Some people are lucky enough to WORK FROM HOME. They think that just because they’re home all day, that really is like a vacation day and they can spend the entire time running errands or taking care of house projects under the guise of “working”.
Others take their telecommuting a bit more seriously, and end up working longer hours than their office-bound counterparts in order to retain the flexibility of maintaining a home office.
Web Watch has a friend who has moved around the country on a whim — three months in one city, a year in another — just because her job is home-bound. Her employer still believes that she is maintaining the home office at her actual home, but in reality she really can do her job from anywhere… and has proceeded to do so. Her company (she claims) is none the wiser.
Granted, that’s taking WORK FROM HOME to a bit of an extreme, and she doesn’t have an opportunity to work in an office environment. Her company doesn’t have a local office, and there is no need for her to be physically in any particular building at a specific time. She’s one of the lucky ones.
Why? Because HP HAS CHANGED THEIR TELECOMMUTING POLICY, and they don’t seem to get why there’s a problem.
It’s not that HP is trying to eliminate telecommuting as much as possible from their workforce. We get that – there are many, many times that co-workers benefit from being in the same place at the same time in order to successfully collaborate and work together on projects.
But what HP doesn’t seem to understand is WHY people choose to telecommute if they have an option of working in a local office building. Here’s a snippet of what HP says are a list of IMPROVEMENTS AND CHANGES MADE TO HP OFFICES OVER THE PAST YEAR to make working in the office better:
The company has added more than 1,000 conference rooms with new conferencing technology. Gyms and fitness centers and cafeterias have also been improved. Shared spaces have been given a fresh coat of paint, and cleaning schedules have been stepped up.
REALLY, HP?
In order to encourage people to work in an office environment, you had to point out that CLEANING SCHEDULES HAVE BEEN STEPPED UP?
How putrid and awful were your offices for the non-telecommuting staff you already had? How bad would you have let your office bathrooms get for those workers before you decided that THEY were the ones being inconvenienced by not taking advantage of the telecommuting policy?
HP – if you think that dirty bathrooms are the reason people want to telecommute, your business plan needs to be re-evaluated.