Telecommuting: Is Banning it a Terrible Idea?

In light of the alleged ban of telecommuting by Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, I took the opportunity to address some key points on the issue. I read the memo and despite the media coverage, there was no mention of a “ban.” Employees were “asked” to come to work physical locations in the interest of fostering a more collaborative environment … and then the world exploded.

As someone who has worked on both the administration of a telecommuting policy, and telecommuted myself, the media coverage of this issue struck a chord with me.  First, let’s take a look at a few of the issues.

Entitlement

Granting your employees the ability to work from home gives them the flexibility to balance their personal lives and their work. This type of flexibility really lets your employees know you appreciate that they can benefit from not having to be in the office all day. Nothing says work-life balance like being able to take a conference call on the toilet, while there’s a roast in the oven. Employees who have enjoyed this privilege up until now will be just as outraged and offended as if their pensions had been rolled back.

Legal Obligations

Employers are required to provide telecommuting as a reasonable accommodation for disabled employees. An all-out ban would be completely illegal. The interesting component to this will be how Yahoo addresses employees who refuse to come back to the office on a full time basis. Do they have a clause in their contract that requires an employee to be in the physical office when asked, and does it cover the frequency with which they are now being asked to be present? Could an employee argue that the terms of their employment included the assumption that they would have telecommuting privileges?

Cost

A remote workforce obviously reduces overhead for the company, but also reduces the cost to the employee. This includes daycare, transportation, parking and more. This is going to be another bone of contention as employees start to experience increased work-related costs as a result of this new initiative. It’s not good for Mayer’s PR that she’s increasing daycare costs for some of her employees after building a nursery onto her office. However, she paid for that nursery with her own money, and rich people have babies differently than the rest of us.

Innovation

The whole purpose of the change in Yahoo’s telecommuting perspective is to foster innovation within the company (I used the term perspective, because there doesn’t appear to be any changes to a policy anywhere in the memo). There are many strategies and tools companies can use to encourage employees to communicate with their peers remotely, but honestly nothing really beats living with your co-workers for 8 hours per day. You never accidentally bump into anyone at your home office, and you rarely interact with anyone you don’t work with directly. Being physically present in the office creates a lot more opportunity to interact with co-workers on a more personal level.

Example: Employee A bumps into you in the hallway and complains about project X, and you (as an outsider) can provide input that may different from other employees assigned to the project.

Yahoo is really just going to have to gauge the feedback from employees to determine how this will play out. The media backlash is really coming from people talking about efficiency, and it WAS implied that employees cannot be as efficient from home, which contradicts a whole lot of recent research. Many are shocked that this reduction in flexibility is coming from a working mom…she went to work two weeks after childbirth…why would you think she would sympathize with someone who doesn’t want to drive to work in the morning? 

The Job Hunt Blues

People often tell you that looking for work is a full time job. Those people are correct. It is actually the WORST job ever because you don’t get paid and the more you have do it, the worse you feel about yourself. Like a regular job, you need a work-life balance. This is actually more important than it is in a regular job, because companies need to see you at your best. If you’re too eager, or mopey, or tired your chances of success decrease slightly. Sitting at home doing the same thing over and over again with little or no success really demotivates a lot of people and they start complaining about everything, including the lack of employment in their respective areas. This is not attractive to any prospective employer.

Lucky for you, I’ve put together one of my famous numbered lists to solve all your problems.

1.       Wake Up at an Appropriate Time

It’s really easy when you don’t have a place to be, to sleep in, watch cartoons and live the sedentary life. You still have to put in the hours to be an effective job seeker. Also, interviews are always during work hours, so you’ll most likely need to be alert for a morning interview. It’s hard to do that at a 9am interview if you’re used to waking up at noon.

2.       Plan a Full Workday

It’s really easy to get sidetracked when you don’t have a plan. Create a job hunting strategy and map out all of the tasks involved.  You know when you are the most effective, so you can plan the heavy stuff for those times. You need to take into consideration the time it takes to fill out applications, write cover letters and tailor your resume. Make sure you include time to use social networking for job hunting purposes, and attend physical networking events as well. A former employer of mine once told me not to work on any one task for more than two hours at a time. He says after this time, you become less interested and less efficient. Change it up every now and then.

3.       Take Breaks

The reason steps 1 and 2 are important is that if you do them properly, you won’t feel guilty about taking regularly scheduled breaks. Your employer is required to give you a 15 minute break every four hours and 30 minutes for lunch on a full shift. If he’s not a douchebag, he gives you a full hour. Take those breaks. They are government mandated for a reason. Don’t be your own douchebag boss.

4.       Don’t Forget About Your Hobbies/Personal Life

If you are a regular gym-goer, now is not the time to stop. You should also take this opportunity to start eating healthier. Continue to go out and see people on a regular basis. Doing stuff from a computer at your kitchen table and then moving to the couch at 5pm, and then to bed and back to the table in the morning can make you a little crazy. The networking events you attend won’t be enough. Plan things with your friends and go out at night. Be a regular person even though you don’t have a job…just do it cheaply cause you’re poor.

When you neglect to properly plan and execute your job hunting strategy, you start to feel guilty about how little you’ve done. Then you don’t take time for yourself. This results in you being less effective. It’s a vicious cycle that ultimately results in a pint of ice-cream, a lot of crying and still no jobs. The worst thing you can do for yourself at this juncture is take away the things that make you sane. Also, if you have good friends, they will pay for things because they feel sorry for you. You won’t get this kind of treatment again until someone you love dies (true story).

P.S. These strategies can also be applied to people who work from home or for themselves. 

Fitness For Fatties

“Every great diet begins with a single step… and there’s like a bunch more steps and eventually the journey ends up sucking and at some points you’re pretty sure you would be thinner if you hadn’t even tried... Doritos?” – Scott Keenan

Welcome to the mindset of the out of shape. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably attempted some diet or exercise regime that ultimately resulted in complete failure. For some people it’s ok. They just didn’t get the abs they wanted, or their arms are still a little flabby. For the rest of us, it usually results a quick loss of about five pounds followed by a gain of ten pounds, some mild depression and a lot of cream cheese.

I could manage to lose 10 to 15 pounds every year by giving up junk food for lent only to gain it back immediately upon reintroducing crap into my  diet. I also made several attempts at exercise regimes, which never worked out…mostly because I hate exercising. At some point reality has to sink in. You will not do your body any good by just taking the stairs instead of the elevator or going for a walk at lunch. Adjusting only your diet or your exercise regime only does so much. Eventually you have to suck it up and take the plunge with a plan for long term success.

The first step is admitting that you suck. At some points during your diet you are incredibly dedicated, forcing yourself to run an extra 10 minutes after your tired and eating an entire notebook of unlined paper (this is healthier than loose-leaf) in order to extinguish the craving for chips. You have to identify at what point during the day you are an Olympian and force “the you that doesn’t suck” to make the decisions about the rest of the day.

If your gut hangs out over your belt, you have already proven that you cannot be trusted with food. My recent attempts at eliminating junk food proved fruitless as a result of discovering easy pastry recipes. Do you know of a food that you can’t stuff in a pastry and fry, because I don’t. Replacing junk food with chilli pockets did not result in any weight loss. My diet needed a more thorough plan than just “no junk food” in order to overcome the diet hurdles.

Hurdle 1 – Portion Control

It came to my attention that the type of food I was eating was not the problem. I like eating healthy food, I just eat too much of it. When you come home from a long day of work you are in no position to make decisions about what or how much you’re going to eat. The fact is, making something healthy is usually harder than Kraft Dinner or picking up a burger on the way home. Decisions about food intake should be made by the you that doesn’t suck. I found that cooking a big meal at the beginning of the week, portioning it out into Lunch and Dinner sized portions and freezing them made a huge difference. If I spend a couple hours not sucking on Sunday, I don’t have to think about food for the rest of the week. This allows me to focus on work, the gym and my social life without sacrificing my diet.

Hurdle 2 – What do I eat?

The next issue is making sure what you are eating isn’t that bad. I’m not a lot of help here. I’d go see a dietician. I know you’re supposed to snack often so I started carrying around a bag of fruits and vegetables, divided into portion sizes and snacked at least twice in the morning, and twice in the afternoon. I also hated eating breakfast, so I started taking toast and peanut butter with me to work, so I would at least have something in my stomach in the morning. Carry water with you. If it’s on your desk, you will drink it.

Hurdle 3 – Ignoring the Gym Bunnies

 Everyone at the gym is more attractive than I am. Do they really want to see me there?

The answer is no. You make them sad. I found a gym in my area that has significantly fewer attractive people, so I’ve been going there. My first trip to the gym bunnies’ location was extremely depressing. I immediately start sweating when I bend over to tie my shoes, so after the first 10 minutes on the treadmill, I look like I’ve become severely dehydrated. The people at this gym don’t appear to sweat. They’re all sporting Lulu Lemon’s “no pit stain” collection, with perfectly coiffed hair, reeking of perfume and cologne. They still have perfectly chiseled bodies and tiny little waists. I assume they do the bulk of the workout at home, and just come in for a little warm up, followed by a lot of looking at themselves in the mirror in public. This made me uncomfortable. If these people intimidate you, try finding a gym with a homelier clientele. Though, I think all of us regular people should infiltrate these locations and see if we can get them to just stay home.

Hurdle 4 – Motivation

I don’t want to go to the gym.

Duh! Nobody who isn’t completely full of themselves enjoys going to the gym. There are a couple different techniques for getting yourself there.

The Buddy System – Schedule regular times for you and your friend to go. This way, you know if you don’t go, your friend will be irritated. Also, your friend could be more athletic than you. This could motivate you to try harder and they could give you some tips on how to use the equipment. If you’re like me, this didn’t work because your friends can’t stick to a schedule and when they tried to encourage you to run faster or longer, you gave them the finger and stopped talking to them for a while.

Escalation of Commitment – This is a common error made in business. Basically, you continue to invest time and money into a failing business unit only because of all of the time and money you’ve already invested in it, regardless of its potential for success. In this scenario, the failing business unit is your physical appearance. Buy yourself some expensive running shoes, and some fancy gym clothes that are supposed to be good in all types of weather, and are odour resistant. You’ll have invested enough at this point to keep you going for a couple months. P.S. you still have to wash the odour resistant stuff….it does end up stinking….no matter how much you paid for it.

The most important thing is to not think about the fact that you’re going to the gym before you go. Just put your clothes in your bag and get there. Then it’s too late to go back.

Hurdle 5 – Not Looking Like A Tool

Won’t I look like an idiot trying to use everything for the first time?

Yes….you will, and those people ARE laughing at you behind your back. My gym happens to have orientation sessions for new people (or old people who just haven’t taken them before). When I decided to get serious about going to the gym, I took these courses. The trainer and I decided that I’m probably not coordinated enough to use the free-weights on my own, so I should stick to the machines that don’t actually work your core muscles. I think this was a good compromise.

If your gym does not have orientation sessions, you might think a personal trainer is a good alternative. Nope! A personal trainer is a sadistic sub-human who enjoys watching you suffer AND you pay them for it. If you’re really that hard-up to have your self-esteem undermined, move back home with your parents.

Hurdle 6 - The Relapse

F#@* it

You will most likely lose all motivation and revert back to old habits...possibly even worse than your old habits. I recently put two pieces of pizza between two pieces of toast. I added some mustard and mayonnaise and a little bit of party mix. It was pretty much awesome. When you hit bottom like this, you have to give yourself two weeks of disciplined, back-on-trackedness before you'll feel motivated to start your healthy-living up again. 

Remember, we can't jump every hurdle, but together we can strategically maneuver around them.