The Social Implications of Telecommuting

Posted on 03. Nov, 2010 by LaymanHarang in Sustainability

So, what happens when the boss walks in and announces that you or your team can now, at long last, work remotely, or from home, or telecommute, or whatever term is used? First, everyone goes to the nearest watering hole and enjoys a long and well deserved happy hour. Next though, for many, the reality starts to sink in…

• Most of my friends are at work.
• My apartment is small.
• I don’t have a separate office at home.
• When will I get out –
• Various other forms of mild panic set in.
• Freedom can be a peculiar thing. What to do?

First things first, not everyone has a makeup that is conductive to telecommuting. There is nothing wrong with needing or wanting the social interaction that offices provides, but before you resign yourself to life in a cubical allow yourself to explore migrating out of the office a step at a time. Working from a virtual office does not need to be an all or nothing proposition. Many will start working from home one or two days a week. Doesn’t the thought of not playing in Friday afternoon rush hour sound good? Wouldn’t Monday mornings be a bit easier to tolerate, if you were working from the kitchen table in your slippers? The process of moving to a virtual office can be exactly that, a process. Many of you will want to get home and never see the office again, but not so for many others.

So, what does this mean?

• Telecommuting is not “all or nothing”.
• Many of us will start out slowly, one or two days a week.
• Most offices’ are not going away any time soon.
• There are new social networking tools that allow us to react out to out co-workers when we need to. This topic will be explored in a future post.

Where does this leave us? Telecommuting or working from a virtual office is coming for more and more of us. It makes sense for a variety of reasons. We will look into some of those reasons in future posts, but for now, we would encourage you to look forward to a more free, flexible and productive virtual workplace.

Thanks again for visiting. We hope that you continue to find value here and come back often.

We look forward to your comments.

www.karmanngroup.com

Tags: The Paperless Workplace