Telecommuting: an option for your company? How at-home workers can enhance productivity.

• Author: Williams, Morissa
• Position: Alaska Funding Exchange

Some of the best employees in Alaska are nowhere in sight-at least to their employers. In fact, they may be thousands of miles away.

Mary Miller, CEO of Alaska Funding Exchange, has a work force comprised mainly of telecommuters. In her business, she explained, she simply has to find the very best people for the work, and her telecommuting workers fit the bill perfectly.

"My business is the place nonprofits go to when they are looking for funding. It's my job to figure out what they want and need and to find the best fund-raising, writing or research consultant to provide those services for them. Then it becomes a matter of managing the relationship and making sure that everyone is living up to their end of the bargain."

The telecommuters save Miller's company money.

"It is less expensive," she explained, "in terms of payroll and office space, and you can hire the absolute best, most highly skilled workers to do only those tasks you want. And, because they keep their overhead down by not renting office space, your own costs are lower. I have also found that they are fast, professional and available at the times I need them the most."

Karen Benning, a grant writer who telecommutes from her home in Anchorage to AFE's office in Juneau, illustrates a characteristic of serious telecommuters: a sense of accountability and pride in her work. She observed, "Although it's a challenge in some ways, making the change to become self-employed and work at home has been the greatest decision I've made in my career. There's no 'middle man' (or woman) between myself and the end product. If things go well, I can feel good about that. If things don't go so well, it's up to me to learn the lesson and make improvements to the work process."

Telecommuters may be available long after on-site employees have gone home. The very fact that they don't punch a clock means they expand company working hours. They may be part-time in theory; as a practical matter, their hours of availability tend to be long. Their work is more task-oriented than time-oriented, which can benefit company productivity.

CEO Miller herself has been on both sides of the modem. She explained, "When I was an independent consultant and moved from a home office to an office building, I immediately became more rigid in my working hours. It was not a conscious decision; I think it just makes sense that if you have to commute to the place you consider 'work,' you start to restrict your availability."

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