Robin's story where she paid tribute to a great manager is exceptional, and I just don't have anything that quite measures up on the positive side of things. However, I do have my experiences from the trenches that challenge the assumptions that a lot of us make regarding the whole workshifting proposition.  

I think perhaps my worst experience was with "upper management" while managing a team at a startup. Start ups are never easy, and they require a whole lot of sweat and tears, and beyond all else - love. I remember during a particularly tenuous time, an executive making a blanket statement about there being team members leaving at 5pm. (Horror of all horrors, someone who observes the workday schedule). It was definitely made to sound as though the whole team was comprised of slackers, and that we weren't really giving it all that we had. It was one of the few times that I have had to excuse myself from a meeting - for fear of the things I might say if my mouth were to open.

This happens all the time, in lots of places, to tons of people. This is not a special or unique story, until you really start to look at the details. It was a fairly bleeding edge group of people that we were working with. The individual who was calling out the folks (really 1 person) who were leaving early was fully appraised of every possibility in terms of working with technology in order to work from anywhere. He was also one of the younger individuals on the executive team - not the oldster who stereotypically has the greatest challenge dealing with a lack of "face time." He also happened to have a very robust background in technology, and development, and that whole space where the typical workshifter can be found. The employee in question, who was conveniently providing a generalized "malaise" to be associated with the group was actually a gentleman who was going through some very rough times at home with his family. Through it all he was always available for calls, and always responded to emails promptly - even though not in the office. However, he had become the scapegoat and the mascot all in one go.

In the end, after reflecting on this situation- and learning about Robin's story - you realize that what it comes down to, in terms of being successful and working with people who respect you and your work despite location or time - is really a capacity for compassion, and open lines of communication. On both sides. It is also, in large part,  the capacity to recognize when you're in an environment, or on a team where workshifting just isn't going to be a sustainable solution and figuring out where to go from there.

I'm curious to know where your "in the trenches" stories fall when dealing with managers.  Great, good, indifferent or similar to the above?

Photo by: Mr.Tea

In a recent cover story in Business Week, Gen-Y was painted as a helpless group. A large population that is settling for underpaying opportunities, moving into fields just to have a cube to call home or staying home with mom and dad while they wait out the Recovery Plan. Only 46% of people aged 16-24 had jobs in September of this year. Where does Gen-Y go?

School

They can head back to school. This certainly seems like a viable option. Learn more stuff and in turn, look more experienced or fit for a job a few years down the road. The options range from Grad School to Tech and Trade Vocations. While this may only dig you deeper into debt, it does prolong the idea of going out into the workforce and not finding something you love to wake up to do everyday.

Start a Business

Gen-Y can opt to start their own business. This is something that Gen-Y is taking to heart and in record numbers. Donna Fenn, author of Upstarts interviewed over 150 Gen-Y entrepreneurs for her book and was amazed at the growth, maturity and leadership qualities found in these young business owners. When we talked a few weeks ago, she mentioned that many of these companies (and not all are Internet companies) had better visions, customer service and creativity than most big businesses.

The Freelancing, Blogging, Career Hopper

A close friend of mine has had an awesome time in her 20's. Heading up organizations in college, landing internships with mega media companies and graduating at the top of her class was just the beginning. When she left UCF doors seemed to open for her. She started at a magazine as an assistant and left as an assistant publisher. Next was freelance writing, a little time off and some brand building. Next was an opportunity at a large production company running their marketing department part-time. With Fridays off, she was free to frequent the coffee shops, browse through Guru.com or eLance and pick the jobs for her price. Her latest opportunity brings her to a Fortune 500 as a contracted writer where she got to name her price and hours. This makes her an asset to the company, builds her portfolio and gives her the freedom to enjoy her 20's while focusing on her future.

Lifting Rocks

The case of my friend is not an uncommon path. Take a look at the bloggers over at Brazen Careerist. I bet over half have links to freelance design, consulting or coaching. Those same people are working full time, looking for new opportunities and building huge personal brands that will enable them to work on their terms with companies they believe in.

The Gen-Y's in the Business Week article are depicted as the victims. The jobless in a nation faced with major unemployment problems. I like to call them the unmotivated. There are jobs. There are opportunities. You just need to lift the rocks before you can look under them.

Gen-Y gets a lot of press for a bevy of reasons. I just wanted to point out that the do'ers, not the say'ers are today's hit makers and there are plenty of do'ers within Gen-Y. I know Donna can introduce you to 150 of them. Brazen another 500 or so. Let's go say hi.

Photo by: billaday

Today Zack Grossbart stops by again to provide some tips for effectively hiring workshifters.  Zack is the author of the upcoming book The One Minute Commute and writes over on his blog.  Zack focuses much of his writing on exploring how to build distributed teams using best practices from the high-tech industry.

Hiring a workshifter is one of the most nerve wracking experiences a manager can have. Even thinking about hiring a workshifter seems fraught with risk. You don't know if they'll work out. If they aren't working out how will you know? How will they fit in with the team? What if you can't contact them? The potential problems are seem so insurmountable that many managers decide to never even  open that can of worms.

You can take a lot of risk out of hiring workshifters by knowing what to look for. Potential workshifters should have all the attributes of any good employee, but there are specific talents that every workshifter must possess to succeed. Hiring managers who know what to look for can judge these skills with a simple set of tests during the  interview process.

Talent 1: Clear Writing Skills

Writing well is the single most important skill for a workshifter. You don't need to hire Hemingway, but if the candidate can't clearly communicate their thoughts in documents and emails you'll both be in big trouble.

Start by looking at their resume. Is it well written? Did they make it easy to read and understand their qualifications? A resume acts like a magnifying glass for writing ability. If your teleworker candidate's resume isn't well written they won't write well once you hire them. But don't stop there; after all it's possible that they had help writing their resume.

Do a Google search and find any blogs, Facebook pages, and other social media pages. These pages don't always have to discuss professional topics, but the author should write clearly. Can you follow what they have to say? When you are finished can you summarize the content easily?

Another overlooked tool for evaluating writing skills is email. Always start an email conversation with candidates. Ask leading questions and see if they respond well. Make your questions open ended and give them a chance to impress you. If you get answers that are terse or unintelligible move on to the next person.

Talent 2: Accepting Criticism

Workshifters are inherently a little disconnected from the team. Being out of the office can bring with it the advantage of being more productive, but it also means that interpersonal issues are more difficult to resolve. Workshifters have learn to accept criticism well and not take it personally. If your new teleworker doesn't take criticism well they'll never survive outside of the office.

Ask them directly how they handle criticism. Ask them to discuss how they've handled difficult situations in the past and how they responded to criticism. You can learn a lot by their answers.

Blogs and Facebook pages can also come in handy here. If they have an existing social media presence they have probably received negative comments. How did they handle them? Were they dismissive or did they take the comments to heart and really try to understand them?

Talent 3: Quickly Learning Conventions

When a workshifter starts in a new job they will probably attend orientation lectures and learn the basics of how work gets done in your organization. This will cover the big issues, but what about the dozens of other smaller details that go into working in your office and working with your specific team. Important details how to format a presentation, the best way to file expense reports, are a critical part of any job? Workshifters are at a disadvantage here because they can't just stick their head over the cubicle wall and ask. They must learn conventions quickly.

Always ask to see some work from a previous jobs. Does it look like the same every time or did they adapt to the specific requirements of each new workspace?

Ask them how they would go about learning the ins and outs of your organization, and look for specific, detailed answers.

Talent 4: Self-sufficiency

Workshifting gives you freedom and along with that comes responsibility. Good workshifters manage their own time and their own needs. They can't just call the IT department every time they have a problem.

Workshifters should have a plan ahead of time for the following issues:

• A home office - Do they have one set up? What is it like? Were they planning to work out of Starbucks? Successful workshifters have made a serious commitment to their office environment.
  
  
• Telephone and Internet connections - Do they have a good land line and a fast Internet connection? Are they expecting you to pay some of those costs?
  
  
• Tools - Do they need you to buy them a computer? A printer? A desk or a chair?
  
  
• Computer support - How much do they need and how will they get it?
  
  
• Backups - Will they take part in your backup systems or do they have their own?
  
  
• Data security - What steps will they take to make sure your data is secure when it leaves the office? This might include encryption or a virtual private network solution.
  

A good workshifter candidate will have detailed, specific  answers to all of these questions during the interview.

Talent 5: Staying Motivated

Sometimes an office is a distraction, but it also offers a certain camaraderie. Going to a shared work place surrounded by other working people is a great way to stay motivated. Workshifters, on the other end of the spectrum, must stay motivated on their own.

This is one of the most difficult skills to judge since most candidates will lie to you. They aren't doing it maliciously, but unless they have a lot of experience with workshifting they may underestimate the importance and difficulty of staying motivated when they work from home.

One of your first clues to self-motivating candidates  is excitement. Everyone should show some excitement during an interview. If they can't do it then they won't do it from home.

Hobbies are another good indicator of the self-motivated. What does the candidate do outside of work? Do they have long term hobbies or just fleeting interests?

Can the candidate tell you specifically how they were proactive in their previous jobs? Did they wait for someone else to show them the path or did they lead the way? Can they talk about how they got their work done in other positions?

Talent 6: Showing Their Work

In the office you can see someone arrive early and stay late. At home you can't just trust that a workshifter is doing their job. They have to show their work.

Let them describe what previous projects. How did they communicate about their work? Were there status meetings? Did they send emails or documents? Ask to see examples of these documents whenever possible.

Every workshifter is a little different, but they all need a way to proactive show you they're getting their work done.

Talent 7: Being Consistent

Imagine this: at 10:00 AM you send Bob, a member of your team, an email with a question you need answered quickly. At 10:30 you see he isn't on IM yet. He isn't there at 11:00 either. You check your calendar and your deleted email folder, but Bob didn't send you a note about taking the day off.

By noon you are a little annoyed. It has been two hours without seeing him online. You ask other team members but they don't know either. By 2:00 PM you are thoroughly frustrated. You haven't seen Bob, you don't have the answer to your question, and you have no idea when you will get it.

In the office you might walk over to Bob's office, but when Bob is a workshifter you have no idea where he is. Is he taking a vacation day without telling you? Did his computer crash? Is he just ignoring you? This might not be a big problem if it only happens occasionally, but a member of your team that is consistently inconsistent will drive you nuts.

Ask them about their plan and what they expect. Are they willing to commit to a specific work schedule? Also ask them for references. References are very helpful in providing real feedback on a candidates consistency.

Recognizing Workshifter Talents

Workshifting is a skill and you have to judge that skill. The ultimate indication of workshifting ability is previous experience. Have they workshifted before? Did it go well for them? Can they supply references?

Focus on these workshifting talents and you can hire teleworkers with confidence.

Photo by: AJ Leon

Today we have a guest post from Sean Ryan.  Sean is an research analyst with IDC focused on mobile enterprise software. 

Ok, now that I have pegged myself for a Led Zeppelin fan with the title of this post, I can get to the second reason I had for choosing this particular title. We all experience those days (probably more often than we'd like) where the deluge of new projects and urgent requests come pouring in all at once on top of an already steady stream of deadlines, emails, chat sessions, and the rest.

Being an effective multi-tasker is a skill unto itself - it is an even more refined skill for those of us working remotely and/or traveling for business. In some ways the technology being used by mobile workers today makes it easier than ever to multi-task and deal with urgent tasks. However, the myriad of applications and devices we use can have the effect of overwhelming us and creating a hurricane of activity that can actually make us less productive.

In a recent NY Times article about using smartphones to get work done while driving, a communications professor at Stanford, Clifford Nass, noted that the brain is "fundamentally built to unitask." So, that being the case, mobile workers need to be even more disciplined about prioritizing tasks, setting short-term goals, delegating responsibility, and following through with tasks since the distractions are greater and the layers of abstraction are greater.

Below are some of my recommendations for coping with the rushes when the floodgates do burst open. I'd also be interested to know your strategies for dealing with the deluge.

• Use the tools at your disposal, don't let them use you. I keep my IM open most of the time for quick communication without having to pull away from what I am doing, but when I don't want to be disturbed, I put that in my status and am usually even more specific with something along the lines of "researching and writing" as an added qualifier. This helps filter out some of the not-so-urgent requests, or diverts them to email where I can deal with it later and won't forget the details. I do the same thing if I am at an event with my BlackBerry, noting that I am at an event and using my mobile device only. Again, the channel is open for urgent requests only (at least in theory).
  
  
• Mitigate the inevitable by triage and offload. Emails, from the vaguely important to the totally useless, can seriously clog up your inbox and bury important emails in a sea of  unopened messages. The same is true for minor tasks, from a quick email response to a five-minute phone call to a calendar entry. I will often take a couple minutes in the evening and a couple minutes in the morning to go through emails on my mobile device or my home computer, delete the ones that are just spam, move others to respective folders for later, and be mentally prepared to address more urgent matters when I get into the office or start my workday from home. For quick tasks, I try to address them right away, to avoid the death-by-a-thousand-cuts when I have a larger urgent matter to address and the smaller, but still important, jobs to be done are still there to distract me and stress me out (which makes for poorer quality work all around).
  
  
• Always have a "plan B" for accessing critical files. Having more than one way to get at critical files while away from the office is always a good idea. This could be a combination of higher- and lower-tech means. For instance, you could use a remote access solution and also keep important files on either a laptop, smartphone, or USB device. Additionally, you could keep the files on a shared corporate drive and have a point person who could email them to you in the event of an urgent request. I'd recommend one method that leverages secure access to corporate networks, and one that has files securely stored on a local device.
  
  
• Prioritize and set realistic goals. Invariably you'll be in the middle of a couple of other things when the "drop everything and deal with this now!" phone call comes in. I find it best to work backwards by making an educated guess about how long the new project will take and how I will weave that deadline in with that of the other projects I've begun. In this process, I also ask myself some important questions: Which deadlines can be extended and which cannot? Where can I delegate or ask for help from colleagues?
  
  
• Take a deep breath and assess the situation before diving in. There are few things worse than panicking and over-reacting to a crisis without all the relevant information. Unless you are a first responder, taking five to 10 minutes to assess the situation, gather more information, and set a game plan is a very good idea. This also helps take the emotion out of the response, thus avoiding sending flamograms to our bosses or locking on to the wrong details and running full speed in the wrong direction.
  
  For mobile workers, this dynamic also applies to your environment. Say you're racing down the highway at 80 mph; it's probably a good idea to wait until you can get to a rest stop, assess the situation, and then respond accordingly.
  
  For remote workers, it is also important to know who you need to turn to for the right information and expertise when the problem is bigger than what you can deal with on your own; also, to know the best methods to reach those individuals who themselves may be remote or on the road.
  

As a workshifter, how do you manage crisis situations?

Photo by: jereandreagan

Today Zack Grossbart stops by to take a different take on distractions and focus.  Zack is the author of the upcoming book The One Minute Commute and writes over on his blog.  Zack focuses much of his writing on exploring how to build distributed teams using best practices from the high-tech industry.

Everyone knows that distractions make it more difficult to stay focused, but sometimes they make it easier. Have you ever fallen asleep during a long phone meeting? My father (a practicing psychologist) told me how distractions can make it easier to stay focused on the telephone.

When you talk with someone face-to-face you are getting a huge amount of information. Telephone conversations give your brain the audio information, but not the visual information. When it doesn't get the visual information from the conversation it will look for it somewhere else. Give your brain something more to do. Other people can tell when you lose focus on the phone conversation.

Use small distractions to help you stay focused:

• Visual distractions help you focus. Don't watch a movie (that is too distracting), but some low-key Internet browsing can work well.
• Do something with your hands. Play with a desk toy, pass a ball back and forth, knit, anything that you can do mindlessly.
• Walk around. Exercise is good for your brain and movement helps you focus.

Giving yourself small distractions while you are on conference calls will help you stay focused and be more productive.

Do you have a good idea for staying focused on the phone? Post a comment and let other people know.

Photo by: Robert Banh

Today we have a guest post from Katty Kay.  Katty is the Washington correspondent for BBC News America and co-author of Womenomics: The Workplace Revolution that Will Change Your Life (2009).

Stephanie is sitting at her desk, half an eye on the clock, the other half on the light in her boss' office. She has finished her assignments for the day and there's really not much more she can accomplish until the next morning. It's midnight in Hong Kong and her Chinese client is fast asleep. Stephanie wants to go home but senses that leaving at 5pm would be frowned on, so she sits out the wait for her boss to leave and browses the J Crew sale. 

Stephanie is of course an imaginary figure. But she could well be anyone of us. She certainly has been me. And, told like that, her situation sounds absurd. She is simply wasting time - hers and her companies. Fortunately Stephanie's made-up situation is increasingly anachronistic. All around the world companies and their employees are waking up to the fact that clock-time is unproductive and flex-time makes sound business sense.

The workplace revolution, and it really is just that, is made possible by technology. Mobile devices allow us to do our jobs anywhere, anytime. Today we can deal with business queries just as easily from our kitchens as from our cubicles. Why waste an hour in traffic commuting to a downtown office when we can fulfill many of our tasks staying right home?  Just imagine how productively you could use that hour thinking, strategizing or talking instead.

Your client/boss/colleague/boardmember has no idea whether that email came from the sidelines of the football pitch or the desktop at your corporate headquarters. The BlackBerry is a thing of great beauty for everyone wishing to escape the tyranny of the office. What matters today is your performance not your location.

Technology may be enabling this shift but it's people who are demanding it.

In company after company, employees, both men and women, say greater control of their schedules is one of the things they would like most. Women with young children have been in the forefront of this charge. Faced with the crunch of career versus kids many professional women have decided to quit (in 2003 the New York Times dubbed this the opt-out revolution). These educated, career women felt they simply couldn't do the fifty hour weeks and have enough time for their families. 

But these women were useful, talented, experienced, and annoyingly expensive to replace so smart companies tried to find ways to accommodate them.  Capital One, a Virginia based financial services business, surveyed its women's network and asked what they needed to stop them from quitting. More flexibility came the answer. So Capital One introduced its "alternative work schedules" - a range of different work options including five days squeezed into four, part time schedules, conference calls and telecommuting. The alternative schedules were so popular Capital One took them out of the women's network and made them available to the whole company.

Electronics retail giant Best Buy has an even more radical approach. Best Buy has taken the clocks off the walls and implemented a Results Only Work Environment - a ROWE. Professional employees can work anywhere, anytime and are measured solely on results.

What's most encouraging about the companies which have implemented this novel approach to work is the results. At Best Buy productivity increased by an average of 40%. Capital One says employees become more committed, more productive, happier and retention improved. Other companies with similar flexible schemes are equally convinced - treat employees like grown ups, give them more control of their schedules and they will return the favor.
 
I know that I will sneak out the office back door to go to my son's school play whether I'm "allowed" to or not. But if I have to sneak the chances are I'll feel resentful. If I go with my boss's blessing I feel grateful and more inclined to do a good job.
 
What makes this revolution permanent is a generational shift. Gen X, and their even techier younger cohorts Gen Y, grew up in a mobile world. They conduct friendships on Facebook. They study online at Starbucks. They do pretty much everything virtually and they know, instinctively, that you don't have to be in a certain place (the office cubicle) to be productive. Indeed for Gens X and Y the very idea of having to be tethered to a physical location for 10 hours a day is anathema. They don't and won't get it.
 
That is as true for younger men as it is for women. Surveys suggest men in their twenties have similar attitudes to balancing work with family life as women. The genders sound remarkably similar. So the push for flexibility will no longer be a "women's" or a "mother's" issue, prone to always being marginalized, it will be an "employee" issue.
 
Some managers say they are still nervous of giving employees flexible schedules. They fret about the domino effect. "What happens if I let Anna, the office star, work from home one day a week and then Sarah, who is less great, wants it too? Soon the whole office will be clamoring for flextime."

Well actually, no. Accountants Deloitte and Touche have been in the forefront of what they call customizing careers (there are as many names for flextime as there are schedules). And they found that at any given time only 10% of employees actually wanted alternative schedules.
As for the Anna-is-great-but-Sarah-not-so-much argument that's frankly a red herring. If Sarah isn't doing her job well, that's a performance issue not a schedule issue. Moreover, if you start measuring your employees solely on their results and you set them clear benchmarks, rather than measuring them on how many hours a day they spend in the office, it is actually easier to see whether or not they are being productive.
 
Flexibility works. For men and for women. For people with children and people without children. It is no longer a favor to be handed out like candy at a kids' birthday party, it is a sound business strategy.  

If you found this interesting, you can register for this free Webinar on Friday, October 23 at 1p ET to hear Katty Kay explore how the 21st-century workplace is evolving, the role of women in this revolution and how companies that "get it" will acquire a huge competitive edge.

Photo by: Providence Public Library

At some point during one's corporate career, we learn that our success is less dependent on "what we do" versus "who we work for."  No matter when this moment occurs it is a bit shocking. I learned this in my late 20s - I had a boss who coached and mentored me with such wisdom.  I was on an accelerated track and working 24/7.   But then a personal event took place, the death of my father, and I truly "disappeared" for two weeks and disconnected from work in every way.

I had already learned that my direct manager would be the key to professional success. And hopefully each of us learns (quickly) to align ourselves effectively.  Perhaps more startlingly is that with the blurred lines of work-life, the direct manager actually has a key to personal fulfillment as well.   Most individuals experience this the very first time their "work-life" is out of synch.  It is in this moment, we learn exactly what a company culture truly stands for including the accountability of the manager.  In my case, I experienced first hand that my boss was a man of the highest integrity, believed in shared success and was nothing less than brilliant.  To this day, I would walk thru fire for him; yet,  I've always wondered since, what happens to those individuals who have a boss - who is  not quite so accepting and accommodating to personal circumstances?  

Candidly, my manager (by the way his name was Frank Sorrentino)  was not your usual flex suspect. He was with the company 35+ years and the company culture lagged far behind today's standards.   However, he saw the value of an operating environment of trust, collaboration and results.  He looked to the team and stakeholders to advise him what was needed.  I took the death of my father quite hard - the truth is it took me another 4 weeks to come back full-force.  I actually phased in during those four weeks and when I came back - I was strong and returning to an even stronger organization.   With the exception of one individual (an employee called me the day after the funeral to tell me she was resigning) - there were no negative implications or water cooler conversation about my absence.  

What my "traditional" boss accomplished was based on instinct.  The increasing momentum around flexibility and the commitment by so many organizations to create an inclusive culture provides a window to a very exciting future. But these very organizations also recognize that change takes time and that not everyone will have Frank's instincts.  Providing managers with the right tools and support is critical. To not do so can adversely impact and set both the employee and manager up for failure.

Below are five manager practices that organizations find most important in making flexibility real at the manager level: 

1. Enabling and encouraging managers to work flexibly themselves -- on reduced work hours schedules (less-then-fulltime), in a job share where two managers share one job and share the responsibility for being available to their team, on flexible work hours (in lieu of them needing to be present whenever employees are working, which can lead to very long hours and exhaustion), etc.
   
   
2. Using manager self-assessments to help managers recognize and change their mindset about how to manage flexibly. Often it's the manager's attitude that needs changing that leads other changes in their behavior.
   
   
3. Rewarding managers who earn better evaluations on work-life supportiveness from employees.  This requires including questions on employee sureys or 360 degree evaluations of managers that inquire about their 'supportiveness'.  Great organizations have found that collecting this information helps them measure differences in depts. where managers are more supportive of employees' work-life needs with other depts. in terms of their employee retention and even customer satisfaction.
   
   
4. Including considerations of work-life -- attitudes and skills -- in decisions about which managers to hire and whom to promote as manager.  A great example is encouraging managers to pay consideration to resumes submitted that declare an individuals willingness to work flexibly.
   
   
5. Mentoring programs that connect managers who are skilled at managing flexibly and believe in it, with those who are just learning how. This is particularly important as companies are focused on multi-generational workforce.

What are other practices that you think should be included?

Photo by: Timitrius

The nice thing about being a workshifter is you only have to work half days--the question is, which 12 hours.

It's odd that so many employers worry about their remote employees goofing off, instead of just focusing on results, when, in fact, everyone I talk to has opposite problem--overworking and turning it off at the end of the day.

I read an interesting study on Saturday--yeah, Saturday, the day most people are out having fun. The study, conducted by WorldatWork and The Future of Work, was about how the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) makes it hard for managers to allow hourly wage employees to workshift. Introduced in 1939, the FSLA was enacted in an effort to, among other things, keep employers from underpaying and overworking employees. In the context of workshifting, the problem is that the Act requires managers to monitor their hourly worker's schedules. Did they take their break at 10 a.m.? Did they work overtime? What about those "after hours" Crackberry messages, emails, etc. They all count toward the workday.

So as I sat here on Sunday, yeah, Sunday--the day of rest, thinking about what to write for this blog, I wondered who's watching out for me. Certainly not my boss. She's the kind of slave driver that inspired the FLSA to begin with. She has me working 10 hour days. "Just finish one more email" she whispers to me at 8 p.m. And I don't remember any time-and-a-half in my paycheck. Heck, I don't even remember a paycheck.

I've interviewed dozens of workshifters with a similar stories. One guy told me it got so bad that he finally resorted to leaving his home office, driving around the block, and returning home to mark the end of his day.  

Any thoughts out there for how you turn it off?

Photo by: Dhaval Shah

I would like to introduce you to eWorkPlace, a new and exciting program available for Twin Cities metro employers. Are you ready to be an eWorkPlace Employer?

What is eWorkPlace?

Set in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, eWorkPlace is a cooperative venture to not only reduce traffic congestion and gridlock, but to assist employers to reach their bottom line more effectively. All types of employers are included (large or small, private, non-profit, and public) to offer the telework option of working remotely from the office at home or at another location. We are a unique collaborative of 11 partners (public, private and non-profit) dedicated to raise the level of telecommuting in the Twin Cities.

Why Now?

Now one might think the recession has a powerful effect on the amount of telework going on.  But the tides have turned.  Employers see the advantages of more flexible work in terms of increased productivity, greater employee satisfaction and being able to offer a carrot on the stick to those employees who may not have such high rates of compensation. In today's economy, every business is dealing with budget cuts, tight deadlines and staffing shortages. We're all expected to manage through these challenges while leading effective strategies and delivering outcomes

eWorkPlace assists Twin Cities employers to increase the use of telecommuting and flexible work schedules. The strategy of eWorkPlace is to move work to the employee rather than move the employee to work.

What do you have to do?

Employer requirements include definition of their expected level of commitment and reporting of results. Employers sign up and agree to a minimum number of telecommuters, either working during rush hours or at least 1 day per week.  We launched ours initiative in June 2009 and due to employer need for pandemic planning, we are receiving continued interest.

Employers can enjoy many free services and tools from national telework experts for a limited time. Expert assistance includes consulting advice, e-training and remote access strategies from MTIE, WFC Resources, and Superior Endeavors, an IT group. Employers have a wide range of services to ensure telework programs are practical and successful.  You can either start or refine your telework capacity. Information technology is an integral part of the office environment, especially as physical location is less important now than ever before. Technology is no longer a telework challenge, but rather has become an opportunity to increase productivity and morale while potentially reducing business costs.
eWorkPlace provides:

• Free telework toolkit and resources.
  
• Expert training and consulting services for qualified employers.      
  

We will be exploring some excellent employer examples in the future. Stay tuned!

For more information on eWorkPlace, head over to their website. 

Today Jacquelyn Brown stops by to ask for your assistance with a research project exploring personality type, telecommuting and the potential connection between them.  Jacquelyn has been workshifting for the past 7 years and is currently working on her PhD at the University of San Diego with a research focus specifically on telecommuting.

As a telecommuter for the last seven years , I have been intrigued by this alternative work arrangement and have chosen to explore the concept of telecommuting for my doctoral dissertation at the University of San Diego.
 
Telecommuting continues to grow as technology improves, organizations look to save on overhead costs, employees seek stronger work-life balances, shifting economic priorities, and we look to help the environment by putting fewer cars on the roads.  To ensure that organizations continue to support and encourage telecommuting, we need a better understanding of telecommuting challenges.
 
There are so many avenues to explore when it comes to telecommuting.  One area that is underdeveloped and could be insightful for employers, employees and managers, focuses on the relationships between telecommuting and personality type.  We already know that there are learned skills that can benefit a telecommuter (time management, self-discipline...), but what about how one's innate personality type relates to telecommuting?  This complex issue could provide insight into challenges faced by telecommuters based on their personality type.
 
Telecommuters face numerous challenges, such as feelings of isolation, lack of promotional opportunities, lack of structure in their workday and relationships with managers, co-workers and family.  What is not currently understood is why not all telecommuters experience these challenges, and for those that do, why they experience them to varying degrees.  I am suggesting that this difference may be related to a telecommuter's MBTI personality type.  While it shouldn't be assumed that certain types would be better telecommuters than others, it would be interesting to investigate how the various MBTI personality types could adapt to make their telecommuting situations more successful.
 
The focus of my research is to uncover telecommuters' experiences with telecommuting challenges and explore if there is a relationship between those challenges and such factors as one's Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality type and telecommuting characteristics and demographics.
 
The MBTI is a personality assessment that takes approximately 15 minutes to complete.  After taking the MBTI participants will be provided with a detailed analysis of your type.  In addition, I have created a telecommuting survey consisting of only 16 questions that is broken up into three brief sections, Telecommuting Overview, Telecommuting Challenges and Demographics.
 
If you participate in this research, I will provide you with the following:

• Your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) profile (a $12 value)
• The MBTI make-up of the survey participants
• The telecommuting characteristics and demographics of the survey participants, and how they compare to the larger population of telecommuters
• The challenges faced by the survey participant
• The telecommuting challenges for different personality types
  

If you work for an organization that you do not own and telecommute from home using a phone and computer at least once a week, I welcome your insight into your experiences as a telecommuter.  If not, thank you for your time.
 
I will be conducting research for the next 60 days.  Please email me at telecommutestudy@gmail.com to indicate you would like to participate in this research. After you register, I will send you links to both the MBTI and telecommuting surveys with further instructions.  Your feedback on both surveys will be kept confidential.  

Thank you for being a part of this exciting research project!
 

I traveled back to Iowa a few weeks ago for some meetings, and ended up workshifting out of my parents' house in a small town in Eastern Iowa for a couple days. I worked side by side with my dad, who has been running German Sense, an import business for German books, music and games, out of our home for the past 10 years. It got me wondering - is the ability to work remotely something that you can learn or is it inherently part of who we are?

Before I became a Workshifter, I worked for a company that was affected by the floods that ripped through Eastern Iowa in the summer of 2008. The office was literally under water, and as a result, staffers worked remotely from their homes while the space was rebuilt. During this phase it immediately became clear that some were simply not - by temperament, psychology or personality type - wired for this type of arrangement.

Unexpected? Not really. It's clear that certain personality traits are needed to thrive in a remote workplace. Most people would agree that Workshifters are go-getters who tend to be motivated, organized, highly adaptable, disciplined and independent. But beyond that, are there certain competencies that can be learned?

In 2007, a company called Pearn Kandola was commissioned by Cisco to explore the characteristics of the modern mobile worker and the psychological challenges of mobile working. The study, Understanding and Managing the Mobile Workforce, revealed that unlike personality traits, which are relatively stable over time, an individual's competencies can develop and improve with experience.

The findings outlined 9 core competencies required of the mobile worker:

1. Communication - Workshifters need to "be adaptable in the way they initiate and respond to communications." They also need to make their messages more explicit than traditional messages and select the appropriate channel to communicate with the intended receiver. This is opposed to an office-based worker, who is surrounded by people and as a result communicates in a more natural way.
   
   
2. Achievements and result orientation - Workshifters need to be highly self-motivated. Office workers, on the other hand, have people around them who "monitor and 'push' them on."
   
   
3. Customer focus - While office-based workers don't tend to spend as much time facing customers, remote workers spend a lot of time "going between clients, seeking clients out and working at client premises."
   
   
4. Teamwork - Workshifters take part in less collaborative work than office-based workers, who tend to work predominantly in teams.
   
   
5. Planning and organizing - Key planning skills for Workshifters include priority setting, multi-tasking and time management. Office workers, on the other hand, need to plan, "but on a more basic level and not so far in advance" because there is less risk and fewer contingencies.
   
   
6. Commercial and business awareness - Workshifters need to be independent enough to take action when commercial opportunities arise, since there is often no one around to check with. Because of an abundance of support, office workers have more opportunity to check with others before decisions are made.
   
   
7. Flexibility and adaptability - Office-based workers are much more likely to work in a more routine role, while Workshifters need to be able to cope with changes on a much more frequent basis.
   
   
8. Problem solving - Workshifters are much more likely to suffer from non-work related problems (such as IT or travel) that they have to solve independently, while office workers tend to have more options for support.
   
   
9. Building relationships - Workshifters need to make it a priority to build relationships - and trust - with clients and colleagues. For office workers this occurs more naturally due to proximity.
   

I highly recommend reading the full findings of this report for anyone who is thinking about becoming a Workshifter or is managing a remote workforce.

Photo by: ynse

For the past 3 years Rock For Hunger has grown from a small group of college students into, well, a larger group of college students that are impacting the Orlando community in major ways. From throwing $20,000 concerts and events, to helping people find jobs, initiating lifestyle design programs, tutoring underprivileged children and feeding close to 200 homeless every week, they are able to do all of this without an office, a home base or a paid employee.

The group is led by a group of 20-something change agents (disclosure - I am one of them), sprinkled in with a few thirty somethings. The mission is to inspire individuals of all cultures to join together through music, education and peaceful solutions in order to end the cycle of hunger and poverty. This is done with the help of online communication tools, a strong internship and volunteer program and the ability to adapt to change and surroundings. Meetings have been held in places ranging from public libraries, board member homes, Panera's, mom and pop coffee shops, random office spaces, parks, college campuses, music venues, dressing rooms, over the phone and all sorts of interesting places that never have enough chairs to fit the inspirational Gen-Y's that lend their time, ideas and actions.

The group has grown organically, with volunteers coming from college clubs that bring in new Freshmen every year, friends that bring their friends, bands that bring fans and out reached family members who want to lend a hand. Rallying with weekly and monthly emails, a homeless blog, Twitter accounts, Facebook messages, events and physical meetups, everyone comes ready to deliver regardless of the physical environment with with they are located.

Success stories have come from cell phone calls to local education centers offering certificates in forklift certification to building resumes on laptops in library study cubes resulting in job placement at local hotels and security firms. This has all been made possible by technology and the ability to act and use the technology to find an answer to a problem. Think of the iPhone app commercials. There is a "hope" for that.

For the homeless Rock For Hunger serves, they all work virtually. Workshifting from one site to another, all trying to make a means to an end for the day. Having a place to seek refuge every Monday night for a few hours and kick back with friends, while looking at ways to improve their tomorrow in an office they enjoy visiting. There is no coming in late and everyone gets their questions answered by the boss. The concerts serve as places to not only showcase the product (helping the homeless), but recruit new team members (volunteers), give the community an opportunity to give back (sponsors) and for people to have a good time (the music). It is part conference/trade show and part job fair. It mixes entertainment with guest speakers, images of the impact in the community and ways to act - from Tweeting about the experience, signing up to volunteer, blogging to sharing photos and finding donors to make it all possible. In essence, it is a driving force behind the main product - change and education.

(One of Rock For Hunger's Homeless Friends at Recent Concert)

The growth of the Workshifting culture, mixed with technology and personal development have allowed us to tackle issues, find solutions and create programs in record time. On November 2nd, a new program, "Homeless Lifestyle Design" will begin that will take the homeless group through a 4-week program designed to change the way they think and envision their future through creativity, job training and financial awareness.

The course was created using things like Google Docs to pass through ideas, Basecamp to create milestones and send out tasks and Wordpress to manage the training site. This is all done seamlessly with our board members, interns and volunteers who never miss a beat or a deadline, because someone's life is on the line.

This post was not meant to be self-serving, but to show the ideas of working from anywhere can impact any organization, any payroll size and any goal worth achieving. Using tools for keeping organized, sharing notes and documents and throwing large scale events are now more possible than ever. Supporters and fans can live on any part of the globe and have the same impact as if they were in the board room. The product your company builds has the opportunity to help people everywhere with a few clicks of a button and the right marketing behind it.

We are living in a very exciting time and I am happy to be living and working that way.

Go make something beautiful this week Workshifters. Please share. It helps us grow.

Without a doubt, one of the best things about being my own boss and working from home is coffee.  But not just any old coffee - you can get any old coffee from the vending machine in Cubicle Nation.  Oh no! When I talk about coffee, I'm referring to a daily love affair of two - possibly three but never more - cups of properly made cappuccinos a day.  

I'm known amongst my circle of friends as a coffee snob. In fact, I think I may have even lost friends because of my coffee snobbery. There have been hints that, on my Fridays off (my "mummy days" when I try to catch up with other non Friday working mum and SAHM friends), I have not been invited to certain social events, as some think I'll turn my finely caffeinated nose up at their nescaff.  They're right.  I'd rather have a cup of builder's bum.  And I really don't like tea much, except on the two occasions when I've been severely traumatised (childbirth x two) and then only with two sugars and lashings of sympathy.

The fact that I'm writing a blog post about coffee is testament to my love affair with the stuff. And yes, I do realise it's also testament to me being an anorak a l'extrème. But I console myself with the fact that I'm not the only one who has this strange but life-enhancing relationship with the bean of life.  The New Zealanders are renowned for their love of coffee. For those in the know, New Zealand (and particularly Wellington) is the home of the best coffee in the world.  It is one of the few countries in the world that imports its beans raw and roasts them locally, and, having drunk a fair few cups whilst I was down in the land of the long white cloud earlier this year, I believe that the Kiwis do make the best coffee in the world.  

Whilst I was in New Zealand, I was introduced to the "flat white", which is best described as half way between a Cafe Latte and a Cappuccino.  It is crafted by the Kiwis with loving care, and there is a standing joke that it takes 20 minutes to get your coffee.  But boy, is it worth the wait!  There is a particular texture in an impeccably crafted flat white that brings out the flavour of the coffee and gives the partnership of espresso and milk the same sort of divinity as peaches and cream or strawberries and champagne.

The trip to New Zealand was a reccie trip to see if we wanted to move there.  Yes I do, because I simply can't contemplate living the rest of my life without access to Kiwi flat whites. My work shifting vision is firmly in Wellington, my dream house a mere hop away from flat white heaven.  

Back from New Zealand, the withdrawal symptoms were so bad that I bought myself a new coffee machine, a bona fide tax deductible business expense as a happy bonus and a great excuse  - as if I'd needed one.  

New machine all set up, I  went onto YouTube to find out how to make a flat white, only to discover after several failed attempts, that those darned Kiwis make it look far easier than it actually is. My new machine is a good one, and it makes a jolly good espresso, but alas, the skill is in she who crafts the coffee, and she is a mere amateur with pretensions of becoming a Kiwi barista.  I can sometimes get the milk almost a little tiny bit like the Kiwi flat white, but it never quite works.

Want to try it out for yourself? Check out this video and see how you fair:

 

Perhaps I should blame the British cows for not making the right type of milk, or perhaps I just need to keep that Kiwi vision in my head and hope that we emigrate sooner rather than later.

Photo by: Nick in exsilio

Why do you work?
 
When I asked this question in a conference room all I got was silence.  It's actually a really hard question, and answering it in front of a group of people can be daunting.  People felt like they could be wrong. 
 
Well, there is no right answer, it's only important to know "why" so that you have purpose and direction.  It helped when I gave them some of my personal reasons for working:
 

• To create opportunity
• To solve problems
• I have obligation to earn a living
• I didn't win the lottery
• I love what I do
• I need somewhere to go in the morning
• I didn't inherit millions
• My wife would kill me if I sat around the house all day
• Be around like minded people
• Reaching milestones
• Learn from others
• Engineers are cool
  

 
The list goes on, but the point is it's very personal.  The key is not to ask yourself "why do you work at X company", but rather, "why" you work?  Some of my answers are very common and others are cliché, and that's ok.  The point is that you should take a personal inventory, decide for yourself and then ask if your career is right for you.  If it is, do more.  If it isn't, get out.  You owe it to yourself.
 
I would love to hear the truth about why you work.

Photo by: wili_hybrid
 

With flu season looming, large companies are ramping up to make sure they are equipped to handle a workplace disruption. Wikipedia's entry on Business Continuity can make the whole concept seem daunting for any IT director in a big company. It can take a lot of money and resources for a big company to set up a Business Continuity plan. But it seems necessary because the cost of taking hundreds of employees offline is so great.

I would argue that workshifters aren't worried about Business Continuity and that large companies can learn a great deal from their own workshifters. Here are a few things enterprises could learn from workshifters when thinking about their BC plan:

1. Think SaaS - When all your "stuff" is in the cloud, it doesn't matter where your employees are working from. Here's what I need to work outside the corporate office:

• Salesforce - Access to all client data
• Twitter - Network and communicate with a larger community
• iPhone - Get email, contacts and calendar anywhere
• GoToMeeting - Ability to work with anyone, from anywhere
• GoToMyPC - Ability to work on my office computer from anywhere
• Google Docs - Access documents from anywhere

I realize there are more technical jobs that require access to more complex software but most employees can use SaaS for almost everything they do. And using remote access can get you straight to the desktop where any non-SaaS apps live. Check out a previous post from AJ Leon on all the SaaS available.

2. Make Telework/ Web Commuting Part of Your Policy - Workshifters are flexible workers by nature. They are very comfortable working wherever they may be, but it wasn't always that way. Setting up shop for the first time in a coffeehouse is uncomfortable. Working at home is tough if you're used to spending 40 hours in the corporate office. We can talk technology all day but there's a learning curve to becoming a workshifter. By rolling out a formal telework/Web commuting plan within your company you're preparing employees for a workforce disruption. Employees will be more comfortable working outside the office if they've done it in the past.
 
3. Adopt and Advocate Informal Communication - When you work in the corporate office all day your communication can often be locked down to email and office phone systems. Workshifters are masters of informal communication. Using other communication tools like IM, text messages, and Twitter frees  your workforce to communicate wherever they may end up in a disruption. If employees aren't used to communicating in informal ways it may be hard when they're suddenly asked to work from home to avoid a disruption. Build policies within your company around the use of informal communication tools and advocate usage of these tools.  

I'd love to hear from the workshifting community. Why aren't you worried about Business Continutiy? What can corporations learn from the way you do business?

Photo by: Eric M. Martin

Today Roger Courville stops by to share the number two mistake made in online presentations. Roger spends his days consulting and training corporations on how to properly design and optimize webinars.  You can connect with Roger over on Twitter and say hi.

Imagine for a moment that you were sitting down over coffee with a potential partner, and after some get-to-know-you chit chat you say, "so, tell me about your firm?"

On that prompt, your coffee partner pulls out a data sheet and starts reading it to you.

"What?!!?," you start thinking.  But it continues.  

A half-hour later, when your heart is about as cold as your coffee, he looks up and says, "So, any questions?"

While a bit dramatic, this is essentially what happens every day in online presentations.  Web seminars.  Webinars.

In a recent study I conducted about online presentation best practices, in one section of the survey I presented respondents with a question asking them what annoys them most about online presentations with seven potential responses.

Their top two responses made it look like the other five weren't even on the list:

"Presenter reads what is on the slides" and "Presenter reads a script."

So why is this the number two mistake in online presentations?

I've incorporated this research into my public and private webinar skills training.  In one session to a European audience, Alice (her real name) submitted a comment noting, "But I present to audiences for whom English is a second language and they like it when I read the slides to them.  It helps their comprehension."

My response,  "Good job, Alice!  You're obviously not making mistake number one - know thy audience."

An old adage on the sales floor is "people by from people."  But that isn't just a sales tactic.  People aren't going to pay attention, engage, or trust your ideas if you speak at them.

And their message for webinar presenters is clear:

TALK with me.  Talk WITH me.  Talk with ME.

Photo by: James Jordan

I don't spend my day thinking about sleep.  My mind is consumed with work, life, and everything in between.  However, I notice a material difference in my performance depending on the number of hours of sleep I get.
 
7 - 8:  Rock star
6 - 7:  Feeling good
5 - 6:  Is a cold coming on?
4 - 5:  I'm irritable and no amount of coffee can help
3 - 4:  New born sleep (for those that know what I'm talking about..it's bad)
 
I work so hard at being "on" and I need to work just as hard at being "off".  I find that if I'm active right up until I go to bed that I have a really hard time turning my brain off.  I'm in bed, and I can't fall asleep...it sucks!
 
If I take some time to read a few pages of a magazine or book, it really helps.  Also, if I'm worried about something I write it down.  There is something about writing things down that makes them seem not so overwhelming.  It also serves as a reminder to deal with it in the morning.
 
If all else fails, you pop a pill, but I find that to be a very short term fix.  It only solves the symptom and not the problem.  Figure out what's keeping you up, and solve it.  Easier said than done, but with a little effort, I find that I can get the "feeling good" sleep most of the time.
 
Both WebMD and Harvard have published articles with tips on how to sleep better, and I encourage you to read them, but I'm really curious about what your healthy sleeping tips are?

Photo by: just.Luc

It's great to stop working for a few minutes and get into the mind of an author that can really change the perception of your day and give you that kick in the butt you were looking for. I know sometimes working from home you need a little spark to turn off Hulu, the Wii or the kids. You need that light to go off. For me, I like looking into the strengths of others and seeing how they transcended their life, overcoming adversity or just said I am going for it.

This list is a god start and what I turn to when I am looking for some daily motivation.

4 Free eBooks That Rock My Day

The Zero Hour Workweek by Johnathon Mead

This is Jonathon's personal story of going from 9-5 to day job killer and breaking free from the constraints that were holding him back. This is a really meaty 60 pages that looks into how to get paid to be yourself with tips and insights into how grabbed over 10,000 subscribers to Illuminated Mind, writes for a top 50 blog, and created a full time income online.

279 Days to Overnight Success by Chris Guillebeau

Writer of the blog, the Art of Noncomformity, Chris has a nack for connecting with others by sharing his insights and instilling wisdom that really lights up the page. In this free resource Chris shares how he created his own brand, the motivation for his website and how he set himself free. This is really motivational and something that a lot of people can learn from, get excited about and do themselves!

How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in 2 Years by LeoBabauta

Most people in the blogging space know of Leo's story from humble beginnings to a book deal and total domination online with his suite of websites and products. Learning what Leo did right and wrong is motivation for anyone to become a rock star. His story is very possible for anyone and applying some of his knowledge in your business, whether it's big or small, can give you a jump start on the competition.

Spiritually Rich by Brooke Ferguson

Brooke, author of the Business Backpacker blog, wants us to think about our core, what makes us special and how we can use that to serve a greater purpose. The read is quick and exciting and offers those questions you need to ask yourself to get going for the day. To grab the eBook, you will need to opt-into her list, where she sends out very infrequent updates on working from abroad and lifestyle design.

So, that is my list. I am really interested to learn from you all as well. What gives you a quick jolt of energy when you hit that mid-day lull? Please share in the comments so we can make a great resource for people.