Computing Canada, September 13, 2002, Vol. 28 No. 18

I must confess that I take great satisfaction in the fact that I can do my work without wearing underwear.

It's not that I have anything against underwear, per se, or that I go commando all the time — I'm also a university professor, and there are some things that you just can't do —

but when I sit down at my computer to type out a few hundred or thousand words of deathless prose, I can be as casual and déshabillé as I please. Before you get excited, that usually means a t-shirt, board shorts and a five-day growth of beard.

I work at home most of the time, keeping in touch by e-mail, Web browser and telephone. I have close professional relationships with a number of co-workers and editors, even though there are some whom I have never met face-to-face. I usually manage to get the job done — at least as efficiently as if I was sitting at a desk in a cubicle in a head office — with as little fuss as possible. And I never cease to be amazed that I can do all of this at all.

To be fair, telework is not about sitting in your home office, looking like Shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoon (not the movie, please) while the workaday world remains in neckties and nylons. In fact, when you think about it, telework – or e-work, or telecommuting, take your pick of snazzy catch phrases — is a pretty amazing development.

The fact that, in theory at least, you can be a productive member of society without fighting traffic on a major highway every day is pretty damned revolutionary. Technology has redefined the workplace, bringing with it a whole new set of expectations and challenges. ""There's been telework of some kind for decades, but hardly of any consequence until very recently,"" says Bob Fortier, president of the Canadian Telework Association. ""Now, because of the technology, we're allowing the job to come to the people. It's growing quickly, but it's silent growth.""

What Fortier means, of course, is that, aside from the flurry of attention telework (or telecommuting, take your pick of catch phrases) got back in the days when computers were sexy, it hasn't exactly been front-page news. But that doesn't mean it isn't happening — CTA estimates there are 1.5 million hard-core teleworkers in Canada — or that Joe Nine-to-Five isn't thinking about it.

A new survey by the Information Technology Association of America's Positively Broadband Campaign, information workers are, quite frankly, champing at the bit to work in an environment where they don't (necessarily) have to wear underwear. Slightly more than half of the Americans surveyed believe that telework would improve their quality of life. Of the respondents who already telework, that number jumped to almost two-thirds!

The desire the technology is there. The availability of last mile broadband network access, coupled with reliable network authentication and security software makes real remote workplace access even more feasible. ""The technology has been the main driver,"" Fortier says. ""The existence of better and more affordable networking technologies, including broadband will make a big difference.""

So why is telework still a vaguely exotic idea, something that people in the workplace dream about but never quite attain? One part of it is the fear that many companies and managers have of losing control over their workers. Telework seems to be taking hold informally, Fortier said, where managers simply allow it to happen rather than deploy complete telework strategies.

The other hurdle is in the IT department — the guys who actually have to implement whatever telework system a company decides to adopt. With dwindling budgets and increasing demands on their resources, the IT guys have a sort of love-hate relationship with telework. ""They're kind of schizophrenic,"" Fortier says. ""They think the idea is great, but they're just not resourced. When you add up the issues of off-site workers, with administration issues and security and hardware issues and support, you can see why it's taking time to work through the IT department.""

It will happen because it is a good idea. Telework only has to overcome the last hurdle: the unfair image of teleworkers as unshaven, unkempt guys doing work in fuzzy slippers and shorts — to finally be accepted by the head office brass. Of course, as I sit here unshaven, in my shorts, I have to wonder when that last barrier will be overcome.

Matthew Friedman is a Montréal-based freelance journalist. nwf@total.net << Back

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