Q:  Some of my employees have been pushing me to implement telecommuting.  I have read numerous articles on the subject and they are all very positive.  There must be negatives.  What are they?

No more brainstorming over coffee!

No one talks about the drawbacks of telecommuting

A:  In my opinion, the biggest negative to telecommuting is the loss of the informal exchange of ideas between staff.  When most companies are promoting a team effort, telecommuting places employees in situations where they must often fend for themselves. 

When telecommuting is implemented, requests for assistance or new ideas and concepts are generally circulated in a formal manner, be it email or intranet Web site message boards.  No longer can an employee sit down with a colleague or walk into the boss’s office and say, “What do you think of this idea?”  This results in a lack of fertilization of new ideas and concepts.  Over the years, I have seen hundreds of ideas and concepts hammered out over lunchroom tables and next to coffee machines.  I can actually recall a very successful new business venture that started as a joke.

Second, is the individual growth of an employee; the informal mentoring that occurs, or should be occurring, in every company.  Employees grow within an organization by learning from their supervisors and colleagues.  This education is primarily informal and individuals, in many cases, learn by osmosis, by filling in and by assisting other members of staff.  Most of this is lost in a telecommuting environment.

The third area that I believe is a negative in a telecommuting environment is in detail work.  If you are in a business situation where large proposals are being written or other substantial documentation is being produced, detail changes do not happen because of the lack of convenience to implement them.  Because changes generally require formal communication, it becomes easier to accept what has been produced rather than asking someone to add or delete a word or change a format, especially if the change is not truly critical.

That being said in many organizations the benefits of having staff telecommute outweigh the disadvantages.

As a general rule, if you have a staff that is telecommuting, require that they be in the office a day out of every month, to meet new people and if nothing else have a chat around the water cooler!