Telecommuting is the Norm is a quick article from Sales & Marketing Management’s website. I don’t think this trend is surprising to most people. We have seen a tremendous shift towards this approach in outside sales positions over the past 2 years especially. Most candidates now expect some form of telecommuting capability including wireless-connected laptops, VPN connections and PDA cell phones.

If your company does not offer these telecommuting basics, consider this excerpt from the article:

“The war for talent, combined with commuting times and costs, and an increasing need for work-life balance are all factors that promote telecommuting,” says Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh. “All things being equal, a well-articulated telecommuting policy can make the difference between winning and losing a bid for a high-impact professional, especially when more than twenty-seven million people in the United States work from home.”

Among the telecommuting trends:

* 25 percent of managers allow working from home, 13 percent allow working from a satellite office and 44 percent have other arrangements that support telecommuting. Only 19 percent say they have no telecommuting procedure.

Most managers say they expect telecommuting to grow over the next two years. Only 35 percent said it was unlikely that telecommuting would increase.

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Multitasking is one of those words that has entered business lexicon but should be considered an urban myth. We posted on this topic a few months ago and now I have come across a short Q&A article from CareerJournal.com that addresses the physical aspects of so-called multitasking.

First, kudos to the author of the question who can really turn a phrase (emphasis mine):

You’ve written that too much multitasking can leave the mind and body marinating in stress hormones. Can you elaborate on the physiological effects?…Brief or infrequent stress responses pose little risk. But when a person responds this way habitually or over long periods, the risk of injury or disease rises. Evidence is growing that some people’s stress response plays a role in such chronic health problems as psychological ailments or cardiovascular or musculoskeletal disorders, NIOSH says.

I realize some employees are better at accomplishing tasks and goals than other employees. Typically, this ability has more to do with personal drive, goal focus and results orientation than it does with a mythical multitasking ability. From our earlier post:

While multitaskers seem to be accomplishing a lot, they are in most cases literally just going through the motions.
Multitasking doesn’t look to be one of the great strengths of human cognition, says James C. Johnston, a research psychologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. It’s almost inevitable that each individual task will be slower and of lower quality.

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Bad Writing: As Written Communication Skills Deteriorate, Business Schools Take Aim. There is hope and I am encouraged this Monday morning. We comment about writing skills frequently here at The Hire Sense since, well, we have seen some atrocious documents.

The article attacks the problem right at the source:

But in an era of nonstop e-mail and instant and text messaging, written communication skills within companies may be getting even worse as quality is compromised by the perceived need for speed.

The casualness of email and the shorthand of text messaging has crippled writing styles. Now it appears to be affecting basic writing ability. The ubiquitousness of cell phones probably plays a part in this whole sordid trend also. Instead of writing a letter to a friend, one can simply call them (and reach them) instantly on their cell phone.

In case you had some doubts:

“Frequently e-mails are fired off with never a second thought no proofreading,” said O’Rourke. “And certainly the grammar of instant messaging and text messaging has intruded as well.”

We see this trend in cover emails – it is patently obvious that the author did not proofread their email at all. The reason these errors are important in the hiring process is that this communication should be their best work – as good as they get. If they cannot take the time to proofread their prose when they are looking for a new opportunity, I guarantee they will not take the time to properly proofread their communication when representing your company.

“People have been complaining about the quality of student writing since Plato,” said Kate Ronald, an English professor who runs the school’s Howe Writing Initiative. “But I think businesses are paying more attention to it. Businesses today are doing so much more writing, and doing it so much more publicly because so much of the discourse is discussed on the screen rather than on paper.”

Email, websites, text messaging and blogs. I think Professor Ronald is spot on in her closing comment.

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The email covers are like Clark Griswold’s Jelly of the Month Club membership – they are the gift that keeps on giving. Scanning through recent resumes led me to this cover email statement:

I currently am the best sale personality i have ever met. However i’m not loving my postion right now.

I think this was supposed to be a joke. At least I hope so.

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