An important factor for the success of telecommuting arrangements are the policies that companies establishes. Pacific Bell's ground rules - notes that telecommuting is voluntary and requires the permission of supervisors - specify that telecommuters should:

° Maintain regularly scheduled work hours.
° Be as accessible as their on-site counterparts during their agreed-upon hours.
° Have their performance measured by objectives and results.

Wendell Joyce co-chairs the Federal Flexiplace Workplace Project, in which 350 workers at a dozen federal agencies work at home one or more days a week. Mr. Joyce, a personnel research psychologist in the Office of Personnel Management, recommends that telecommuting programs be kept flexible and that voluntary work arrangements be offered to employees as a pilot project. Large companies and bureaucracies are not the only ones to reap the benefits of telecommuting. At least one smaller firm has found that telecommuting can be useful in recruiting key personnel.

In 1990, Bob Gosselin and Cathy Kilday formed STG Marketin Communications, an advertising and public relations firm specializing in high-tech clients. Their office is in suburban Manassas, Virginia, about 30 miles from Washington, D.C. A third of STG's nine-person staff-including a public relations director, account supervisor and senior writer - work at home full time. They communicate with one another frequently via fax machine, modem and telephone, and visit the Manassas offlce weekly for meetings.

Ms. Kilday notes that "high telephone bills are the price we are paying for the opportunity to work with excellent people and offer them a benefit other companies cannot. Telecommuting has strengthened our staff, and the caliber of our employees has helped us attract several important national accounts."

Are the 5.5 million corporate employees who work at home today part of a short-lived fad or an important long-term trend? Jack Nilles, chairman and founder of the Los Angeles-based, nonprofit Telecommuting Research Institute, thinks it is a trend and says the size of the telecommuting work force may grow to 33 million by the year 2010, and 50 million by 2030.

Mr. Nilles, writing in Tom Peters's On Achieving Excellence Newsletter. notes that "the logic behind telecommuting is simple: Since almost 60% of U.S. workers are information workers, it really shouldn't matter where they work."

Mr. Segal is a Washington-based free-lance writer.  
 
 
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