In Minnesota, telecommuting is alive and well

Article by: BRENT CHRISTENSEN 

Updated: March 24, 2013 - 5:57 PM

When people gush about the vibrant business community in Minnesota, they’re often referring only to the Twin Cities. Minneapolis-St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs have rightfully earned a reputation as one of the nation’s capitals of commerce, and — alongside Chicago — are the most prominent places where business gets done in the Midwest.

But a focus on just seven of the state’s 87 counties is limiting, as it ignores thriving, century-old industries like health care in Rochester, shipping in Duluth, mining on the Iron Range, tourism in the lake country, agriculture throughout wide swaths of the southern and western counties, and the growing energy economy in vast areas of Greater Minnesota.

And today more than ever, a place in the Minnesota economy and an ability to work for one of those thriving companies based in the Twin Cities has little to do with having a home within commuting distance of Minneapolis, St. Paul or one of the suburbs. Telecommuting was a unique concept two decades ago, but today advances in our telecom network throughout the state have made it a growing reality for countless Minnesotans for whom a big-city career and a big-city lifestyle no longer have to go hand-in-hand.

In the face of this growing trend, it was with some surprise and disappointment that we read various stories and commentaries about high-profile companies like Yahoo and Minnesota-based Best Buy recently announcing a move away from policies that allow and encourage telecommuting.

But a look around Minnesota and the jobs being created that are no longer specific to one locale shows that those two examples, while headline-grabbing, are outliers.

Today it’s more and more common for a Twin Cities company to employ talented people from throughout the state who do their work from home, taking advantage of the growing rural broadband network that makes the remote workstation a reality in every corner of Minnesota. Rural communities and regional centers — once concerned about a “brain drain” in which talented, educated young people were moving away, often to the metro area, seeking jobs — are now seeing the opposite trend, as Minnesotans who want the pace of a Greater Minnesota lifestyle can often depart the city and the suburbs, and take their good jobs with them.

It’s that trend that is fueling efforts like eWorkPlace, a Minnesota Department of Transportation initiative designed to facilitate more telecommuting throughout the state. Scientists are not needed to prove that the infrastructure for providing high-speed Internet service throughout Greater Minnesota is far less costly than maintenance of our network of highways. And more people working from home means less traffic, fewer emissions and less-frequent need for road construction.

From the start of this trend, the state’s telecommunications providers have worked with employers and communities to provide and continually upgrade the state’s communications network, providing the high-speed, high-capacity and reliable broadband Internet that is increasingly in demand. The biggest names in the Internet world, like Google, have even come to Minnesota in the past year for free workshops to help hundreds of the state’s small businesses establish a Web presence and take their operations worldwide.

While two high-profile companies are moving away from telecommuting, it’s thriving throughout Minnesota, and it’s an increasingly vital part of the state’s economy as telecom advances continue to make it better. And it serves as a reminder that whether it’s in a towering downtown skyscraper or a home office with a laptop, a broadband connection and a view of Pelican Lake, the state of Minnesota is open for business.

Brent Christensen is president and CEO of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/199621151.html?refer=y

GOP lawmaker seeks 'virtual Congress' with telecommuting plan

By Jennifer Martinez - 03/22/13 06:22 PM ET

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) wants to create a "virtual Congress," where lawmakers would leverage videoconferencing and other remote work technology to conduct their daily duties in Washington from their home districts.

Under a resolution Pearce introduced on Thursday, lawmakers would be able to hold hearings, debate and vote on legislation virtually from their district offices. 

While Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer may have recently nixed the Web company's work-from-home policy to boost its performance, Pearce believes a remote work arrangement may benefit Congress and make lawmakers more accountable to folks in their home districts.

Pearce says the resolution would eradicate the need for members to jet back and forth from their districts to Washington each weekend. This would allow lawmakers to spend more time with their constituents rather than the armies of lobbyists from K St., he argues. 

“Thanks to modern technology, members of Congress can debate, vote, and carry out their constitutional duties without having to leave the accountability and personal contact of their congressional districts. Keeping legislators closer to the people we represent would pull back Washington's curtain and allow constituents to see and feel, first-hand, their government at work," Pearce told The Hill in a statement. 

"Corporations and government agencies use remote work technology; it’s time that Congress does the same," the New Mexico Republican said. 

He introduced the same resolution during the last congressional session.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/289947-republican-proposes-letting-lawmakers-work-from-home#ixzz2OTIEXV2Y 

New Jersey A1774 - Provides corporation business tax and gross income tax credits for certain business telecommuting program development and implementation costs.

Great bill for promoting Telecommuting - 

This bill provides a corporation business tax and a gross income tax credit for certain costs incurred by businesses in the development and implementation of telecommute programs which eliminate or substantially reduce an employee's physical commute to and from an employer's principal place of business. Under the provisions of the bill, taxpayers are allowed a credit in an amount equal to a percentage of the eligible telecommute expenses, up to a limit of $1,200, for each employee participating in a telecommute program. For purposes of the credit, percentages are determined based on the number of days per month participating employees telecommute; taxpayers are eligible to receive 50% of the eligible telecommute expenses incurred under a telecommute agreement which requires participating employees to telecommute not less than five days per month, and are eligible to receive 100% of the eligible telecommute expenses incurred under a telecommute agreement which requires participating employees to telecommute not less than 12 days per month. Eligible telecommute expenses are defined by the bill as expenses incurred by taxpayers which enable participating employees to telecommute. They include, but are not limited to expenses paid or incurred to purchase: computers, computer related hardware and software, modems, data processing equipment, telecommunications equipment, high-speed Internet connectivity equipment, computer security software and devices, and any associated delivery, installation, or maintenance charges and fees. In addition, the bill provides a separate tax credit, of not more than $20,000 per taxpayer, for certain costs incurred by taxpayers in the performance of a telecommute assessment. Under the bill, a telecommute assessment includes, but is not limited to: a workforce profile, a telecommute program business case and plan, a detailed accounting of the purpose, goals, and operating procedures of the telecommute program, methodologies for measuring telecommute program activities and achievements, and a schedule for increasing telecommute activity. The bill caps the total, combined amount of credits awarded to taxpayers over the two year period the credits remain in effect. Under the corporation business tax, the aggregate amount of credits approved for all taxpayers may not exceed $2,000,000 for credits earned in privilege periods beginning on or after January 1, 2010, but before January 1, 2011, and may not exceed $2,000,000 for credits earned in privilege periods beginning on or after January 1, 2011, but before January 1, 2012. Similarly, under the gross income tax, the aggregate amount of credits may not exceed $2,000,000 for credits earned in taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2010, but before January 1, 2011, and may not exceed $2,000,000 for credits earned in taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2011, but before January 1, 2012. In either year, if the credit amounts under the corporation business tax or the gross income tax exceed the maximum aggregate limits, the bill stipulates that the credits must be allocated among taxpayers on a pro rata basis. Collectively, the credits provided by this bill are intended to address concerns related to global warming and to encourage the conservation of energy in the State of New Jersey. Currently, one of the largest sources of pollution in this State, and throughout the United States, is derived from motor vehicle emissions. Telecommuting reduces traffic congestion and motor vehicle emissions, and provides energy savings in on-site heating and cooling, lighting, motor vehicle repair and maintenance, and highway construction and maintenance. The reduction in travel time for employees who telecommute also helps limit the demand for fossil fuels and encourages related cost savings associated with its consumption.

Connecticut HB06354 - An Act Implementing The Governor's Budget Recommendations Concerning General Government.

This bill has not passed but contains the following provisions -

Sec. 226.

Section 5-248i of the general statutes is repealed and the following is substituted in lieu thereof (Effective July 1, 2013):

(a) The Commissioner of Administrative ServicesSecretary of the Office of Policy and Management shall, within available appropriations, develop and implement guidelines, in cooperation with interested employee organizations, as defined in subsection (d) of section 5-270, authorizing telecommuting and work-at-home programs for state employees. Such guidelines shall be designed to achieve the following goals: (1) Increase worker efficiency and productivity; (2) benefit the environment; and (3) reduce traffic congestion. The guidelines of the telecommuting or work-at-home program and determination of whether an employment position is appropriate for such program shall not be subject to collective bargaining under the provisions of chapter 68. (b) Any employee of a state agency may be authorized either by the head of such state agency or, for any employee of the legislative branch, by the executive director of the Joint Committee on Legislative Management, or his or her designated representative, to participate in a telecommuting or work-at-home assignment. Approval of such assignment may be granted only where it is determined to be in compliance with the guidelines developed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. Any assignment shall be on a temporary basis only, and may be terminated as required by agency operating needs. Each state agency shall provide the Department of Administrative ServicesOffice of Policy and Management with a copy of any telecommuting or work-at-home program arrangement that it authorizes for any employee of such agency. (c) The Commissioner of Administrative ServicesSecretary of the Office of Policy and Management shall include in the annual report required under section 5-204, as amended by this act, the extent of use by employees of the programs provided pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section.

Mankato, St. Cloud among top for telecommuting

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows Mankato, North Mankato and St. Cloud are among the top 10 metro areas nationwide when it comes to the percentage of people who telecommute for work.

The Mankato Free Press reported Sunday ( http://bit.ly/Y3sJjY) that 7.7 percent of the combined workforce in Mankato and North Mankato work from home, while 7.6 percent of the St. Cloud workforce telecommutes. At last count, Mankato and North Mankato had more than 4,000 people working from home full- and part-time.

"In the Upper Midwest we have a strong work ethic, and if you're working at home for somebody, you've got to have that characteristic. Also, you have to have flexible employers," said Greater Mankato Growth president and chief executive Jonathan Zierdt.

Zierdt said computer technology has allowed telecommuting to replace the daily grind of commuting.

Jason Giroux, a North Mankato Web designer and marketing specialist who telecommutes, said he believes he's more productive working at home. "I definitely would have a hard time going back to an office at this point," he said.

National companies such as Best Buy and Yahoo recently pulled the plug on telecommuting, saying corporate collaborative and creative needs are best served by on-site staff. But Minnesota doesn't seem to buy into that argument.

Just a few years ago, the Twin Cities metro area won a share of a $1 billion federal award for its efforts to promote telecommuting to ease traffic congestion.

At Minnesota State, Mankato, 17 people work at home for part of their work week. Among the conditions: Employees must not use telecommuting as a substitute for child care, and telecommuters must be available by phone or email during work hours.

The census defines a telecommuter as someone whose work is home-based at least one day a week.

Mary and Marty Cassem of Lake Crystal are a telecommuting married couple sharing a home office. She's an area community relations representative for the American Cancer Society. He's a distribution manager for a New Jersey bearings company.

"There's definitely pros and cons," Mary Cassem said. While she enjoys the flexibility, she said having your workplace at home can be hard. "You never quite get away from the office," she said.

http://www.inforum.com/event/apArticle/id/DA4UG2VG0/

Marissa Mayer, Telecommuting and The Business Woman Reaction

Marissa Mayer, Telecommuting and The Business Woman Reaction

We All Know What Opinions Are Like – Here’s Mine
Here’s Why My Opinion – and Other Prevailing Ones – Could Be Completely Wrong
http://womengrowbusiness.com/2013/02/marissa-mayer-telecommuting-and-the-business-woman-reaction/

by TINU ABAYOMI-PAUL on FEBRUARY 27, 2013

The top story I’ve been watching this week was the decision by Marissa Meyer, CEO of Yahoo, recently transplanted from Google, to end telecommuting at Yahooby telling remote workers to come in or quit by June.

I’ve been slow to form an opinion on the matter for several reasons.

First, I know how hard it is to make difficult business decisions that affect more than just you.  You can’t always do what’s popular. And sometimes doing what you perceive to be right, or the least harmful, makes you the bad guy.

Second, I work from home a lot, and get much more done than I do in an office environment in the two companies I own now.

So I know my opinion is a biased one: remote working (mostly) works for me.

In short, I want to take my personal bias out of it, and look at the situation based on the information I have, rather than the feelings I have first. Of course, I later add human emotion back into the equation and reevaluate again because I’m a person, not a robot. As are the affected and reactive population.

In so doing, I’ve come to the conclusion that the backlash isn’t all about whether what happened was what is best for Yahoo! or not.

It’s the fear that a prominent company making this kind of policy change is a threat to American telecommuters.

In other countries, particularly in Europe, the role of work in life is embedded in the culture. Time off is often more lenient, productivity is valued above present. It has been for years and a major company changing its mind is not likely to sway other business owners.

In the US, policy changes at major companies often ripple out to other companies. Big companies are sometimes the test beds for ideas like unlimited time off, email for office use, having a web site or a blog, or telecommuting. Smaller companies watch them to see if the experiment will succeed or fail.

When there is a perceived failure at a prominent company of a benefit employees want, given this climate, of course there will be panic.

Now that a couple of days have passed, and I’ve had time to actually gather some information, I have come to the conclusion that even if this was the right move for Yahoo, the implementation was faulty.

And I’m inclined to think this may have been the fastest, though not the best, resolution for Yahoo’s situation, IF the rumors about the lacking productivity of the remote teams are true.

(Of course, my opinion and my fellow bloggers or social media users is likely of little consequence to whether Yahoo! will reverse its position, regardless of whether our opinions are correct. However, the alternative idea of remaining silent when these kinds of issues hit so close to home, seems counter-intuitive, even hypocritical.

How can you tell people their voice matters, and then not speak? Stranger things have happened then bloggers being able to use our collective power to cause change. Back to the issue at hand.)

I started my research by simply reading the Yahoo! memo  leaked to All Things Digital, and I could see why it caused outrage to those who may be sensitive to the issue of telecommuting.

One of my favorite blogs, Spin Sucks, from one of our community members, Gini Dietrich, gives an example of a way the same message could have been communicated with better wording in the Yahoo! memo.

I agree that her version would have caused a much smaller uproar, perhaps none at all. Then I wonder  if alternative solutions were pursued.

I also noted that the memo in question came from the head of human resources, not from Meyer directly. Of course she had to have made the decision. But is it possible that she didn’t sign off on the phrasing in the memo? Is it likely that Yahoo never meant to indite telecommuting as a general practice?

Surely, if there are people abusing the telecommuting privilege, they should be let go. But what about the people who it is working for, who are adding value to the company, perhaps even because of telecommuting rather than in spite of it?

When telecommuting fails on such a large scale, it’s at least partly the fault of poor monitoring and management. Study after study shows that telecommuting actually benefits the company, the workers, even the environment. There’s the argument that it doesn’t spur innovation as much as productivity, but are the types of jobs that were remote, in this case, primed for completing projects or generating ideas?

Of course, as you’ll read in one of the stories below, the prevailing suspicion is that Meyer did this to force people to quit instead of firing them. Which also seems lazy, short-sighted, and ultimately bad for Yahoo if this is true.

It’s bound to throw out the baby with the bath water – there are likely great telecommuters who work better independently, adding value to the company. Instead of looking across the entire company and firing the appropriate people, cutting off an entire arm that may only be dead in the fingers … it just seems barbaric and backwards.

My opinion, as much as it relies on the available data to draw conclusions, still assumes a lot of things that may not be true. And this is where I believe some of the rhetoric surrounding the issue needs to be checked against the strictest view of the facts at hand.

Meyer may be making similar changes in the rest of the company we don’t know about. There’s an article where a former Yahoo telecommuter came forward to state that things were not efficient remotely.

Telecommuting may be bad for Yahoo’s culture, the way they’re doing it.

Still, even if time shows that Meyer took the correct action to right the company, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth as a former Yahoo consumer.

The only one of their products I use now is Flickr, and only because I can sign in with Google. For about two years I kept asking for help to reset my password – something I have to do quite often as someone who basically lives on the web – with no answer.

Public perception does count for something. But perhaps Yahoo’s public isn’t partly made up of tech consumers any longer – people like us who blog, use Flickr, or social media may not be central to their audience, and perhaps never were.

Below are the articles I read for your reference – it seems relatively easy to find negative press on the topic. The neutral and positive slants offer some great points, though I disagree with most of their conclusions.

Definitely worth a read if telecommuting affects your life, as an employer or as an employee. Without this discourse, Yahoo’s change in policy might have been taken at face value and been the start of a tide which rippled into the blind and abrupt end of telecommuting across the US.

Instead, as one of the articles below cleverly posits – the fact that such a well known company made what so many view as an obvious mistake has opened dialogue on a hidden trend – that of companies reversing the decision to telecommute after trying it and failing.

Perhaps the result of this open dialogue will leave all parties better prepared for this circumstance in the future.