A world class telecommuting program requires a corporate infrastructure. Philip Burgess, President of the Center for the New West, a think tank with years of experience with telecommuting, indicates that telecommuting is finally getting on the right track. As a result, it was a government-sponsored program or one designed to meet individual needs. The necessary infrastructure to support telecommuting within a company on an ongoing basis was not developed. In the last three years, companies have begun to realize the savings and benefits of telecommuting.
Telecommuting is a different way of doing work.
Many of the existing systems, procedures, and policies must be modified to recognize these new situations. What impact might that have on methods of disseminating information, communications, meetings, employee safety, employee training, supervision, ordering, delivery, installation, maintenance, upgrading, management, and asset tracking of computers, telecommunications equipment, office furniture, and software. Instead of ordering 400 workstations to be delivered to a central receiving dock and then installed by an on-location staff over a long weekend, there are now 400 very different home locations. Refer to Figure 1. It details the various factors that must be considered to implement a successful program that can be scaled across the enterprise and sustained over time.