Some Labor Laws Apply to Ongoing Telecommuting

Chicago, IL (Law Firm Newswire) December 10, 2014 – Working at home is common in the technology age, and certain laws apply when this kind of work situation is ongoing and not just temporary.

“If you work at home, you need to know how you are classified by your employer. You also need to consider the laws that apply in your state of residence. Every state, with the exception of Montana, has “at-will” employment laws,” pointed out Timothy Coffey, a noted Chicago employment attorney.

At-will employment means that a company may lay a worker off, demote or fire the worker, or cut his or her pay for almost any reason. However, they may not discriminate against an employee based on various factors which include but are not limited to race, color, religion, sex or age.

These rules apply both to those who work at home and to those at work in a traditional workplace. An employee working at home is not classified as an independent contractor because, in most instances, the employer dictates what work they perform. There may also be some tax advantages to working at home, but they may not apply in the case of a disabled worker, because working at home benefits the employee and not always the employer.

“If an employee works at home because there is no available space in the employer’s usual place of work, telecommuting is then a benefit for the employer, and the costs of running a home office are usually tax deductible. However, you must know what kind of working arrangement you have first,” Coffey indicated. To that end, get any work-at-home arrangement detailed in writing. This is good protection for both parties to the agreement.

Any work-at-home written agreement should outline that the worker is obligated to follow certain business rules and codes of conduct and outline precisely what work the individual must produce for each pay period. Is the worker to be on call? That should be included in any agreement, along with a record of what equipment the individual may have at home and what should be done if that equipment is damaged or stolen.

If an individual is disabled, the federal government readily acknowledges work-at-home agreements, regarding such flexibility as an “accommodation.” This is in line with the federal rules and regulations that mandate that disabled workers must be allowed the opportunity to do their job to the best of their ability and that if there are issues, the disability must be accommodated.

“If you are in doubt about the validity of a work-at-home agreement, reach out and talk to an experienced employment attorney,” said Coffey.

Learn more at http://www.employmentlawcounsel.com/

THE COFFEY LAW OFFICE, P.C.
351 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 602
Chicago, IL 60654
Call: 312.627.9700

http://www.lawfirmnewswire.com/2014/12/some-labor-laws-apply-to-ongoing-telecommuting/

No flextime in your office? Don't blame HR, fault your boss

by  Anne Fisher  @anbfisher  NOVEMBER 13, 2014, 10:41 AM EST

Human resources managers say supervisors resist letting employees out of their sight.

If your employer offers flexible work schedules—the option to telecommute, for instance, or to come in to the office at hours other than the usual—how did you hear about the policy? Odds are it wasn’t from your boss. Only about one in four (27%) employees report to someone who’s willing to bring up flextime, says a new survey from the Society for Human Resources (SHRM). Everybody else hears about it either in job interviews at the company, or from peers after they start.

Coincidence? Not really. The SHRM study uncovers a big disconnect inside many companies. While human resources executives want to make flexible work arrangements available to everybody as a way to attract and retain talent—especially, but not only, “knowledge workers” who happen to be Millennials—bosses closer to the front lines often drag their feet. Almost three-quarters (71%) of the HR people polled say that managers don’t support, let alone encourage, flexible schedules.

“HR sees flextime as a crucial part of its strategy for managing talent, and employees clamor for it,” notes Lisa Horn, director of a SHRM program called the Workplace Flexibility Initiative. “Where it falls down is at the middle-management level. Flexibility is more complicated and difficult than managing employees who are all together in one place at the same time.” In particular, she adds, “some managers are afraid of how it will affect their own work-life balance if it means they end up having to do extra work.”

To try to overcome those misgivings, SHRM has teamed up with the Families & Work Institute to launch When Work Works, partly to make training available on topics like measuring the productivity of remote employees. (The SHRM survey says 80% of HR departments now have policies that “encourage managers to evaluate employees based on accomplishments rather than just ‘face time.’”) But Horn says it’s slow going: “We still have a lot of work to do.”

In the meantime, When Work Works has put together a step-by-step toolkit for anyone who wants to request flextime, including advice on what to do if the boss says no. One suggestion: Ask for help from another manager who does support flexibility, and who is either a peer or a higher-up of your recalcitrant boss. Invite him or her to a meeting with you and the boss who’s against it, to discuss the details of how flextime could benefit both of you. In a nod to the tricky politics this may entail, the guide cautions, “This should be presented as a joint problem-solving meeting, not an attempt to go over your supervisor’s head.”

If that doesn’t work—and if finding a different boss is, for whatever reason, not an option—the SHRM survey offers one encouraging statistic: About half (48%) of HR people think flexible schedules, including telecommuting, will be much more widespread within five years. Managers who are resisting flextime now will need to get with the program, says Evren Esen, SHRM’s survey chief, “or else their organizations may become less competitive.” And who ever wants to take the blame for that?

https://fortune.com/2014/11/13/flexible-work-schedule-denied/

Telecommuting Not In Budgets

Telecommuters often request office supplies and items such as keyboards, monitors and phones as well as services from employers. But two-thirds of company purchasing departments in a survey by Staples Advantage say that they don't factor in telecommuters when doing budgets.

Fifty-nine percent of procurement professionals surveyed in the study by Staples Advantage, the B2B unit of Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS), buy products for telecommuters, while 33% say that telecommuters pay out of their own pocket.

"For many companies and employees, telecommuting makes good business sense," said Neil Ringel, executive vice president of Staples Advantage. "However, if organizations don't budget accordingly and provide appropriate oversight, there is significant risk for rogue spending and inconsistencies in the tools provided to telecommuters. Organizations can reduce their overall spend with upfront planning, streamlined purchasing and procurement oversight."

http://news.investors.com/management-managing-for-success/120514-729319-telecommuting-not-in-budgets.htm?ref=SeeAlso

Let Employees Choose When, Where, and How to Work

A sense of freedom — the ability to choose what you work on, as well as how, when, and where you perform your work — is a growing priority for talented professionals across sectors and industries, and one of the core elements of a fulfilling career.

According to a 2009 Forrester report, by 2016, 43% of the U.S. workforce — 63 million people — are expected to work from home; 34 million people already do. This trend is driven by a number of factors, including professionals’ desire to have control over their day-to-day work life. Millennials are especially keen (as many as 92% in one survey) to eschew office life for more freedom about where and when they work.

But it’s not just workers who benefit from freedoms like working at home. Companies that officially allow employees to work remotely at least three times per month were more likely to report revenue growth of 10% or more within the last year, compared to firms without such policies. And some companies, like videogame maker Valve (valued at $3B just two years ago), attribute much of their commercial success to their open workflows, i.e. arrangements where employees get to choose which projects they work on and which roles they play on those projects. Valve also cites this level of autonomy as one of its primary competitive advantages in recruiting and retention (check out the company’s Employee Handbook).

YOU AND YOUR TEAM

·                  Engaging Employees

Best practices for keeping your team focused and motivated.

Many large companies track and report the efficiencies and benefits they gain from remote work policies. For example, Cisco estimates that it saves $277 million each year from productivity gains related to telecommuting employees. AnLRN study released at the World Economic Forum in Davos found in a deep study that companies in which employees displayed “high levels of freedom” in their relationships were 10-20 times more likely to outperform companies with low freedom scores. These findings speak for themselves.

Here are a few examples of companies that prioritize a strong culture of self-care and freedom:

·                  At The Gerson Lehrman Group’s global HQ office in New York, employees don’t have assigned team work areas, but rather work in “neighborhoods” ­— flexible working spaces that have various amenities (conference rooms and tables, phone booths, even overnight lockers) and are free to pick up and relocate to another neighborhood when they see fit. They also work under highly autonomous workflows, especially their engineers. Engineers choose their own projects, engaging with business operators across the company directly — no project management, no product management.

·                  At my company ReWork, all of our employees have four weeks of paid vacation each year, as well as four weeks of remote work eligibility and unlimited sick days. We’ve had employees do extended work trips from Colombia, Brazil, Uganda, and cities across the U.S. We adopted these policies after months of research and observing similar policies at organizations, such as Reasoning Mind, a Houston-based educational software nonprofit that also encourages its employees to take 4-week remote work stints each year.

·                  Employees at NationSwell, a new media startup focused on telling the stories of American citizens, business owners, and ventures changing the fabric of our country for the better, work together in their New York City office on Mondays, but are free to roam the city and work in coffee shops or wherever they please for the rest of each week.

·                  Firms like 37Signals, Mozilla, UpWorthy, Universal Mind, StackExchange, GitHub, and Treehouse are known for having fully or largely distributed teams from day one — and they use that to their advantage in recruiting the best talent wherever they live.

These policies are examples of results-oriented management thinking. That is to say, policies shaped based on outcomes, not process. If someone can do their job and do it well while absent from the office, more power to them.

Here are three things you can do to bring more freedom into your workplace:

1. Ask your employees which kinds of freedoms they want, and be prepared to act on their requests.

Depending on your industry, the product or service that you sell, and your geographic location, your employee’s needs will vary. And it’s impossible to know what they want unless you ask them. Employers have many options when it comes to increasing freedom: remote work, work-from-home, and paid vacation policies are some of the more commonly known. But you can also let employees choose their work and managers, select their own professional development opportunities, or provide incentive-based compensation for particularly good performance on key projects.

In-person facilitated discussions — not faceless surveys — are the best way to hear from people as they are more likely to give you authentic responses. Work/life balance is a very personal thing and to get the full picture it’s important to listen carefully. If your organization is too large to hear from everyone in person, make sure to at least flesh out survey results with a few facilitated discussions from different functional teams.

2. Spend time understanding remote communication tools.

Companies like Slack, Hipchat, Yammer, Trello, and Asana are bringing fantastic new tools to the marketplace that make it easier than ever before for remote team members to communicate and work together, as well as interact with company stakeholders. (I think that Slack is especially fantastic, but don’t take my word for it.) Professionals who use Twitter and other social networks for professional reasons are always a tweet away from their teams.

If you’re not sure what team communication tools to use, get in touch with either a startup founder or folks who work in your local startup ecosystem. They are more likely to know of the latest offering that has been fairing well with early adopters.

3. Be vocal about your work policies related to freedom.

Adopting high-freedom policies is a competitive advantage in the talent market. The more nuanced and relevant your policies are, the more competitive your hiring brand will be. If you have great benefits but don’t have a dedicated (and concise) section of your careers page or job descriptions that explains them, or you don’t talk about them during candidate interviews, you’re missing an opportunity to leverage that asset.

It’s much easier to recruit and retain great talent when you are giving employees what they want while helping them excel at their jobs. More and more people want the freedom to decide where, when, how, and with whom they work. Do your best to provide that freedom.

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Nathaniel Koloc is co-founder and CEO of ReWork, a mission-driven recruiting company that specializes in sourcing purpose-driven professionals for companies operating in the purpose economy.

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This article is about HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=786866291929475161#editor/target=post;postID=6799637466137884265

Work From Home Jobs: 4 Reasons Why Telecommuting Is The NEW American Dream Subscribe Free

By Toni Matthews-El · November 9, 2014 ·The buzz (and pay) associated with working at home is steadily rising.

Odds are this trend is here to stay .

Here are four reasons why you should not only get used to the availability of remote work, but also anticipate it as the new standard.

1.) Convenience and Flexibility

It’s very convenient to be able to say your work can be done at a desk near your bed, at the local library or even your favorite coffee shop.

There’s also an increasing desire for flexibility; so many things you need to do during the day cannot be done because you’re “trapped” at the workplace for eight hours.

More Americans are looking for telecommute opportunities that will grant them a greater amount of freedom as to how they spend their day.

2.) Greater Control Over Earnings

Aside from flexibility, one of the most attractive things about many work at home job opportunities is that you dictate your earnings.

You can look at your level of experience and education and decide what’s reasonable based on what you earned within a non-telecommute environment.

You can decide your hours. You can decide what days you work and what days don’t. The ability to decide how much or little you earn, rather than having this told to you is amazingly freeing.

3.) No More Hostile Workplaces

The difference between telecommute jobs and traditional jobs can be staggering in terms of the avoided stress.

Some work environments are full of nasty individuals and run by bullies.

It can be emotionally taxing being in hostile work environments, especially if it happens to be a job you feel that you cannot afford to leave.

When you’re self-employed, YOU decide who you want to work for and have far more control over your work relationships.

4.) Paradigm Shift Is Underway

Are we witnessing the last days of the traditional office environment?

It’s possible.

With nearly half of today’s working Americans either in telecommuting jobs or employed in fields that are work-at-home-friendly, it’s possible in ten years, telecommuting can represent the majority of the workforce.

Gone is the hierarchal, “climb the latter” thinking. In its place, a series of career fields where people exchange ideas and information on a more level field.

http://www.webpronews.com/work-from-home-jobs-4-reasons-why-telecommuting-is-the-new-american-dream-2014-11

How to hire remote workers

By Peter Zeinoun, BrandPost

• Nov 7, 2014 9:00 AM
• e-mail
• print

Remote employees, working from home instead of the office, can improve your bottom line considerably. According to a recent Stanford University study, the Chinese travel agency Ctrip "estimated (working remotely) improved productivity by around 25% and saved about $2,000 per year per employee working at home."

Taking on remote workers means you have a larger pool of talent to pick from. If your office is in San Francisco, and you insist that your employees work there, you're limited to Bay Area residents or anyone willing to relocate. Remote workers can be anywhere with a good Internet connection. 

But picking the right people can be tricky. You need disciplined people who require minimal supervision and can fix their own IT issues.

You can use the skills you developed hiring local workers when hiring remote, but you're going to have to examine some additional factors.

Consider the worker's location

Think about time zones. If your office is in California, and a prospective employee lives in England, that person will be eight hours ahead of you. If you come into the office at 9:00am, it will be nearing quitting time for them. Chats and videoconferencing will be difficult unless the new hire is willing to work nights.

Also pay attention to language or cultural barriers. If you’re looking for someone to write ad copy, only hire people with a firm grasp of the language and the intended audience. This isn’t an issue with all jobs; a programmer or graphic artist only needs to be able to understand your directions.

Interview them face to face

Don't discount the importance of body language. How a person sits, how they use their arms, and how their face reacts to a difficult question can tell you a lot about them.If they live close enough, have them come in at least once. Otherwise, interview them via video chat. If they don't have the equipment for that at home, they're probably not right for the job. 

And even though they’re working remotely, you should still consider how well they'll fit into the company culture. They may be hundreds of miles away, but they'll still need to fit in. In fact, a remote worker may need better social skills than a local one, since they have to meld into a work environment without haven't actually being in the office.

Ask them to friend you on Facebook or other social media sites. This will give you a glimpse into their personality and an idea of how they handle online socializing--what kind of jokes they like, how they handle disagreements, and so on.

Ask the right questions

While interviewing candidates, try to go beyond the usual questions about their experience and qualifications. Ask them how they schedule their workday. How do they handle creative blocks and distractions? Have they had other telecommuting jobs?

Communication and connectivity are essential. What kind of Internet connection do they have? What VOIP and video services are they comfortable with?

A big one: How technically adept are they? Can they install the company's VPN software? Fix their own computer? After all, someone from IT can't simply drop by and fix it for them. A remote control tool such as LogMeIn Rescue will allow IT to help them, but their own tech experience will still be vital.

And ask them about their environment. How many people live with them? Are any of them young children, and if so, is someone else responsible for them during working hours? Having children shouldn’t affect their eligibility, but if they intend to juggle full-time childcare with their job responsibilities, that could warrant further discussion. Also, does the potential employee have a separate room to use as an office? If it doesn’t feel too intrusive, you might even ask them to show you their workspace via webcam.

Minda Zetlin of Inc.com also put together a great list of questions to ask prospective remote employees.

Whether you call them telecommuters, remote workers, or no-collar workers (some, I suspect, may be no-pants workers), they can be a terrific asset. But like any other employees, they're only useful if they're the right people.

Remote Control: Teleworking does not replace office culture

Content That Works

A 2013 survey by the non-profit research association, World at Work, found that 88 percent of some 800 businesses large and small offered telecommute options.

November 02, 2014 11:00 am  •  Marilyn Kennedy Melia CTW 

Although workers see telecommuting as a valuable perk, they can’t totally escape the office, finds a research paper recently published online in Personnel Psychology.

Indeed, ties to co-workers and bosses back at the office play a key role in the success of these remote work arrangements.

Telecommuting has grown increasingly popular. A 2013 survey by the non-profit research association, WorldatWork, found that 88 percent of some 800 businesses large and small offered telecommute options.

Still, managers and co-workers back in the office won’t view remote workers’ performance positively unless they aim to counteract some long-held negative perceptions, notes Ravi Gajendran, a University of Illinois business professor and co-author of the study.

Gajendran’s research provides evidence against some of those negative views, and offers insight on how remote workers can improve the perceptions of their performance. The findings can also bolster an employee’s argument that he should be allowed to telecommute:

• In spite of employers’ worry that productivity will slip without the monitoring that face time affords, data on 323 workers and 143 matched supervisors finds that job performance of telecommuters is actually slightly better than performance of office workers. A key reason, speculates Gajendran, is that remote workers are motivated to do more because they appreciate their arrangement.

• Office workers often resent remote employees, “because there are unanticipated tasks that can creep up and the at-home worker isn’t there to help,” says Gajendran. He recommends that telecommuters “be sensitive to what is happening at the office,” and suggest that they are available to help out.

• Remote work must really be somewhat remote. Explains Gajendran: “If managers use excessive controls, like constantly monitoring when a telecommuter logs on and off his computer, workers perceive the lack of trust, and their performance can suffer.”

http://www.nwitimes.com/business/jobs-and-employment/remote-control-teleworking-does-not-replace-office-culture/article_7d28e781-37a9-5a6b-a17b-a490fde68a2c.html