More federal workers are telecommuting than ever, but many managers are still more comfortable with having their employees come to the office, according to a new General Accounting Office report.
Telecommuting, also known as flexiplace (short for "flexible workplace") has been touted in recent years as a family-friendly policy that can reduce sick leave use, improve productivity and relieve traffic congestion. But agencies told GAO that changing from managing by observation to managing by results is a difficult switch for many federal managers.
"Some managers and supervisors resisted allowing staff to participate in flexiplace because they did not believe that employees were working unless they could see them," GAO reported.
In a June 1996 memorandum to agency heads, President Clinton set a goal of 60,000 federal telecommuters by the end of fiscal 1998. In July 1996, the President's Management Council estimated that 9,000 federal employees nationwide telecommute.
Most federal telecommuters are professionals, including engineers, attorneys, management and program analysts and computer specialists. These occupations lend themselves to telecommuting because they involve work that can be done from home: writing, reading, calling people, and working on a computer.
Overall, agency officials told GAO that telecommuters were just as productive or more productive than employees in the office. Only one official said telecommuting had caused a drop in productivity.
In its guidelines on telecommuting, the Office of Personnel Management says telecommuters should be "well organized, highly disciplined self-starters who require little supervision and who have received at least fully successful ratings." OPM warned that jobs requiring a significant amount of face-to-face contact are not well-suited for telecommuting.
Employees telecommute primarily for the personal benefits, such as being home for children or avoiding long commutes, but also to avoid interruptions in the office, GAO said.
GAO reported that agency officials said that because the work ethic of employees did not change when they worked at home, managers should not be concerned about their ability to supervise employees who telecommute.
But many jobs require being at the workplace, and many employees prefer the office environment, GAO noted. Other barriers to more widespread telecommuting include a lack of equipment at people's homes, the handling of sensitive data, and the lack of a formal telecommuting policy.
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