Ever since the advent of the Internet and email, a slow but steady progression of working away from the traditional workplace office has taken place.

And what once looked like a revolutionary trend 10 years ago, now seems to many simply to be part of societal evolution due to technological advances.

But the questions remain: are nonprofit organizations making use of technology to their full advantage? Are more of them allowing people to work from home? And if so, has it been for the better?

Virtualissimo

Lynn Eakin, interim network director of the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN), tells CharityVillage® that it’s hard to quantify how much telecommuting or virtual office work has impacted sector organizations.

Like many businesses today, she says, most work arrangements have morphed into a “hybrid” system where the standard operating plans of old — and by “old” she’s only talking about a decade ago — no longer apply.

From the ONN’s standpoint, Eakin says most of the collaborative work being done intra-organizationally and across geographic boundaries relies heavily on telecommuting.

“Where organizations are spread all over Ontario, especially in rural areas, they would not have an office and would likely be working with those that do have offices” by doing so virtually.

In describing her own organization’s staff work arrangement, Eakin had trouble trying to explain how it works in regards to telecommuting arrangements.

“There’s no easy answer to [whether we have a traditional office arrangement or a virtual work staff]. We do have an office in downtown Toronto with a very small staff. But then we have committees at work, many of whom are email and telephone [staff] who we never actually see. So it’s a hybrid,” she says.

Eakin says she hasn’t yet seen any studies out there dedicated to measuring how telecommuting has affected efficiencies and impacted sector organizations, but in her opinion the changes to the way sector organizations work “have been profound.”

Anecdotally, she says, the old notions of staff and office arrangements no longer apply. “It’s all almost virtual work, in a sense. It’s disbursed work that our sector does a lot of because we’re always trying to stretch things further. Because everyone has email now, and web technology, that’s all increased work flexibility tremendously.”

On location

According to Jennifer Okafor, national human resources manager at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), part of the motivation behind her organization’s willingness to shift some work to telecommuting was for a deeper local presence in communities.

She said in 2000, the JDRF began hiring fundraisers to work from their home offices in specific markets.

“This practice was expanded beyond our fundraisers in 2007 allowing JDRF to attract and retain top talent,” Okafor said. “This flexibility in work arrangements has provided the foundation with a competitive edge very necessary in today’s market.”

JDRF’s staff complement is approximately 100 employees, of which roughly 15 currently work from home either full-time or one or more days per week, Okafor said. She explains there is a variety of scenarios as to why telecommuting is practiced at JDRF. They include cutting down commute times, thus allowing employees “to begin their work day with less stress and in a better frame of mind,” she said. A second reason is for productivity. “[Telecommuting] allows for projects with tight timelines to be completed with minimal interruption.”

Finally, telecommuting allows JDRF employees to care for family members by providing flexibility to “deal with aging parents or small children that require attention and time.”

Linda Marmen, director of HR at the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) of Ontario, said her organization has used telecommuting since 2004. They have what’s called an “hours of work” policy that allows CMHA employees to tailor their work schedule depending on their job description.

She said out of 22 staff members, 11 make use of this flexible scheduling.

“We allow staff to work one day [a week] from home. At times there may be an employee working on special assignment…and we would allow them to work more from home.” Most of their telecommuters work from home on fixed days, so CMHA can track which days those employees will be out of the office and allow management more ease in scheduling meeting times with the entire staff.

All employees using this system are also required to sign a contract stating the organization can revoke its decision to allow telecommuting or flexible work scheduling if there is abuse or it negatively impacts an employee’s productivity.

Marmen noted that the telecommuting schedule and requests to use it by staff also changes throughout the year. For instance, in the summer months, many employees want to make more use of telecommuting.

As far as quantifiable benefits to the organization are concerned, Marmen said the CMHA hasn’t identified any in terms of reduced overhead or other savings. However, she said as an employee — Marmen makes use of the telecommuting option as she lives a fair distance from the office — she has noticed savings in her personal budget due to reduced gas consumption.

Virtual stats

Last month in a jointly issued report, Calgary Economic Development and the Telework Research Network released WORKshift Canada: the bottom line on telework.

The 33-page report, the first of its kind, details how part-time telecommuting — the document looks at what would happen if the 4.3 million Canadians with compatible jobs and a desire to work from home at least two days a week — could have “a bottom line impact of over $53 billion per year.” For instance, according to the report, an employer with 250 telecommuters would save over $3 million per year.

Additionally, the data in the report indicates while “44 percent of Canadian jobs are telework-compatible, only three percent of the population considers home their primary place of work.”

It should be noted that the report doesn’t focus on nonprofits. But it’s likely that some of these savings could be realized by organizations in the sector.

The report states that telecommuting can also result in an average reduction in employee absenteeism of 6.3 days a year. It also suggests that Canadian employees who telecommute just twice a week could save an average of nine work days a year and those who use public transit could save themselves almost three weeks a year.

Office for rent

Greg Petkovich, president of Atticus Interim Management, an organization specializing in HR solutions for businesses of all sizes and in all sectors, gave CharityVillage® a comprehensive take on the telecommuting world of today.

The words du jour are “consolidation” and “off-site.”

According to Petkovich, whose company has done extensive research on the topic, both nonprofits and for-profits are “taking a hard look at their functional areas that are not client-facing and asking themselves whether or not those individuals need to be under direct supervision in a traditional office, or migrating to a total telecommute option would work best for both the company and the employees.”

He said the shift to this type of thinking has accelerated over the last three years. It has resulted in more employees moving to home-based offices and organizations not renewing existing leases.

His research also indicates that more than 70 percent of employees now prefer to work from home, as it provides the flexibility they need to deal with daily life events. The only downside discovered is that about the same percentage miss “the social interaction that comes from being amongst a group of people. But smart companies are finding ways to manage this by bringing their telecommuting, off-site employees back into the office on a semi-regular basis, either monthly or quarterly, just to get reconnected with people in the company,” Petkovich said.

He also pointed out that, surprisingly, the research shows that stuff gets done more efficiently and productively with telecommuting employees. Employees are forced to better schedule their time at the home office. The distractions inherent in a traditional office are often eliminated by working from home. And telecommuters often overcompensate when they’ve had to step out of the office to deal with personal matters by working more hours.

But he says there is a downside to it all.

“Telecommuting employees are often tethered to a Blackberry. They were more successfully able to separate their work lives when all their material was at work. But now it is all usually in an office in their home. So now, during a break, even on off days, our clients find that their telecommute employees will continue to work on projects or with clients or put in time off the clock, because the office is ever-present in their homes.”

A question of loyalty

But where one would think that employees would be more beholden to a company because it allows them to work from home, Petkovich said this isn’t necessarily the case.

While telecommuters do express satisfaction with their work situation, the loyalty they feel to the job is more about being a telecommuter than being a telecommuter for a specific organization.

“The employee, for maybe the first time in their working career, has greater flexibility in managing some of the challenges of household and family life. Of those employees that embrace this work method, most want to stick with this lifestyle. Our research has shown that 83 percent of employees who work in this environment would seek out a company that would allow them to maintain the same type of home-based work style,” he said.

An HR quandary

The bigger issue now, according to Petkovich, is how to evolve human resources law to fit the telecommuting crowd.

“From an HR perspective, how do you manage, motivate, and discipline employees who are off-premise? And how do you ensure that productivity and quality maintain very high?” Petkovich asked. “It’s an emerging component in HR law and HR in general. Some challenges now with [telecommuting] include, from an employee perspective, whether they’re required to provide their own equipment and an employer’s right to have greater control over [off-site] employees.”

“People forget that just because you work in a home office, it doesn’t negate your responsibility to adhere to HR law.”

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.

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