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Telecommuters Connection: Cindy Currie Takes the Tradeoffs
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Cindy Currie became a fulltime teleworker in November 2005. Three years later she still sometimes wonders if she prefers commuting to an HP site. On the plus side, telecommuting "certainly takes the hassle out of getting to and from work," she says. "There is far less wear and tear on the car and its driver," she says. Currie used to spend six to seven hours driving 275 miles weekly to and from her home, so she figures she saves "over 300 hours and 13,000 miles a year."
"And the dress code is very different," she says. She can begin work early when she needs to and make other adjustments to her workday to accommodate colleagues and clients in different parts of the country and the world. "Equally important is being around (and almost instantly available) for my school-aged children. They can leave for and return from school with me at home," she says. "Teleworking certainly helps in maintaining some semblance of balance in my life; things are a lot less crazy than they were when I went to the office everyday."
The thing that Currie most misses about life in the cubicle is the ability to sit down and work through business challenges "side by side, on the spur of the moment -- getting to really know people. Nothing can replace face-to-face interaction," she says. "When you don't have that, it makes building relationships a bit harder and it certainly takes a lot longer."
Currie, who started with Digital Equipment Corporation 25 years ago, is a business planning manager and focuses on managing programs, projects, policies, processes, procedures, and tools. She has a home office devoted solely to her work. She finds that she is working more hours than she did when she commuted to an HP site. "In fact, my children claim that I am always working! And, although I don't think I'm 'always' working, I think I do work many more hours a week than I would or could if I went to an office everyday," she says. "There is that temptation to log in and check e-mail 'quickly,' because you can and then before you know it, you've gotten involved in something and have been online for hours."
Telephone, e-mail, instant messaging and virtual collaboration technologies such as SharePoint are her tools of telecommunication. However, Currie says, "When I find a colleague who is somewhat local to me, I make a point of scheduling something face-to-face, even lunch, in order to get out and meet the people with whom I work."
Currie says she won't be returning to an on-site office anytime soon. For her, working from a home office makes her more accessible to family and more productive at work. She'll take the tradeoffs, grabbing those face-to-face encounters with her colleagues when she can.
30 October 2008
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