Flexibility: What's It Worth?

I have the skills in demand

I have the skills in demand today so I get regular calls and emails from recruiters. Due to family situation, however I must work from a home office. Been pleasing large enterprises for years and it's good and stable but I'm available to whomever will give me stable work from home at a fair rate. Degree plus experience. What expertise I don't already have I can develop in short time.

When I started working at my

When I started working at my current job, we were allowed to work from home on occasion and our flexible schedules provided coverage from 7:30 am until 6:30 - 7:00 pm. We since have had an organizational change, and the new regime has ordered us to be here by 9:00 am, it doesn't matter if you worked late the night before. Also, our work from home is not recognized in any way, shape or form, so if we are out for any reason, it is a sick or vacation day, so working from home is on our own time. Needless to say, in this almost adversarial situation or mcjob, nearly every worker bee in my department, I predict, will be gone this time next year. Apparently, the corporate knowledge and history have not been deemed of value here.

Our professional rank system

Our professional rank system development team of six analyst programmers, three web consultants - developers all work in a Results Oriented Environment (ROE) A not-so -new(?) term for flex time. Our approach addresses both employee personal needs and our business needs. The results are excellent in terms of quality on time productivity, staff development, team work and employee longevity. Our average time of service for the six analyst/programmers is above 15 years! Biggest problem is mine as an old IT manager at retirement age balancing true trust of staff and my old fashioned "control" needs. I'd recommend seriously trying ROE and error on side of trusting employees... Cheers

I am a proponent for

I am a proponent for tele-commuting and flex hours. As a Manager for a team of 5 employees within our I.T. group, I have found that the majority of the team, deliver more consistent results and meet delivery dates, as a result of being allowed to manage their hours against our notorious rush hours here in the Atlanta area.

Unfortunately, my management team, does not openly support nor discourage this practice. The approach they have taken, is "don't tell, won't ask". Just another example of placing middle in the role of middle management :-)

Local governments should

Local governments should spend more money on helping to build a high speed infrastructure such as FIOS, and less money on building HOV lanes. In the Washington DC area where traffic is legendary, the benefits to having less people on the road doesn't just result in less traffic. There are less accidents, less road rage, fewer road repairs, etc.
My company realized the importance of a mobile workforce, and there are so many benefits they are too numerous to mention.
HR departments need to be involved to make it fair, and managers need to be told it is not thier responsibility to decide who can or can't telecommute. They need to justify NOT allowing someone to telecommute. If you don't trust someone to work from home, that is an HR/management problem, not a telecommuting one. A workers productivity should be judged by how much they produce (duh), not by the hours they spend in an office.

I used to work at home

I used to work at home full-time before I started working for my current company. The company does allow compressed work weeks for certain groups, but generally the policy is that everyone must work a 5-day week. When I was promoted to my current position, it was with the understanding that I could work from home whenever I wanted as long as I didn't abuse it. A few reorganizations later, that was arbitrarily rescinded for all personnel, so now I have a 3-hour a day commute. My job is one that a substantial portion of my work can be done from home, but HR and upper management simply doesn't want to hear about it: no reason - the answer's just no. So, I am looking for a position closer to home after spending over a decade at my current company. I have an idea I'll be hard to replace.

It absolutely works. With

It absolutely works. With the number of hours Americans are working these days, there is little time to do other things outside work. I worked at a company for four years and worked out of the house full time. I worked a lot of extra hours, many of which were on calls with outsourced groups all over the world. My two hour a day commute was two more hours of work at least, let alone the additional hours late a night. It's a nice perk that allows the employee work the schedule as needed.