The Telecommuter Manifesto

A funny thing happens when you transition from an office worker to a telecommuter.  What were once routine tasks that were hardly given a second thought suddenly become an area of increased attention for your management.  Recording time is one such example.

Not all workers record time, so this may seem like a non-issue to you.  Other similar tasks face the same scrutiny though, so please read on.  Those of us who work on an hourly wage, or for different clients, government contracts, etc have to record our time worked on various tasks.  Even salaried worker face this requirement.  I work on salary, yet still must allocate what I’m doing with each 1/10 of an hour, i.e. my day gets divided into 6 minute increments.  Generally, I’m only working on a single project, so this isn’t much of an issue.  I simply record a full day’s work to a single account.  But during extremely light or heavy work times I may be splitting time between multiple accounts.

When you work in an office, nobody seems to question your time.  Even people who spend more time at the coffee pot than at their desk have no trouble getting their time approved.  But when you work remotely, entering your time honestly still seems to draw suspicion.  Suddenly round numbers, like 8 hours, seem much too convenient to be true.  Superiors may wonder “Did he really work a full day or does he just want me to think that?  I’ll bet he’s watching TV in his pajamas…”  Of course, such considerations are ludicrous.  It isn’t that working remotely is apt to make you less honest about your time.  In fact, you’ll probably be getting a whole lot more done in much less time without the distractions of the office.  The real issue here is one of insight and control.

Without the ability to oversee you or check in on you throughout the day, your manager can control you less and must trust you more.  Never mind the fact that they may find your colleagues at that aforementioned coffee machine, at least in that case they can yell at them to get back to work.  By being out of their sight, to an extent you are also out of their control, so expect them to grasp for control in new and subtle ways.  Increased scrutiny of your time card is just one small example.

This issue reaffirms the importance of a special trusting relationship between you, as a telecommuter, and your manager.  For some, prestablished trust may suffice.  For others, trust will grow with telecommuting tenure.  Still others may never earn the trust they were giving without question in the office.  Even with trust, managers are inclined to manage.  Since they cannot do so in some of the ways they are accustomed to, be prepared for them to branch out in new ways that may indrude on important, but seemingly trivial tasks, like recording your time.