If Joe Employee is not sitting at his desk during the day, how can his boss really know whether he’s getting his job done?
It’s the biggest issue most telework employers struggle with – even as they reap cost savings from having their employees work from home, said Jennifer Schaufele, executive director of the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
“It’s a trust issue,” Schaufele said. “The way to address that is with a really good work plan.”
Schaufele spoke Monday at a conference to encourage more Denver-area companies to offer telework options.
Denver has the third-largest number of teleworkers in the country, Schaufele said. Nationwide, more than 45 million people did some type of work from home in 2005, up nearly 2 percent over 2004, according to the independent International Telework Association and Council.
Alpine Access in Golden has solved the productivity mystery by tracking its 7,500 home-based call-center workers through software from the moment they log on to their computers, said Rick Owens, the company’s vice president of technology.
San Francisco-based McKesson Health Solutions also closely monitors its workers’ time, said Adrienne Crowley, a McKesson employee and nurse who calls patients by phone from Holyoke. McKesson has more than 300 employees in Broomfield, and hundreds of nurses who work from home across the country.
“You have to be very organized at home, and you have to be very time- conscious, because they measure you for the amount of time you spend on the phone,” Crowley said.
U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, is pushing the federal government to promote teleworking. Udall last week called for federal agencies to cut their gasoline use by 10 percent in a bill supporting teleworking.
“We need to engage with the new economy,” he said. “This is the future.”
