Encouraging Teleworking

A few days ago, I found this article encouraging President Obama to ‘make it the norm’ for folks to work from home one day a week. On the surface, this seems like a great idea. Reduce pollution, save time, reduce gridlock, increase productivity and job satisfaction, the list goes on…

I have to wonder how effective this will be. Most jobs can’t be done from home, even just one day a week. No bus drivers, no waiters, no dry cleaners. Even at my office, there are many positions that don’t allow working from home. Most of this is due legacy systems that don’t allow remote access. Nationwide, bringing these systems up to date to allow remote workers would require hundreds of millions of dollars, which would quickly erase productivity gains. But, I guess it would be stimulating to the hardware, software, and consulting companies. I think we’d also face some bandwidth issues if we moved too rapidly, but such a initiative might increase broadband penetration; never a bad thing.

All complaining aside, I think this is a great idea. The ‘office’ as we understand it is a throwback to a time when being physical proximity was the only way to accomplish an organization’s mission. Why not start thinking about organizing teams and businesses in new ways, ways that take advantage of the technology we have available? Why require employees to be in the office every day? Might be just the push the teleworking movement needs.