We say no commute
 

Me and a coworker are trying to get a "work from home day" to catch on. For the boss to sign on, we have to put a plan together on how employees would stay in touch and be productive from home. Does anyone's job have a work from home day, has anyone tried to get one? I'd be interested to know how it works.

Well that is going to depend on the budget and your IT setup. Is VPN available? How about VoIP?? I do this for a living so give some specifics and I can help around here for a change.

We have a small office, there's 16 of us. Nothing fancy like all that VPN stuff, though I'm not a very technical person.

Well, we have them in a formally informal way. We require that they post their home contact info, log into the internal chat server, and keep a log or include what they worked on while home in their monthly status report.

Work at home is just that-work. We do not allow WFH for a sick kid, car trouble, etc, as in those situations, not much work will get done. However, if you need to be home to sign for a delivery, or the furnace guy is showing up for service, that is fine.

We do not allow scheduled days from home, except for those folks whose job can be done more than 90% of time online. There are not many of those positions left, since we offshored them.

We also do not allow work at home during critical periods, such as end of quarter closings. Also, if you are meeting with anyone outside of the dept (i work in IT), then you need to be present.

The guys on my staff would rather be able to WFH when needed as opposed to scheduling a regular day anyway, and having them onsite is better for business.

I guess it would depend on home setups then. I am not sure what all you can get done from home since I am not familiar with your situation, but I can work from home and actually remote into my work PC through a VPN tunnel, and even have an office phone at home. It is literally no different for me. Other than I get a LOT more done working from home.

WAH is a good concept, but I think it takes second best to a good, reasonable bike commute from point of view of fresh air / exercise / endorphin rush thing.

I don't know what kind of work you do to tell you how to be productive, don't even know if you use PCs.

IF your work is primarily PC based, you can talk to your IT weenies about gaining remote access to your internal systems, if needed. For communicating, one word - Skype.

We are not all weenies, I mean I certainly am, but that does not mean we ALL are.

Yea... noone would ever use such a nice word to describe me.

We're all weenies...some just don't know it yet. :D

I worked from home as an IT consultant for about 2 and a half years. When I started out, I was afraid that I would have a hard time staying on task while working from home. I was afraid the temptation would be too great to blow off work and do stuff around the house or watch TV.

What I found was that the opposite happened. Because I worked from home, I never left the office. I ended up working insane and unsustainable hours and my clients grew to expect it from me. Ultimately, I ended up just going to work full-time for one of my favorite clients. Now I love going into the office - especially given the fact that it's an easy commute by bike. I do miss being able to run errands during the day without having to explain myself to anybody. I also miss the money a bit too. But overall, I'm much happier NOT working from home.

Of course, it sounds like you're trying to organize a work from home day and not telecommute full time. I recommend using an instant messaging service like AIM for most communication (both at home and in the office). If you're sending confidential information around, it should be software running on your own private server. Otherwise AIM, MSN, ICQ and the like are fine.

Screen sharing software is also super useful. Easy to use options include GoToMeeting or GoToMyPC. If you can't get the boss-man to spring for one of the commercial services, you can use VNC or remote desktop but it will require a bit more technical knowledge to set up. (Of course, if you're running a mac, it's built right into iChat)

Lastly get a comfortable headset for long phone conversations/meetings. Speakerphone sucks. Holding a phone to your ear for hours at a time sucks just as much. Most cordless phones and cell phones have a jack for headsets these days.

Really there's not much to it. If you want telecommuting to be accepted by your company, discuss what you're going to accomplish in advance and then produce results. Encourage your coworkers to do the same. If it's abused or the perception of abuse exists, it will be shut down instantly.

You should be so lucky... to get a chance to ride to work. I've just transitioned from commuting on my bike three days a week to zero. :(

I'm now working from home full time. I'm setup with a laptop, aircard (I have DSL at home, the aircard is if I have to go somewhere and I need access), VPN and my cell phone. After the first two weeks, I was going stir crazy. I don't have time to ride on the weekends due to kids and family. My only time was riding to and from work... Don't get me wrong, working from home is great. The only thing I miss is talking to other coworkers.

However, not getting to ride was getting to me. So I get up early in the morning and ride! I found a nice 11 mile loop that includes 1100 ft of climbing and 1100 ft descents. With that, at least I get my riding fix in... But I still do miss commuting.

I'm yet another IT weenie! :thumb:

Really depends on the work you do.

I use VPN to do some work from home when im sick. But I cant manage/direct my department from home. I also cant address questions/concerns/problems in the manufacturing shop. Also, much of the software which does work through vpn, does so at a speed that drives me crazy, and 3d cad just doesnt work over vpn at all for me.

I know this is off topic, but when are we going to get the riding bicycles to work part of this thread?

Oh, also, I like pie.

Ya. Just do it. If folks have a telephone and access to the company's internet and database, there is no need to be at the office. No need to go crazy with planning and special hardware/software.

Just do it. I think your company will be surprised at how easy it is. That day, they will save energy on lighting, electricity, cooling, water, etc. If you do it once per week it could cut your energy costs and cleaning/maintanance costs by as much as 20%.

Don't worry about slackers. Employees who will slack off on "work at home day" are already slacking off at work - only when they do it at work, they are often gabbing with someone else and multiplying the inefficiency.

You probably won't get this started for bike commuters, but it will gain momentum amongst the car commuters.

At a startup, we all kept in touch via iChat AV, complete with webcams on "Work at home Fridays" although I usually worked from coffee shops.

At my new gig, we use an internal messaging system like AIM but only for internal use. From a technical perspective, solutions include setting up a Lotus Notes Sametime or Jabber server, for example. I had to deal with Lotus Notes back in the day. Absolutely hated it. Maybe it's better now, but i doubt it.

Everyone at my company works from home two days a week and one full week a month. Here's what we do to make it work:

• Have fairly strictly defined work hours. Everybody doesn't have to have the same work hours (I start and end an hour earlier than most people, for example), but there has to be a pretty substantial overlap, and you have to be there during those hours.
• Require everyone to be reachable via IM during work hours.
• Keep our in-office days focused on stuff that makes sense to do in the office, and out of office days focused on stuff that can be done independently or with remote collaboration.
• Hire the right people. You can't do this if people are not responsible, willing to be held accountable, able to collaborate effectively, able to use initiative appropriately, etc.
• Hold people accountable. Setting up telecommuting in a workplace isn't like giving people genius grants and turning them loose -- you're supposed to accomplish things, not just futz around being brilliant. In many ways, while oversight is obviously less intensive, accountability must be even stricter than in a conventional workplace. People get fired here for failure to perform -- they get fired for failure to show up for work on time, for that matter. Not many workplaces will really hold you accountable for your actual performance; you need to if you're telecommuting.

If i did have a work from home day i certainly would have to leave the house to actually get work done. Maybe hit up a cafe or something. But of course, they have to have wifi so you can get some work done. You could always transfer files you need and whatnot back and forth with pen drives, but there are probably more technical ways to do it.

http://missionbeerparlor.com/images/FREE_WIFI.jpg

A couple of tools that might help a small office setting up for telecommuting are logmein and hamachi...

Logmein is a remote desktop app... similar to GoToMyPC but they have a free version... I use that extensively.

Hamachi is a zero-configuration VPN that works through most firewalls... very handy for communicating from home to work, or between home users or whatever... the free version has a limit of 16 computers... the pay version can link 255 computers together in one subnet... Very easy to use... I use it to link all my work computers together with my home computers so I can transfer files, use remote desktop or VNC... all kinds of goodness. :-)

Both tools are available at www.logmein.com

Lotus Notes, no, it's not any better...it breaks so often the only reason I don't write a report with solutions and how it would be better if we switched to X program instead etc is because it = Job Security.

+1 vote for Skype for IM

p.s. another IT weenie....

VPN + Remote Desktop (if you're a windows shop) is the easiest way to work from home. I'm in IT also, and often work at home, though I'm required to be in the office during normal hours.

Anyway, Remote Desktop, for those of you who haven't used it, blows GoToMyPC or PC Anywhere and the like away. Your windows PC doesn't simply take snapshots of your desktop several times a second with RD; rather, it just talks with the video, sound and other parts of the computer and then displays that on your PC remotely. THe speed difference is fantastic. Remote desktop is king.

First off, you'd have to make sure your coworkers had internet access at home. Similarly, you should set up a way for their office extension to reach them at home. Virtual phone systems like Gotvmail make this quite easy, where call to the office forward to a home phone, or mobile device. Also, some sort of portable storage device so you can transport your work PC data to your home PC. We have these things at my work because most of us travel on the job, so we need them.

I keep work and home 99 percent separate. I bring nothing work related to my home, no laptop, no work cell phone, no papers, no "homework". I prefer my daily bike commute to work and back, and doing my work at the office building. I have a lot of good friendly co-workers and we share a lot of information during the day and work on projects together. Also I am not a desk jockey all day long. I work with a lot of telecom equipment and technicians that are working on the equipment, and I am back and forth to our warehouse to check on spare items or to check incoming equipment orders for my projects. When I am at home, hardly a thought related to work ever crosses my mind, keeps the stress low and helps to avoid being a workaholic.