I am a big fan of Teleworking, but the setup costs are holding back this being rolled out across areas of the business. A desktop PC is far cheaper than a laptop and our area of the business is reluctant to convert. Most of the people within my area would love the opportunity to be able to work from home when the need arise (Sick kids, etc) Maybe Telstra can offer some incentives to the different businesses units to convert the desktops to laptops are they are replaced? As employment opportunities go, I would be inclined to go with the job that allows me to work from home from time to time than the other!

Teleworking has many advantages and disadvantages so many people will gain from Teleworking where their time is more on call based and where confidential information is not required to do their job.

I teleworked for a number of years and found that you tend to work longer and the work hours are far more flexible in that for a lot of production work I could work when it suited, for example on a hot summer night it would be easier to work at night and sleep during day. If you are on call its the only way of working in that your laptop and communications are your link to the world.

However if you deal with sensitive information such as account information, payments or a deal of personal information, you are really restricted to being office based due to the requirement for security of that information, in this case Teleworking is not a good idea.

Its horses for courses, speaking as someone who has experienced both sides I find working in an larger office preferable as you have a great deal of interaction with people and is much easier to go through the day, but after that in priority order I would put teleworking ahead of working in a small office.

Just my 0.02 worth
Darren

I think the biggest limiting factor, especially for large corporations is going to be information security. Especially for situations where Customer details are being accessed, like Centerlink, Medicare, and of course Telstra. Could you imagine the storm that would happen if someone not authorised managed to access Centrelink customer details? or medical details from Medicare?

How about Roster Teleworking (RT) whereby each team member can have a RT per week; or creating a rule that the whole team must meet face-to-face 2 or 3 days a week.

My management are only supplying WFH (working from home) access to those who are on call. Yes it is important for those people, but there are quite a few of us who are not on call, who could benefit from WFH access. I think there is a lot of distrust and control issues going on. I think it is time for Telstra to put it's money where the mouth is - we are a telecomunications company after all. We should be at the forefront of this type of thing.

Also - why do we need a laptop, a desktop is quite fine for most people.

I agree with the observation and research about increased productivity - in the short term. I haven't yet seen studies that reveal the changes in productivity for teleworking over a sustained period where teleworking is a permanent arrangement, ie, for 1 or 2 days per week, every week.

I think that the benefits of ad hoc teleworking are immediate and obvious. We've all had major projects that require uninterrupted thought for a day or more to complete the work, or scenarios where there are sick people at home or the need for a contractor to fix a problem at home (etc), and so the benefits of ad hoc teleworking can easily be observed.

However, for jobs that require a degree of innovation or strategic planning, the ability to "sound out" ideas with colleagues becomes imperative to success in those roles. These conversations with colleagues occur in the spur of the moment and cannot be forced to occur at a fixed time in a regular team meeting.

I'd be very interested to see a report detailing the benefits (or otherwise) of sustained, regular teleworking in a professional environment (marketing, engineering design, product management, etc) to see whether the productivity gains are still present after a longer period of time.

If Telstra want to look after their staff, they should negotiate with the unions about a Union Collective agreement. Telstra award staff have not had a pay rise for 13 months.

The Collective agreements are complex. How does Telstra negotiate, and with who. If staff are to vote yes, they must take advise. This is the union's role.

Telstra already has tried a non union agreement, however Telstra's selected staff members voted NO. Telstra is not in touch with their own staff.

Could someone please tell me how the comments above from Che Unity are relevent to a discussion on teleworking, or how they even made it onto the page on what is a moderated forum? Apart from being irrelevant to the topic, they display a tired old attitude towards unions which many staff don't support and would like the opportunity to be free of.

I'd welcome the opportunity to telework to some degree; if nothing else, it would save me a 2 hour commute every day. Geoffrey Gerrand's comments about the applicability of teleworking to the nature of the job are very true; a certain proportion of my role does require me to be personally available to my colleagues, but I think there's a paradigm shift to be addressed. The wide-reaching nature of Telstra's operations means that personal contact is a luxury that won't always be available, so using technology suck as shared desktops and collaboration space, webcams, teleconferencing etc is inevitable.

Teleworking has some huge potential benefits in terms of office space alone; if staff worked rotataing weeks onsite and at home it would cut office requirements significantly in terms of floor space, power, parking etc. The minor additional cost of a laptop and broadband access solution would be far outweighed by the administrative and hotelling savings, and the onsite time could be used for any required face to face actions, training etc. Security shouldn't be an issue with all sensitive data stored on the network and only accessible via secure VPN.

I understand the natural hesitation of any company in terms of committing to a long term teleworking model, but the world needs to move beyond the bums-on-seats viewpoint and look at measuring productivity and output as opposed to mere attendance.

I am a big supporter of teleworking, and have done it on and off for a two year period.

The job I was performing at the time allowed me to do this, given it was either by phone, web or email. My boss was interstate, so there wasn't much difference between WFH or working from the office.

From a productivity perspective, the reality is that the work controlled me. My boss would know fairly quickly if I wasn't performing. Further the use of Office Communicator allows my boss to see if I am online, or how long I am away. But funamentally it was the job role the allowed me to telework.. I can't do it in my current role.

So there are ways to resolve the trust issues, the challenge for large organisations is to ensure that all managers are open minded to the benefits of WFM.

Teleworkers and teleworking is a large and complex area for numerous companies globally. I have worked for several years as a teleworker and have found I worked much longer hours and it was a benefit to to my employer.
A company has to adopt and accept the teleworking culture first before teleworking can be a success.
There are numerous sites and reference information:

http://www.teleworkaustralia.net.au/

http://www.workplace.gov.au/workplace/Programmes/WorkFamily/TeleworkingorHomeBasedWork.htm

https://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/SID-3F57FECB-7172BB2C/cpa/hs.xsl/724_23185_ENA_PRINT.htm