You are probably sitting there asking yourself that there are cons to telecommuting? With all the wonderful innovation going on in cloud services and all the nice toy’s that cloud providers a coming out with there’s the idea that more work can be done from the home now that everything is being moved to the cloud. Ah but for the average worker bee there’s more to think about when the idea of telecommuting is offered as a “perk”. The idea sounds enticing roll out of bed grab a cup of coffee and stroll over to the pc to check work email, check your Facebook account and check the sports page of the local paper,all from the comfort of your home, in your PJ’s and no traffic of inclement weather to worry about. Sounds good doesn’t it? Ah but there’s a dark side to the whole cloud/telecommuting thing. Let’s begin with a few facts. When a company sets employee’s up for telecommuting it is looking at saving money. Everything a business does effects the bottom line. Telecommuting is no different. By having you the worker bee telecommute, the business has all ready justified it as a business savings. Think about it. They can now save on water, restrooms, power, paper, space for your office or cubicle. With you worker bees out of the facility there’s no need to have a cafe, copier and coffee machine. The company shifts the costs of the business to you. You are at home and now you have to pay the added expense of having your pc and printer on all the time now. Then there’s the cost of the printing paper that you have to pay for. Let’s not forget the added expense of added water use. You have to use the bathroom and the coffee pot needs to be filled. You might not have to pay for the gas to go into work but now you have to pay the higher utility bills because your home all the time now. Oh and lets not forget the cable company. You have to have a high speed network connection to connect to the business cloud to do your job. So your cable expenses go up, and you now have to monitor your data caps, since working in the cloud uses up data. Another downside to telecommuting, and collaboration in the cloud include the loss of face to face meetings. Everything in the cloud or telecommuting involves the phone. I hope you like the phone because with telecommuting it will be your primary means to stay in touch with the boss and colleagues next to email. What about video conferencing? I don’t view it as being widely deployed in every one's homes and another thing is if you do allot of it you run the risk of blowing those data caps. This is very bad from a career perspective. Since you have no daily personal contact with colleges and the boss you loose the opportunity for face to face time, and you become some faceless person out in cyber space. Kiss your chances at promotion out the window. Then there’s the expectation that since you are working from home that you will not only be more productive, but also available for early or late conference calls. You no longer can use the excuse oh sorry I hear the traffic is bad so I have to leave right away. Na ah. There will be none of that. Oh, and since you work from home you could log on for a few hours on Sunday to do some work right? This the new corporate expectation. The only perk in it is a pc for work, and if you qualify maybe a blue tooth cell phone. Now does it sound wonderful to work from home in the cloud?
Just my Two Bits...............Eric
