Movement from the employer's facilities to one's own has not been limited to piece work manufacturing. But such success stories have not been enough to significantly impact office employment. Given the high costs of office space and commuting, one wonders why there has been such slow change in this area. Conversations with diverse sector managers suggest the inability to supervise remote workers is the major stumbling block. But supervision is a recurring theme.
Some managers doubt that employees can work without continual supervision.
I wondered about remote work situations. Having worked and traveled throughout the Northwest Territories I had seen the remotest of the remote. That had to be the single officer RCMP detachment in a village on Baffin Island. There, the officer was responsible not only for the administration of justice in the land, but was also the embodiment of the Government of Canada and from time to time, all its agencies. I called the RCMP to ask how much training and experience an officer would need before being posted to such a situation.