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"It's not hard to sell the benefits of telecommuting to employees; it's the employers who need convincing that working from home can actually translate into increased profits. According to a recent Families and Work Institute's National Study of Employers, the number of employers offering a flexible work place increased from 34 percent to 63 percent between 2005 and 2012, indicating the option of telecommuting is quickly becoming the norm rather than the exception. Telecommuting offers many benefits to an employer, including increased employee satisfaction, reduction in operating costs and the ability to tap into a broader talent base - one no longer limited by geography."

Jane Cravens' page on telecommuting with links to dozens of other resources

""We do our best work when we're physically connected," says Roy Hirshland, CEO of T3 Advisors, a commercial real estate advisor. Dialing in on Skype will work in a pinch, but it's not a substitute, he says. "When you're in the same room, you can see facial expressions, you can feel energy in a room." The idea is based on Media Richness Theory, which posits that some tasks require face-to-face interaction. Skype doesn't fit the bill. "Skype is a great, free way to communicate with sound and picture, but with glitchy connections, awkward camera angles, the limitations of webcams and cheap microphones, etc.," says Dr. Matthew Lombard, a professor at Temple University and president of the International Society for Presence Research. "It's far from the same experience as talking to someone in person. Face-Time and other tablet and phone methods have the advantage of mobility, but they suffer in terms of the vividness of the experience." "Narrow-bandwidth tech like text-based chat rooms and messaging, and email, are great for specific, relatively straight-forward, 'dry' cognitive tasks but not so good for things that involve ambiguity and emotion," Lombard says. "So there are an awful lot of tasks people need to complete in business (and certainly in life generally) that don't lend themselves well to these technologies.""

summary of main findings from just released CompTIA study on millennials' expectations of technology, telecommuting in the workplace, etc. 

local Tampa woman finds good job on FlexJobs and telecommutes now

Forbes 9/02/2013. Kerry Hannon suggests 10 tips from working at home. In addition to the tips about designating a space, etc. Kerry also talks about the challenge in convincing others you can manage other people when you telecommute. Use a digital way to "show up" at the office, be an online extrovert to keep your face and presence known to those in the office.

by Kelly Wallace Finding work life balance needs to be reframed as a person, not working Mom, issue, especially since we are all connected 24/7. Companies are becoming less flexible, not more, especially after Yahoo banned working from home. Men want flexibility as well, and statistics show more men than women telecommute, which defies the popular conception of working moms being the highest percentage of telecommunters. Until the conversation includes everyone, not just focuses on women, there will be no change in perception of the issue in the c-suite.

Post by sara Sutton Fell, February 2, 2015 on working from home. Good guidance on finding and applying for part-time and full-time jobs that are remote, telecommuting, home-based, distributed or "geographically neutral."

new study on impact of millennials in workforce--want to use technology for connecting, communicating, and collaborating in much greater numbers than baby boomers do

has a from-to matrix by Phyllis Moen on shifting from traditional to open work environment and links to other resources

Interesting and VALUABLE links-rich how-to blog post by Wade Foster at Zapier, a distributed company, June 27, 2013 on managing remote teams. Identifies excellent resources elsewhere assembled by practitioners in remote work places. Identifies three key things: team, TOOLS (great list for work team), and processes for success. Team--hire doers, hire people you can trust, trust the people you hire, hire people who can write, hire people who are okay without a social workplace Tools--Campfire for virtual office; Sqwiggle, a persistent video chat room that takes a picture of you every 8 seconds which people can see on their computers and instant video chat; email, Trello for joint to-do list; GitHub for issues and pull requests; iDoneThis for daily digest of accomplishments--notes that "it is great for personal use as well because it can help build habits." Also Chrome profiles, LastPass Enterprise, Draft for easily versioning drafts, and Google Docs, Hello sign (for signatures without hassle of scanning, etc.), and Google Talk Processes--everyone does support on regular schedule to stay close to customers; a culture of shipping, weekly hangouts, weekly learning, monthly one on ones, culture of daily feedback

blog post by Kurt Mackey at MongoHQ, a distributed company, on working remotely and how hard it is to come up with an effective system for engaging workers. It is a work in progress. Need firewalls between personal life and work life--sound has to be managed for one thing. Mentions the blending of in-office staff and remote staff and a 'standard' for everyone to use the same collaboration tools, be available via the same channels, and produce documentation of interactions that are important to share. Has a whole section on the practical (and the tools they use to communicate) prefer async communications! Have a central work tool (Compose to record what is being produced each day); day to day communication in Hipchat, use pre-reads to meetings on a Wiki that get updated on Hackpad during the meeting, open mailing lists, Sqwiggle for face time, and Google Hangouts, too. Final recommendation is to "keep iterating" to build a remote friendly culture.

From Inc. by Christina Desmarais, August 14, 2013. Good advice about dealing with family members, friends, other phone calls while using a home office. Also, names some tools to help keep up with collaborative projects and work teams: Hipchat for group chatting, Trello or Asana for project management, Expensify for tracking expenses and submitting expense reports, and Sqwiggle which keeps your webcam on so co-workers can see you work.

Laura Vanderkam, Fast Company, July 2014 recommends taking off Tuesday, Wed., or Thursday for a workday from home instead of Friday for maximum productivity.