Here are a few of the commonly asked questions from our visitors.
Questions
- How can I convince my boss to let me telecommute? Ans
- What is the best desktop sharing tool for virtual teams? Ans
- What is the best electronic whiteboard tool available today? Ans
- How can I improve teamwork in my virtual team? Ans
- I get lonely working at home full-time. What can I do to help me feel more connected to my team? Ans
- How can I be sure when I upload work to our corporate computers that the data is secure? Ans
- How much of a positive impact do I have on the planet when I telecommute? Ans
Answers
- How can I convince my boss to let me telecommute?
- What is the best desktop sharing tool for virtual teams?
- What is the best electronic whiteboard tool available today?
- How can I build teamwork in my virtual team?
- I get lonely working at home full-time. What can I do to help me feel more connected to my team?
- How can I be sure when I upload work to our corporate computers that the data is secure?
- How much of a positive impact do I have on the planet when I telecommute?
It all comes down to how you being a telecommuter will help your manager get her projects done faster or for less money. Prepare your case before approaching your manager. Write down all the benefits to the company (see our benefits page for ideas), check your work style and job requirements against the minimum criteria in our prerequisites page, and then share all this with your manager along with statistics we have compiled. It doesn’t hurt to tell your manager that many of the fortune 500 companies have a telecommuting program to save money and improve productivity.
Please see the Most Suitable list of tools on the right column of our desktop sharing tools page.
Please see the Most Suitable list of tools on the right column of our whiteboard tools page.
Building teamwork is simply a matter of interaction time. Having people work together on aspects of a project is an excellent way to encourage interaction and allow teamwork to build naturally. If you want to jump start teamwork, on-line games are an excellent way to have your team interact in a non-business setting, allowing them to share a common experience. Our teambuilding page lists a few ideas for on-lines games, but let your imagination run free.
Get your team up on an instant messaging tool and keep the buddy list visible. Having a visual cue of others being present and working ‘beside’ you can help a lot. Be sure to attend as many of the major on-site meetings and teambuilding events as you can to reconnect with your teammates. Volunteer for projects where you must do a lot of on-line brainstorming, problem-solving, or document editing with others. This will help you feel less isolated. For other ideas, please see our telecommuting downsides page.
You should work with your company’s IT department to setup a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection between your home office and your company’s firewall. These are pretty easy to setup and most large companies already have processes in place to do this. With a VPN, all data from end-to-end in both directions is encrypted, effectively extending the corporate firewall out around your home office. This allows you to work securely from home (or anywhere) as if you were in the office.
There are some good overall numbers in our telecommuting statistics page, but it is pretty easy to see that for every day you don’t drive to work, there is one less car on the road. This reduces your stress, eliminates your exposure to road-rage and accidents for that day, and cuts the pollution from your car to zero (100%). Those are pretty significant numbers. Any additional power you use at home is offset by the reduction in power you aren’t consuming at work, making that part of the equation a net neutral. But, the most significant aspect of telecommuting is the productivity increase. Being able to get more done in less time greatly increases the producitivity of a company, allowing it to accomplish more with fewer resources. This benefits everyone, including our planet.
