# WENDELL JOICE, *U.S. General Services Administration*

## Federal Telework Topics

**Introduction**

This paper provides an overview of selected topics and issues regarding
the federal telework initiative. The discussion is organized around:

> • Origins of the initiative
>
> • Successful aspects/programs
>
> • Challenges
>
> • Helpful partnerships
>
> • Selected Telework Program Variations
>
> • Current Events

For purposes of this discussion, the terms "telework," "telecommuting,"
and "Flexiplace" are synonymous and interchangeable and each is defined
as a work arrangement in which an employee regularly works at an
alternate worksite such as the employee\'s home, a telecommuting center
(telecenter), or other alternate worksite which saves that employee a
more lengthy commute (distance‑wise and/or time‑wise) to a main
worksite. According to recent federal definitions, "regularly" means a
minimum average of 1.5 days per week.

To be considered telecommuting, the work done must be in paid status.
Thus, for example, working at home extra hours for which the employee is
not paid is *not* telecommuting.

# Origins

The existing governmentwide telework initiative, formerly called
Flexiplace, has been in place since 1990. Flexiplace was established in
response to workforce concerns first documented by the Hudson Institute
and later by the Department of Labor. The essence of these concerns was
a prediction of a turn-of-the century drop in the quality of the labor
pool and the consequent fear that federal recruitment/retention would
not be able to compete with private sector salaries. The plan was that
initiatives such as Flexiplace would help boost the labor market value
of a federal government job.

There is a rich history regarding the origins of federal telework not
detailed here. Instead, the reader is referred the following website and
a document entitled "The Evolution of federal Telework"' for a full
account of the origin of the program as well as other details related to
this paper: http://policyworks.gov/telework.

# Successful Programs

Despite its chronological age, federal telework is still a relatively
new program because of its slow evolution in the federal bureaucracy.
This fact has a bearing on how success is defined for federal telework
programs. For typical mainstream programs such as training, one can
simply implement the program and then judge success by the results
produced (trainee ratings of the effectiveness of the training,
subsequent performance measures, etc.). With countercultural programs
like telework, however, a key success measure, in addition to results
produced, is simply getting it off the ground and/or getting it past the
pilot stage. Another success measure is the level of implementation or
adoption.

### Success in Getting off the Ground

We are now more than a decade into the federal telework initiative and
most federal agencies have at least a semblance of a telework program.
This was not the case in the early years of the initiative. During that
time, success was achieved by those agencies that managed to be in the
first wave of telework program implementations.

To begin with, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department
of Interior, and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service of the
Department of Agriculture were the first to overcome management and
organization culture hurdles and successfully implement programs under
the Flexiplace banner. It should be mentioned that these are not the
"first ever" federal telework programs (see the Evolution article) but
they are the first to be implemented under a government-wide program. It
is difficult to assess a common success ingredient here since the three
organizations differ in both function and organizational culture. For
example, unlike the other two, APHIS had a track record of taking on
progressive initiatives. If anything, the key common element appears to
be that each had the benefit of a talented, motivated, and skilled human
resources professional spearheading the program.

# Federal Telework Center (Telecenter) Initiative

Another successful implementation was and still is the federal
telecenter program. A telecenter is a cooperatively used and supported
satellite office that is conveniently located near the residences of its
users. Any agency with employees living near a given telecenter can
lease workstations at that center for telework use. This program was
established, by Congress, in 1993 to examine the feasibility and benefit
of telework centers. It began with three telecenters in the DC area. The
program now has 17 telecenters in the DC area, several more sprinkled in
different parts of the country, and a few federal arrangements with
privately run centers nationwide.

The successes of the federal telecenter initiative are that:

• after being roundly rejected by federal agencies in initial
Congressional hearings, the planned pilot implementation was still
accomplished;

• it continues to have Congressional support and funding;

• it is an on-going demonstration of successful partnerships between the
federal government, state and local governments, and private sector
organizations; and

• it has consistently demonstrated telework program effectiveness.

In terms of the program's effectiveness, evaluations have shown the same
basic positive results garnered by other telework applications: improved
employee morale/quality of worklife, job performance, congestion,
reduced commute, etc. Also, telecenters have provided innovative
benefits as emergency response measures for agency facilities that have
been deactivated because of disasters or other events (Northridge
earthquake, Oklahoma City bombing, Atlanta Olympics bombing, etc.).
Finally, telecenters have been used as part of the reinventing
government effort to "bring government to the people" by serving as
convenient government service outlets (thus, agency customers share the
same reduced commute benefit experienced by teleworkers).

On the other hand, the telecenter initiative has not fared well in terms
of utilization levels and the ability to be self-sustaining without a
subsidy. Generally speaking, this initiative suffers low utilization
rates because of (a) the on-going management resistance to telework and
(b) the problem of double overhead. (The concept of "double overhead" is
discussed later in the section of this paper entitled "Challenges.")

An exception to the telecenter initiative problem is the National Guard
program which has focused on converting armories into distance learning
centers (during off-business hours when the Guard typically convenes)
and telecenters during business hours. The Guard has an expansive and
growing nationwide network of these centers; the combination of the
Guards solid funding base for this project and the dual nature of these
centers serves to enhance their utilization and support their existence.

# Successful Telework Innovations

Following are examples of telework program successes which extend beyond
program implementation.

General Services Administration New England Region (GSANE) Telework
Program

Like many urban areas, Boston is suffering from massive traffic
congestion problems. It has a massive public works program dubbed "The
Big Dig" taking place at the same time as the rebuilding of Logan
International Airport and the upgrading of numerous local roadways. The
result of all this construction, much of which is in the shadow of the
GSANE office building, is constant traffic congestion and long,
expensive commutes for GSA workers.

As a response to the traffic congestion, the GSANE office established
and surpassed a 10% teleworkforce goal. Recent figures show that:

• 23% of eligible workers work from home one or more days a month,

• 30% use technology to perform their work outside the office, and

> • there has been a steady increase in the number of teleworkers and
> the number of days spent outside the office since the inception of the
> program.

During the same period of time that this program has been operational,
the GSANE has been recognized for outstanding performance in the
following areas.

Other successfully applied telework program features include:

> • All employees were invited to apply for the program regardless of
> the position they held;
>
> • The region established a Telework Committee which screened the
> applications and chose the participants including some who were
> selected despite reservations on the part of their managers. The
> committee decided to approve those disputed applications to test the
> limits of the telework concept. (Managers were given the discretion to
> terminate the agreement in the event of poor performance, and were not
> held accountable for problems resulting from a telework assignment
> they had opposed.) The committee expected that some of the selectees
> would fail and was willing to accept that short term outcome in order
> to establish a mechanism to improve the performance of a marginal
> worker. However, none of the selected teleworkers required corrective
> action and managers reported that employees whose application they had
> opposed were working harder and better than they did at the office. By
> the second phase of the program, some of the most skeptical managers
> had become active teleworkers and supporters of the program.

-   Each teleworker was briefed on how to conduct a safety survey of the
    home work environment and given a form to complete as part of their
    agreement.

-   GSANE hired a professional facilitator to conduct an in-depth
    meeting with managers to gauge and respond to their reactions to the
    Telework Program.

-   The Telework Committee directed that all employees could be equipped
    with cellular telephones, laptops, and docking stations. This, along
    with other steps, resolved the technology and equipment concerns
    initially raised as a major impediment to effective telework.

-   To expand the program, the Committee decided the most important
    element of a successful program was how people perceived their jobs.
    Why were they working from the office every day? Was it just habit
    or was there some particular reason their function could not be
    performed from another location? They conducted a region-wide
    exercise and broke tradition by asking employees to justify why
    their work should be performed at the main office (as opposed to an
    alternate worksite).

**Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)**

This program, implemented in 1995, has documented a successful reduction
of expensive facility requirements and a savings in facility funds. It
began with a telecommuting plus alternative officing program in 22
Railroad Safety Inspector field offices around the country. Safety
Inspectors who volunteered for the program, telecommuted full-time from
their homes. Their traditional office space was eliminated. By January
1997, the FRA had closed seven field offices, reduced space in two
others, and saved approximately \$80,000. In fiscal year 1997, the FRA
closed 5 more field offices and reduced space in 3 offices resulting in
an annual savings of \$84,644. In fiscal year 1998, FRA closed 6 field
offices and reduced space in 4 offices, resulting in a cost savings of
\$87,285. The FRA estimates that this program is currently yielding
about \$200,000 per year in facility cost savings.

**The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)**

The CPSC also has implemented telecommuting throughout its field
organization with successful decreases in facilities costs. Currently,
95 of CPSC\'s 130 field staff work from their homes. Since its inception
on a pilot basis in 1995, CPSC has saved roughly \$3 million in space
rent.

**The Department of Education (DOE)**

In 1996, DOE successfully used an alternative officing solution to deal
with budgetary problems. Using a combination of hotelling and home
workstations, DE was able to reduce facility costs in regional field
office locations. These savings enabled DE to save 24 jobs that
otherwise would have been lost.

**Government-wide Depression**

While there are numerous individual successful telework programs across
the government, the governmentwide incidence of telework is
unimpressive. According to recent figures, less than 2% of the federal
workforce is teleworking as compared to 10% of the nations overall
workforce. While some agencies have good programs, no agency has a
program to match the 25 or more percent levels reported by some private
sector organizations.

# Challenges

As might be expected with any culture change initiative, there are
numerous challenges to the growth of the federal Telework initiative. A
significant portion of these challenges are rooted in individual and
organizational resistance to change, especially when it comes to
ingrained attitudes and behaviors.

# Management Culture

Without a doubt, the reigning number one challenge confronting the
telework initiative is the existing management culture which is still
vigorously resisting changes such as telework. Despite a wide array of
specific concerns expressed by managers, the basic issue is that the
world is transitioning into new ways to work and new work cultures. Most
current managers were trained and excelled in operating in an industrial
era workplace and now they are being asked to change ingrained attitudes
and behaviors. It's not easy and, for the most part, it's not happening.

# Worker Culture

Because management resistance has depressed the growth of telework and
received most of our attention, another looming culture change challenge
has gone unnoticed until recently. While workers generally endorse the
use of telework, they have shown reluctance in making changes such as
giving up permanent workstations and/or working in boundaryless
organizations. As telework grows, this will become a significant issue.

> Resistance by Organizational Support Functions: Human Resources,
> Information Technology and Facility Management

Rule of thumb guidance recommends that organizational support functions
such as human resources (HR), information technology (IT), and facility
management (FM) be heavily involved in planning and implementation of
telework programs. Moreover, to expand the size and success of telework
programs, it is recommended that telework programs be tied into other
organizational objectives such as efficient utilization of resources
(equipment and facilities). The problem here, however, is that usually
these functions are geared to supporting traditional on-site work
activity and have displayed the same resistance to change commonly
associated with managers. For example, organizations have reported that
their IT functions impede telework because of fears and inadequate
provisions regarding security of their networks, poor capability for
supporting large scale remote access, insufficient
resources/skills/procedures for remote technical support, and lack of
awareness of new software/hardware options available to facilitate
telework arrangements.

Regarding facility management, some agencies have sought to take
advantage of potential cost savings experienced by private sector
organizations by reducing their expensive main facility requirements via
use of telework. At the very least, agencies have wanted to make more
efficient use of main office space originally assigned to teleworkers
but which now sits vacant for large periods of time. These agencies have
reported problems with managers not wanting to give up space, with
facility managers troubled by "raindrops" (the transitional situation in
which only a few personnel in each organization telework; thus, instead
of large contiguous vacant spaces available for new use, there are drops
of spaces here and there). Consolidating such drops of spaces and
utilizing "reduced boundary" organizations is a change that troubles
both facility managers as well as their customers.

# Double Overhead and Telecenters

Another challenge in facility management focuses on telecenters and
double overhead. As pointed out earlier, there has been resistance to
reconfiguring main office space to take advantage of telework and save
on facility funds. Agencies that use telecenters must lease the
telecenter workstations used by their teleworkers and, therefore,
experience a double overhead cost for each teleworker using a telecenter
(overhead for existing main worksite workstation plus lease cost for use
of telecenter workstation). This, clearly, is not an efficient use of
funds and is a primary deterrent to the development of telecenters.

Successful use of telecenters will require managers to abandon the
current culture favoring the use of main office space. Overcoming this
cultural bias will enable agencies to utilize alternative officing in
their main worksite facilities, exercise more efficient space
management, and reduce facility costs. Savings from reduced facility
costs would more than offset telecenter fees. However, the current
management culture is very reluctant to "give up space," even for
immediate cost savings.

There is also a legislative issue lurking here. Currently, when agencies
save facility costs, those savings go back into the central treasury and
are not received back into the agency budget. This, of course, is a
disincentive to saving on facility costs. GSA has a bill before Congress
which, among other things, would rectify this situation.

# Legislative/Policy Arena

A challenge that recently has become significant is the impact of dated
government operating policies. There is an array of established
regulations, laws, policies, procedures, etc. that is out of sync with
the teleworkforce era. The challenge is to review, revise, and clarify
these policies as needed. Changing established policies and procedures
in a large bureaucracy is more than a notion. Examples of such policy
arenas are OSHA, Workers' Compensation, travel and other areas of pay
policy, duty station, tax laws, etc.

**Small Agencies**

An interesting and somewhat ironic challenge focuses on small agencies.
While the federal government has its cabinet department and larger
independent agencies, it has 50 to 100 small independent agencies that
go unnoticed by most of the public. Contrary to initial expectations
that smaller agencies with smaller and less onerous bureaucracies would
be the first ones to adopt workforce changes such as telework, the
opposite has been the case. Small federal agencies, as a group, have
been more resistant to telework than have larger agencies, as a group.
Our challenge is to understand the special needs and cultures of these
agencies in order to make more progressive headway with them.

# Additional Challenges 

The following challenges confronting federal telework are, clearly, not
limited to the federal government or, in fact, to just telework. These
challenges face all sectors and many of the human resources initiatives
for progress in the 21st century.

# Measures of Productivity

As with many human resources initiatives, telework is constantly
challenged to produce "hard data" regarding its impact (productivity
figures, cost projections/justifications, etc.) To some extent, this
focus on hard data shackles progress to 20th century production line
thinking. It is also an outgrowth of managerial risk aversion which
seeks to have numerical analysis be responsible and accountable for
decision making. One of the well known problems here, of course, is the
long-acknowledged inability to establish credible "productivity"
measures on the performance of typical white collar occupations. Despite
the recent popular focus on measures and productivity, there has been no
real progress in this area and, fortunately, a few experts are beginning
to question the wisdom and value of this pursuit. Finally, another
developing issue is that the focus on such measures which relate to
"quantity" of work produced is overshadowing much-needed focus on the
quality of work. Quality assessment, obviously, is even more removed
from traditional "hard data" measures than is white collar productivity.

The measurement problem is not limited to such human resources issues.
Adequate measurements for assessing costs, pollution impacts, and
traffic congestion impacts are also missing or, at least, overly
burdensome.

Still, it must be said that credible assessments and measurements are
valuable and needed for the workplace. We just need to be more creative
and innovative in our approach to this issue.

# Mandates

The issue of mandates versus encouragement and /or other incentives is
an ironic twist to management progress. The old "x" style command and
control model of management has been devalued over the past few decades
in favor of a more "progressive" approach involving concepts such as
participatory management, incentives, and encouragement. For example, a
"reinventing government theme" espoused by the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (formerly known as the National Performance
Review) is "Negotiate, don't dictate." The anti-mandate sentiment is
heavily promoted in the management community.

The twist is that, while concepts may change, habituated and ingrained
human behavior is far more resistant. When it comes to mandates applied
to them, managers freely adopt the anti-mandate vie; yet they are not so
quick to adopt other counter cultural initiatives such as telework. This
is abundantly evident in the excruciatingly slow pace of adoption of
progressive workplace initiatives such as flextime and telework.

In all fairness to managers, they are not some different species
inimical to workers. It's just that, as leaders, they are supposed to be
on the leading edge; consequently the focus of change reaches them
first.

The problem question arises, "How long can we afford to wait for the
slow, if ever, change in culture to implement much needed changes in the
federal (or any) workplace?" Some organizations have addressed and
responded to this question by determining that they cannot afford to
wait and have turned to mandates as an efficient means to effecting
much-needed change. Interestingly enough, after the expected grousing in
response to mandates, many organizations report a successful workforce
adjustment to the mandated initiatives. It seems that once the
organizations realize they have to adjust and do so, they find that they
are comfortable after all.

Following up on this organizational change issue, there is a growing
issue commonly expressed by managers who say they would be willing to
adopt telework in their organizations for some of the workers but not
for others. Because of fears of grievances or other hassles, they decide
to avoid telework (or any other progressive change, for that matter)
altogether. There is clearly a legitimate issue here. That issue is that
some workers are ready for new ways of working and some are not. The
population of those who are not ready consists of more than just
marginal workers; it also includes workers who, like many of the
managers, are not ready to change ingrained habits and attitudes toward
working. This brings a new challenge to the art of management: managing
differences. Managers will need to learn to implement, facilitate, and
manage progress for workers who are ready for change while continuing
traditional management with those who are not. This must be done fairly
and equitably. For this challenge, organizations would be wise to
consider providing support from human resources and change management
experts.

# Training and Attitude Change

There is often the suggestion that more training is needed to reduce
resistance to change and bring about progress. Perhaps, in some cases,
this is true. In many cases, however, we are dealing with ingrained
attitudes and behaviors. As human behavior experts will tell you, this
is not fertile ground for intellectual interventions such as training.
In this area, an array of experiential and reinforcement interventions
are needed, such as mandates, support mechanisms, pilot projects, and
new administrative ways of incenting/disincenting change.

# Partnerships

The federal telework program has benefited from solid and supportive
relationships with a variety of partners from the public and private
sectors, both nationally and internationally. The most enduring and
active partnerships are with the International Telework Association
(ITAC), the Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments, and various
pro-telework members of Congress. Involvement with ITAC and a national
telework promotion campaign, Telework America!, has resulted in
partnerships with numerous private sector organizations such as
telecommunications firms, management consulting firms, etc. Work with
telecenters, traffic mitigation, and emergency response efforts is based
on collaborative relationships with state and local governments such as
Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Los Angeles, Maryland, Virginia, and California.
Finally, participation in an on-going information exchange with
countries such as Japan, Canada, and various European nations has
yielded successful partnerships.

**Selected Telework Program Variations**

# 

# Telework Programs for Workers with Disabilities

Prior to the beginning of Flexiplace (1990), accommodation for workers
with disabilities was one of the very early uses of federal telework. At
that time, such use tended to be a fairly random and infrequent
occurrence across federal agencies. Over the years, accommodating
workers with disabilities has been a constant aspect of federal telework
promotion; it has also, however, been one of the most under-used. To
some extent, however, this has been due more to the lack of job
opportunities for workers with disabilities than it has been due to
telework program failure.

**Department of Defense (DOD) Demonstration Program**

Impressive, however, has been the telework activity at the DOD, home of
the first formal federal effort to utilize telework arrangements for
people with disabilities:

"The DOD program grew out of a larger effort to create new opportunities
for persons with disabilities in the DOD civilian workforce. The goal
was to create a diverse workforce in which at least 2% of all civilians
employed would be employees with disabilities. Flexiplace was seen as a
way of meeting that goal by offering an attractive work alternative to
prospective employees. During the uncertain period of base closures,
reductions in force, and changes in administration during the early '90s
the DOD altered its goal from creating new opportunities to enhancing
current positions." (DOD report on the program)

Findings from the demonstration program supported the conclusion that
telework can be useful for persons with disabilities across a wide range
of practice and should be a continuing work option. This DOD telework
option for persons with disabilities is functioning actively today.

**The CAP Program**

Since its inception in 1990, DOD's Computer/Electronic Accommodations
Program (CAP) has provided the equipment and assistive technology for
people with disabilities to work at home or other alternate worksites
(CAP, 1999). Working together, CAP and the DOD Flexiplace program for
people with disabilities found that Flexiplace is an effective
accommodation and recruitment tool for people with disabilities. CAP's
target groups include:

• Individuals on workers' compensation or disability retirement;

• DOD employees with disabilities who could be more productive if they
were allowed to work part or all of the week at home or in some other
off-site location; and

• Persons with disabilities who have been unable to be employed because
their disabilities make it difficult for them to function in a federal
workplace on a regular basis.

Assistive devices supplied by CAP can:

• Allow injured employees to continue working in some capacity;

• Help employees return to work after injury in a more timely manner;
and

• Help prevent further debilitation.

Today, CAP reports continuously increasing numbers of recipients of its
services.

> Executive Memorandum: Employing People With Significant Disabilities
> Utilizing Alternate Work Sites

In July 2000, President Clinton issued an executive memorandum directing
all federal agencies to (1) identify positions that can be relocated to
alternate worksites and that can be filled by qualified individuals,
including those with significant disabilities, and (2) regarding the
identified positions, develop an action plan for encouraging the
recruitment and employment of qualified individuals with significant
disabilities. While the fruits of implementation have yet to be
harvested, this memorandum is intended to expand the opportunity for all
federal workers to telework, including those with disabilities.

# Workers Compensation Activity

During the early 1990s, agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority,
the Department of Labor, and DOD (as mentioned above) began
experimenting with the use of telework to (1) provide opportunities for
recipients of workers compensation and (2) reduce the size and expense
of the Workers' Compensation (WC) Program.

Three major difficulties were uncovered:

• A risky situation for WC recipients who make the effort to use
telework to return to work. The risk is that if, for some reason, the
telework option does not work for the recipient, the recipient may face
significant administrative difficulties or barriers when attempting to
return to the WC program;

• A mistaken general belief by employers that WC recipients are not
interested in returning to work;

• An informal finding that some WC recipients would not be welcome back
to their workplaces.

The latter two difficulties are program issues that could be overcome
with a well-managed program initiative. The first difficulty (recipient
risk), however, requires a legislative fix.

Faced with such difficulties, efforts to develop a feasible and
comprehensive telework option for Workers' Compensation faded out by the
mid-1990s. Various small initiatives continue to tackle this challenge.
Currently, however, the absence of any federal policy, legislation,
and/or program established to bring the benefits of telework to Worker's
Compensation continues to be a significant lost opportunity.

# Equipment Provision

Another program variation has to do with the provision of equipment for
use by teleworkers. As can be seen below, federal agencies deploy a wide
variety of program approaches to this issue:

• Many agencies have devoted funds to purchase equipment for
teleworkers. Typically, this includes computers, modems, printers,
and/or fax machines. Also, typically, this means dual sets of equipment
(for the main and alternate worksites) for the majority of teleworkers,
who tend to be part time teleworkers.

• Other agencies utilize surplus equipment for use by their teleworkers.

• Some agencies with particular budget issues have required their
teleworkers to provide their own equipment.

**Managers and Support Staff**

A typical finding for federal telework is that disproportionately fewer
managers and/or administrative support staff personnel utilize telework.
This can be due to policy restrictions, lack of understanding/exposure,
and/or management resistance. There are some exceptions in which a few
agencies have actively encouraged managerial telework. Low support staff
participation in telework can be traced to the widespread belief that an
office cannot function unless all support staff are physically present.
Again, however, a few agencies have implemented programs and policies
that facilitate the participation of support staff. For example, some
offices use a tag-team approach in which the "physical presence"
requirements (typically reception duties) are handled cooperatively, on
a rotating basis, by one staff person covering several offices while
other support staff in those other offices are engaging in telework.

# Current Events

Following are selected projects that are currently underway.

**Spousal Telework Employment Project**

There are numerous occupations in federal agencies which require
periodic geographic relocations of employees. This requirement has long
been a source of burden and disruption for the families of these
employees. One particular problem, which has been the subject of recent
publicity, has been the adverse impact on the careers/jobs of spouses
who want to accompany these employees on their relocation assignments.
As a response, a task force of federal agencies, led by GSA and DOD, is
putting together a pilot program which plans to use telework as a way to
facilitate the continuation of careers and/or provide career
opportunities for spouses of relocated federal employees.

> Government-wide Policy Review to Remove Policy Barriers/Hindrances to
> federal Telework

As mentioned above, many federal policies are dated and out of sync with
present-day workforce needs, especially those of telework programs. As
federal telework has grown, the number of policy-related inquiries has
increased. These inquiries have spotlighted numerous policies which
require revision, clarification, or removal in order to facilitate the
growth of federal telework. GSA and the Office of Personnel Management
(OPM) are leading an interagency task force to conduct a comprehensive
review of relevant federal operating polices and make recommendations as
needed.

**Research and Demonstrations**

GSA, OPM, and the Department of Transportation are in the
conceptualizing stages of designing research and/or demonstration
projects involving telework in areas such as emergency preparedness,
programs for workers with disabilities, and reducing main office space
requirements via alternative officing.

**Comments by Dr. Gina Vega,** *Merrimack College*

**Building the Case for Telework**

**Overview of Opportunities and Challenges**

There are both identifiable paths to success as well as obstacles to
implementation inherent in building the case for teleworking in the
federal government. These paths and obstacles have been outlined
succinctly in Wendell Joice's paper on federal Telework Options (2000).
The proven paths and great opportunities fall into the categories of
reduction of pressure on the natural and physical (infrastructure)
environment, budgetary efficiency, and potential quality of work life
enhancements for a variety of American populations. The obstacles reside
in the three general areas of:

-   Organizational culture

-   Availability of supporting resources

-   Diminished expectations, missed opportunities, and limited vision

This paper adds a fourth to that list:

-   Unnatural acts

# Opportunities

The reduction of stress on the environment and the infrastructure has
been well documented for at least a decade -- there is no need to
discuss them further at this time. Joice accurately reports the goals of
the teleworking initiative that support and protect our natural
resources as well as the contention that work-at-home programs and
alternate work structures often improves worker morale and job
performance. We have moved past the era that validated quantitative
measurements above all others when it comes to human behavior; we do
need to search out more creative and innovative ways to assess
achievement of goals.

One of the most valuable and satisfying results of the emphasis on
telework has been the development of a variety of adaptive technologies
that allow people with disabilities to work to their full potential. The
population that deals with various handicapping conditions that have
limited work access in the past can benefit greatly from opportunities
provided by teleworking. The federal government can also benefit
enormously from an underutilized and currently significantly
under-employed worker population that has hardly been tapped due to
previous difficulties in accommodation to existing workplaces. The
identification of these jobs is the current responsibility of federal
managers, and they need some guidance in determining which of their job
titles can be sensibly filled by people who are not readily able to work
in existing centralized locations.

The same holds true for some recipients of workers compensation. This
program holds great potential for success, both in accomplishing needed
work that may remain undone while workers are receiving WC benefits and
in allowing workers to continue performing the work activities that are
not affected by whatever they are receiving WC for. When people feel
that they are contributing members of a work group and that they are
needed, they are likely to maintain their "edge" and return to work in a
more positive frame of mind. The author rejects the "informal finding
that some WC recipients would not be welcome back to their workplaces"
(Joice, 13). It seems groundless in light of the need for workers and
the skilled workforce population crunch.

The bright spots of opportunity inherent in telework are exemplified in
Dr. Joice's inspiring highlights of the GSA New England Region Telework
Program in Boston. This creative program provides clues for telework's
future success, clues which are too often hidden underneath layers of
rhetoric about how telework will solve all of our nation's economic,
social, and environmental ills. (On behalf of the Bay State, however,
any and all means of traffic relief around the area of the Big Dig are
always welcome). In Boston, every single employee, regardless of
position or grade (not just those meeting specific criteria), was
invited to participate in the program. The goal was 10% participation;
the actual rate skyrocketed to 23%. Performance in other operational
areas has been exemplary for this region. Yet, despite this creative
program's success, it falls outside the definition of telework because
1.5 days per month of work does not meet the standard criteria of 1.5
days per week working at an alternative location.

Despite such bright spots, participation in telework has not been
wholeheartedly endorsed in the federal workplace. The overall
participation figures are dismally low.

# Challenges

It is with the challenges articulated by Dr. Joice that this paper takes
exception.

# Organizational Culture

The teleworking ventures that have proven successful have arisen from
the same culture that is described as inimical to emergent work
structures, and it has happened for several straightforward reasons. The
successful programs have in common a set of some cultural and
organizational design characteristics that have facilitated the
development and implementation of these emergent work forms. These
characteristics have typically included:

-   work groups whose task assignments lend themselves to off-site
    production, such as surveyors, lawyers, and investigators,

-   technical employees and/or workers in self-managed positions (Grade
    12 and higher),

-   the fortune or misfortune to be located in an area with either
    extreme congestion (like Boston's Big Dig area), severe pollution
    (such as certain CDC programs in Atlanta), or great distances to be
    traveled to a central workplace (such as OSHA offices in Texas or
    Colorado),

-   extraordinary budgetary constraints to be met that force
    consideration of alternate solutions or new directions (such as the
    case with the federal Railroad Administration) or surprisingly deep
    pockets that permit the extensive hiring of experienced outside
    consultants and the purchase of excellent portable equipment (such
    the GSA northeast region), and

-   a method of rewarding rather than penalizing entrepreneurial
    behavior.

These have acted as stimuli for the creation and acceptance of new work
designs, regardless of a national federal work culture that has been
described in other, less agreeable terms. The large bureaucracy that is
the heart of the federal organizational structure has been superseded,
in the successful telework programs, by a sense of agility that is
unexpected and therefore all the more effective.

When we talk about the organizational culture of the federal government,
we must take care not to aggregate all departments, agencies, and
sub-agencies and somehow "average" their individual cultures into one
identifiable, but inaccurate, whole. The culture that has been
identified as the federal workforce culture is epitomized by:

-   managerial resistance to change,

-   ingrained attitudes and behaviors that remain stuck in an industrial
    era workplace,

-   workers who are reluctant to give up their permanent workstations,

-   discomfort with boundary-less organizations by both managers and
    workers,

-   resistance to change by support services in terms of security
    concerns, inability to support remote access, insufficient resources
    devoted to remote technical support, lack of awareness about new
    technological solutions,

-   managerial reluctance to give up space,

-   a system of double overhead that gets in the way of the
    reconfiguration of office space, and

-   budgetary disincentives to saving on facility costs by sending such
    savings to the Department of the Interior and not to the specific
    agency's budget,

This laundry list of cultural problems appears insurmountable when
described in this way. Appropriate cultural change would demand
reversals to the expected and accepted, and would usher in an era of
change that would include:

-   an attitude that welcomes change in the workplace and that looks
    towards an information age workplace,

-   high comfort level with uncertainty,

-   the ability on the part of workers to determine one's own work
    design,

-   availability and access to sufficient technical support,

-   removal of value on "space for space's sake,"

-   realization of actual savings that could be reallocated to needed
    areas, and

-   the return of any savings realized to either federal workers
    themselves or to their agencies.

This set of requirements may be too much to demand of federal managers
and workers without significant preparation and re-socialization. For
example, the establishment of a Telework Committee in the Boston region
provided some manager-approved, formal relief from the standard fear of
failure that often limits the creation and implementation of ground
breaking programs in traditionally hierarchical work environments. The
difficulty of describing and measuring work, endemic to a
self-protective culture, was virtually obliterated by the requirement
that workers justify their work location, thus forcing the question down
to the level in which it correctly resides -- that of the individual
worker.

# Resources

Some of the successful programs that we hear about share a unique
characteristic in government working circles -- access to deep pockets.
Dollars can provide both technical expertise (in the form of consultants
and facilitators from outside the government who are not tied to
yesterday's solutions or to a career path dependent on the government's
grade system) and actual equipment -- laptops, modems,

et al -- that keep workers on the same virtual page as their in-office
colleagues.

There is little as inimical to business success as inadequate tools to
perform required tasks. We would not suggest purchasing used medical
equipment or old technology for our military hospitals; neither should
we suggest that workers who depend on electronic technology for
accomplishing their jobs be required to use antiquated computers or
other equipment. Most federal agencies cannot afford to purchase
duplicate equipment for workers. In fact, simply upgrading existing
equipment is beyond the fiscal ability of some, as a result of the
existing legacy of nearly-outdated technology. At present, many federal
teleworkers are required to use either their own home computers or to
use equipment that has been handed down by their departments when they
upgrade.

One of the most successful tactics undertaken by private industry has
been to recognize that workers out of the main location need *more*, not
less support, and they have reallocated their resources accordingly.
Done skillfully, this one action can have greater impact than many of
the more obvious, visible managerial support interventions and certainly
has more universally positive impact than do mandates. We have only to
compare the success of the Big Dig-affected GSA workers, supplied with
cellular telephones, laptops, and docking stations with that of workers
in other agencies or offices using their own home computers or
hand-me-down electronic relics, released by their own departments in
favor of newer equipment.

It is important to mention at this time that most federal workers must
absorb the costs related to telework themselves. That is, they pay their
own electricity, their own telephone bills, and they maintain the heat
in their home offices at a working level (rather than lowering it during
the day as they might if no one were at home). Concerns have been
expressed about the double overhead costs that are incurred as a result
of maintaining both a central office location and a telecenter location
for teleworkers who work at these alternate facilities. Granted, this is
not an efficient use of funds. Nonetheless, and regardless of however
efficient it may be, it is not ethical for the government to have
workers subsidize their own work locations. A reminder is in order that
shifting the costs to the worker does not eliminate the actual costs,
only the government's burden and responsibility for them.

# Diminished Expectations, Missed Opportunities, and Limited Vision

We have accepted the inevitability of teleworking as the form most
appropriate to the information era worker. It is therefore distressing
to hear this innovative and inexorably-to-be-accepted work design
referred to as "countercultural," as is done in Dr. Joice's paper.
Telework is far from countercultural, touted as it is as the 21^st^
century worker's natural work habitat. "Simply getting it off the ground
and/or getting it past the pilot stage" (Joice, 2) suggests that the
implementation of telework is a challenge that the government is far
from being able to meet.

Although hamstrung to a certain extent by limited autonomy, nonetheless
programs have been introduced, accepted, and endorsed. The success of
the early programs was owed, in good part, to the historical need of the
workers in those departments to work offsite. The Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, Department of the Interior, and Animal Plant
Health Inspection Service all employ many workers whose job success is
dependent upon site visits, so telework is a natural adjunct of their
daily work structure.

But the ongoing success of more and more innovative and unique
programming trials across the nation has indicated clearly that telework
is neither countercultural nor is it a trend in danger of being halted.
The impetus provided by fiscal expediency, environmental stresses, and
urgent demands by the heads of today's families should reassure us that
teleworking is not going away. The danger lies not in worker or
managerial expectations, but in diminished expectations and limited
vision on a higher level.

We are informed that there is a movement toward consideration in the
federal workplace of the quality of work accomplished as more
substantive than the quantity of work accomplished, and that this
tendency is moving us away from quantitative measures and towards a
qualitative approach to assessing costs and impacts (Joice, 8-9). This
should be applauded. We are also informed that there has been a
significant movement away from command and control, Theory X (McGregor,
1985) management and toward participatory management and negotiated
agreements (Joice, 9). Again, this movement is favorable.

Why, then is there an immediate desire to return to the discarded model,
the model of mandates, when it becomes difficult to negotiate the
desired change? Why should we consider the proposal to reinstate a
top-down, back to Theory X method for expanding the valuable, win/win
teleworking solution? The suggestion that teleworking will be warmly
embraced once the "expected grousing in response to mandates" (Joice, 9)
dies down returns us back even further into industrial era thinking than
imagined -- it takes us straight back to 1915 and Frederick Taylor's one
best way to perform any management-desired activity. This is not worthy
of the United States government in the year 2000.

# Unnatural Acts

The challenge of advancing teleworking in the federal workplace is not
so much the negatively framed "resistance to change," but rather that
the federal workforce is suffering from cognitive dissonance (Festinger
and Carlsmith, 1959), the inability to reconcile the actual demands of
the workplace with their ingrained and firmly socialized beliefs about
what the workplace "should" be. They are being expected to perform
"unnatural acts."

Federal managers are no different from the managers in private industry
who have accepted telecommuting (and that is far from being a universal
state) except in the key area of socialization. This relates to the
basic difference between government employment and employment in the
private sector. The presence or absence of a profit motive creates the
perception of completely different work environments, and these cannot
be addressed with the same tools.

There exists a fond tendency among government employees to concatenate
democracy and its organizational forms with capitalism and its
organizational forms. These, however, are not interchangeable. When we
ask people who have been trained from the outset to maintain and protect
the status quo (as we expect of government employees) to behave instead
like people who have been trained to embrace change and to expect
support in their entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial activities (as are
employees in the private sector), we are likely to be disappointed.

We are demanding that federal managers toss aside all they have
internalized about control, monitoring, and other techniques of
industrial age management without providing them new alternatives. We
are also demanding that workers who have had a long history of being
monitored and measured suddenly become responsible for themselves. We
are expecting that workers find comfort in a boundaryless workplace
after spending years in a sign-in, check-out, uniformed guards at the
entrance, access-limited environment. This is not realistic. We have a
responsibility to replace the loss of comforting activities with
something else.

Federal managers and federal workers simply don't understand their new
jobs. Do we really understand them ourselves?

Cooperation and socialization cannot be mandated; they take time and
must be handled gracefully. The "just do it" approach suggested in Dr.
Joice's paper would be appropriate in the Taylorian society of the
industrial age that we are told to move beyond, but it does not fit
today. We cannot risk pulling out the supports of the foundation of the
federal workforce without shoring up that foundation with a new set of
supports.

With all respect to the strength of the appeal of mandates, focus should
instead be on the creation of a set of bottom-up incentives,
reorientation and retraining at all levels of the federal workforce, and
recognition that, until federal managers are trained to be federal
leaders, we cannot expect them to operate on the "leading edge" (Joice,
9).

Above all, we must find a way to allocate sufficient resources to permit
the broad implementation of the desired teleworking solutions without
demanding that managers or workers perform what they perceive of as
unnatural acts.

References

L. Festinger and J.M. Carlsmith, "Cognitive Consequences of Forced
Compliance," *Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology*, Vol. 48, 1959,
pp. 78-92.

W. Joice, Federal Telework Topics. Presented October 16, 2000 at
"Telework and the New Workplace of the 21^st^ Century," Department of
Labor, Xavier University, New Orleans, LA.

D. McGregor, *The Human Side of Enterprise*, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1985.