.

For people interested, here is a post about tips for working from home.

There are some things I miss when I work from home. The human interaction, all the gossips and office politics :). But then, there is Facebook, Twitter and IM for that (i know, not for human interaction). These not just things for personal use. Its high time business starts using these and avail the benefits.

C'mon, this is age of the internet.

Having said that, I have some work to finish before I go to office tomorrow.

Macbook Wheel - Notebook With No Keyboard

Innovation getting better ...

- No keyboard
- Hummingbird battery that powers the laptop for full 19 mins before it needs to be re-charged

What's puzzling is how to type using the wheel to scroll to each alphabet. Looks cumbersome ....

Will wait for the next generation ...

Psychoacoustics - No wires

Having room full of sound and brilliant home theater experience with a flat panel of speakers. AND NO WIRES !!

Read this story here

iPod utilities

New generation of iPod is out. What can you do with your old iPods?

This is what you can do:
1. upgrade to iPod classic and introduce split screen interface(Read more)
2. Wiki enabled iPod (Read more)
3. Install iPodLinux and play games (Read more)

For the new ones:
1. Chuck iTunes - Use Floola(here)
2. Sync pocasts to your iPod from any computer using myPodder (here)
3. Rip DVDs for your iPod - Use HandBrake (here)
4. Convert youtube videos for your iPod (here)

Read more

Notebooks: DELL Vs Sony

I was reading a review about budget laptop design.
It compared Dell Inspiron 1420 and Sony VAIO NR160. Factors that are compared are keyboards, profile and looks. It is, however, not a comprehensive list of factors that you would really measure.

My take on this:

1. Sony is easy to purchase in open market whereas DELL is not. DELL leverages on direct sales. There are no DELL kiosks that you will find in any mall in India(atleast I have not seen !)
2. Service centers for DELL are much easier to access as they have call support. On the contrary, there are no service centers you can walk into.
3. Sony is overpriced like it's other products(usually ... I have not had good experience with my Sony Music System and Car Stereo)
4. In DELL, once you purchase with Vista, and later on if you downgrade it, they charge you more for support.
5. DELL can be customised easily online, but Sony is a bit rigid in that.

I would prefer DELL to SONY for it's value for money and on call support. With SONY, I have not seen any presence in corporates the way it is there for DELL, Lenovo and HP.

Yuo can read the original post here(Dell vs. Sony: Budget laptop design).

The author, in a way, recommends HP pavilion. Also, from what I have read online and seen till now, HP seems to the one which satisfy the domestic sector with it's high quality servicing.

HP is my next buy I guess ....