Telecommuting Meet Career Advancement

By Rebeldad Brian Reid

Telecommuting took a hit a couple of weeks ago. A survey of executives conducted by Korn/Ferry found that 61 percent of execs believe that telecommuters will damage their career prospects by working from home. But that's not the weird part. Those same executives believed overwhelmingly (78 percent) that telecommuters are at least as effective -- if not more so -- than their in-office colleagues.

I've argued here before that telecommuting, for the huge swaths of the workforce for which it is practical, is enormously beneficial. It gives employees the option of working where they work best, it eliminates time-sucking commutes, it can aid in work-life balance, it reduces the expense of office space and so on. And while I have no desire to belittle the importance of face-to-face contact in corporate culture, let me be honest: the pleasure of discussing "The Office" at the office is hardly worth the trouble of driving there.

Coverage of the Korn/Ferry report only added to the head-scratching. A manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying that "face time, being present in the office, has nothing to do with what it takes to advance." And Mark Mehler, who runs a recruiting firm called CareerXroads is even less hip on the chit-chat than I. "Water-cooler time costs money," he told the LA Times.

Full disclosure: I'm now a full-time telecommuter, and there hasn't been a time in the last five years where I haven't worked -- at least part-time -- from home. In fairness, I'm a pretty good remote employee. I'm responsive, I keep up personal relationships with far-flung co-workers, I can block out the distractions of home.

Like most balance tools, telecommuting isn't for everyone, and I don't expect K Street to become a ghost town anytime soon. There is a kind of a person who thrives on having an office that is separated by time and distance from the rest of their life, and there are plenty of folks for whom regular face-to-face contact is vital, either professionally or psychologically. But the traditional office is no longer a necessary tool; I have a cheap, hugely powerful PC under my desk at home, and the monthly charge for my broadband connection to the Internet phone and business phone is almost exactly what I used to be paying in Metro fares. What more could I ask for?

So if this is an arrangement that could work for so many, why the conviction that telecommuting is a career-imperiling choice? Is this just a matter of changing attitudes, or is there some hidden truth to the anti-telecommuter argument?

Brian Reid writes about parenting and work-family balance. You can read his blog at rebeldad.com.

By Brian Reid |  February 1, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Flexibility , Workplaces
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