I'm working on my diploma thesis about telework basically in germany and about some political implications and social interests in this topic, like work-life-balance etc.

I think that this form of work is quite common in the US for a couple of jobs and branches and I wondered if anyone here has any experience with that? this should be a first overview in this thread but maybe I would ask some of you more specific and detailed later.

that would be great.

nvrmnd

I work from home one day a week. It's been really great. We have to sign into some instant messaging programs so that our supervisors can see we're at our computer. We essentially make a list of what we plan to accomplish at home before our telework day and then provide a write up of what we accomplished when were back in the office.

I see.
do you use your private computer for work?
are you free to arrange your worktime during the day or is it basically still a 9-5 job at home?
did you need some special reasons for getting the 'allowance' to telework?
what happens if you don't accomplish all your goals? are you being evaluated on that, like how successful your work at home is?

The place I work allows for teleworking 1 day a week but it's most due to our "green" initiatives and reducing our carbon footprint.

You have to have been an employee for over a year and you have to have your own computer and phone at home.

You have access to all the internal databases and you just call and check your messages a couple times an hour.

Pretty nice perk honestly.

My situation is a little different (because I am one of the owners of the company)--basically if shit doesn't get done, I have no one to blame but myself.

At any rate, I work from home one day a week and it works out really well--I basically convinced my partner who typically runs our office that shit was falling through the cracks because he was constantly tied to the phone and that if there was a day where he wasn't it would be beneficial. Additionally, I get a day where I don't have to commute, and I can take my daughter to school and maybe even run an errand or two because I'm not committing 1:30-2:00 of my day to commuting. We have a call forwarding service for the phones and I access our office network through RDC.

when i want to work from home, i do. one of the main reasons i tend to go into the office more often than not is because i like being able to print out and review color proofs, work with beautiful women, and free lunch.

I did this for 2 years shortly after college. It sucked. But hey, I posted on CMJ a whole lot amirite. Now? I pretty much only work-from-home when I have to work (I'm a student and my work is at a hospital/ambulance corps).

At my last company, I did this for several months as I had a home studio from which to work. It could still become all-consuming and push far past "5 o'clock" - esp. with upload/rendering times factored - but I found I developed a better sense of how to prioritize after having done the "telecommute" thing for a while.

I mostly do contract consulting work when I have the time now, so it's a different mentality. I'm a student first and as such need to schedule any paying work into my life, and sometimes that doesn't, umm, work. But, when I do take a consulting job, I tend to put life on hold and work 14-18 hour days.

(I vastly prefer office settings with people to see every day and its attendant free coffee)

...

Def. curious about how this varies from Germany to the States based on the varying modes of transport. When I went to school in Germany (Freiburg, F-a-M, Lueneburg), a car commute seemed an afterthought, whereas S-Bahn/Regio transport was typical for my working friends. Of course, this was pre-broadband, so they all had to go to work.

interesting! does your company receive money for reducing the carbon footprint or is it an image thing in a specific branch?

that's a little different, right. do you have any employees or do you run your business only together with the other guy?

that's two of the main reasons why people don't do telework I guess: specific equipment which isn't really mobile and keeping social contacts alive or the fear to become an outsider. the thing with the free lunch might depend on what is served.
I guess it's a small enterprise with a flat hirarchy (does that exist in english?)?
is anybody allowed to work at home if wanted or are the beautiful women excluded from this rule?

There are four of us, three partners and one employee. We have three locations (two warehouses in addition to the one main office) but everything we do is basically done on mobile.

I live in the UK and have been teleworking full time from a work laptop (and corporate VPN) since July 2009. I'm in customer support for a large (over 100K employees) enterprise software vendor. My manager is based in Denver, and his manager is based in northern California. My boss only has four direct reports based in Europe, so face time is minimal barring the occasional conference or training at HQ (NoCal). More and more of our support teams are spreading out like this, so the idea of keeping them in a set office/location is becoming obsolete. While some of my colleagues will work from an office 2 days per week, the company seems to have figured out that pushing people to homework will either 1) make office space for new employees that come in via corporate acquisitions and 2) getting enough people out of one building reduces a load of facilities overhead.

I am appraised twice a year and have had good/great marks ever since homeworking. I don't view home temptations (laundry, errands, video gaming) any differently from those the office (long lunches, 'Net surfing, office cooler chat). Given the aforementioned team structure, they rely on me to be self-sufficient, and I've apparently delivered. I may start/finish work a bit early or late on given days, but I'm expected to be online to take cases from 8:30am-5:00pm taking an hour lunch somewhere in there.

All this said, I've been single and living alone for a majority of the time. I've moved closer to my girlfriend two weeks ago, and the new place still doesn't have live broadband. I'm working from her place (2 bedroom for her + 2 kids, no separate room for office) as a stop-gap, but it has seriously disrupted my, her, and her kids' schedules. Wednesday can't get here fast enough.

in germany you usually have to make sure that you can work in a seperated room or otherwise appropriate situation. though in your case it's just for a couple of days and it shows how important that is.

so basially you work similar to someone in an office and are not able to arrange your working time individually. that's intersting. flexibility as one of the major outcomes of telework for the employee doesn't really count in your case.

In my previous job for a MNC, I worked at home around 2 days a week. Part of it was just our division using it as a way to make us happier/retain employees. Also, my job dealt with interacting with people all over the world, so it wasn't usually important for me to be in the office. The company is moving to open/shared spaces and no assigned offices or cubicles as they promote telecommuting more and more.

My current job involves more face to face meetings so I work at home about 1 day a week at most. I typically use this time to complete writing projects without the distractions of the office.

I can pretty much work from home whenever I need / want to, but I don't do it more than once a month or so. I have a company laptop and a VPN, along with a company cell. My work consists of a 50/50 mix of individual work and meeting-based work. Meetings almost always have a call-in number and sometimes a webex. I lead maybe 1/3 of the meetings I am in.

Pro's: No commute, which means an effectively earlier start time. Drinking good beer while on the clock. Working in jeans and a t-shirt on the roof deck with good music playing loud.

Con's: Not seeing people in person, which is a lot more effective. Not having spontaneous conversations with people I run into in person, which often lead to important discoveries. The general image of not "being at work" or at least the mild fear of acquiring that image. Also the fear of my boss's impression - which depends on the boss. With some, it's been a non-issue. With others, I am less sure of their confidence in me because they're new or stressed out or whatever. Also I just like being at the office, and when I do work from home for a day, I uniformly cannot wait to get back to my office the next day.

BREAKING: in 15 minutes my whole team will be having a meeting to discuss a new permanent work-from-home situation

i am both excited about this (2 more hours per day to spend with my kid, extra $200/mo in fuel costs saved), and a bit apprehensive (questioning my ability to enforce my own boundaries, i.e. when to stop working, etc)

i can keep you updated

please do! maybe you could give further information about the reasons of your company, staff structure (more male, more female?)

We all have our own programs that we're responsible and all our work has specific timelines that need to be met. If you get your work done on time and the quality is appropriate (most of our work is reviewed by our boss and our headquarters in DC) then your eligible for telework. We had a few people that couldn't meet any of their deadlines and admitted when they were confronted that they don't do much when working from home. They no longer telework and one is no longer in our office (medically retired before he was fired).

Our agency now has instituted telework guidelines, which includes annual training, annual reviews, weekly documentation and 2 years in a position to be eligible.

the actual impetus for this sudden virtualization of our workplace is due to our landlord limiting the amount of parking passes our company is allowed. there are 45 passes available for 85 employees, and being that my team of 8 isn't really part of the sales force at large (we are a small dev team subdivision largely detached from most other goings-on of the rest of the company), use a centralized source control utility, and are all pretty much set up on a VPN to work from wherever, it makes sense and will save the company money in facilities fees to have us work remotely, not to mention free up cubicle space for their ever-growing sales team.

as for demographics, there are 7 males and one female in our group.

we'll probably be meeting up one day per week in person, and our standup meetings will take place via skype or other voip deal

interesting. that's a really unexpected reason for implying telework. at least for me. basically you don't have the choice, if I see this correctly. what about the technical equipment? does that count as private investment for the job or does your company provide something? money for the phone bill? computers?

more and more I get an interesting insight of the use of telework in the USA, especially the perspective of mostly male here on the board. that's all gonna be a couple of more pages for my thesis. and obner was one of my sources.

I have a friend who somehow manages to live in Georgia but telecommute to her job in California. She was living in the Bay Area working for a large tech company (she does PR, stuff like writing speeches for executives), but her and her husband decided to move "home" to be closer to family and actually be able to afford a house. She managed to convince her company that this was a doable situation and only has to travel to the West Coast once a month or so.

Funny thing is, I was at their house a few weeks ago watching football and met their neighbor who has a very similar arrangement with his company in Pennsylvania.