Perhaps the telecommuting trend will end before it truly gets established?  I doubt it, but this Wall Street Journal article discusses some bellwether technology companies that are calling back a portion of their telecommuters.

A few big promoters of home-based and mobile-office work arrangements, including AT&T, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and parts of the federal government, have called some home-based workers back to the office, causing some to quit. The callbacks are small and don’t reflect a full retrenchment, but the factors at work — a push to consolidate operations, and the notion that teamwork improves when people work face-to-face — suggest other employers might follow suit as recession clouds loom.

I do not track the correlation between a recession and telecommuters, but the anecdotal evidence is still interesting.  I suspect there will be some ongoing adjustments when it comes to managing a team with some in-house employees and some telecommuters (especially full-time, remote employees).

Despite these companies recalling (is that the right verb?) some home-based workers, others are expanding:

All these employers insist they still fully support telecommuting. And U.S. corporate employees working full time from home are still rising, gaining 30% since 2005 to 2.44 million in 2007, says Ray Boggs, a research vice president with IDC, a Framingham, Mass., market-research concern. Nortel, JetBlue and others employers are expanding work-at-home.

Comments(0)

I got a kick out of this – I’m looking through resumes online and I came across one that was listed as confidential.  Candidates put a title to their resume that often says “Experienced Sales Professional” or something of that sort.  The candidate can then hide their personal contact information (name, address, phone, etc.) and their current employer.  This person did that.

Except the title for their resume was their actual name as in “John Doe’s resume.”

Oops.

Comments(0)