Don’t Quit Your Day Job! Convincing Your Boss To Let You Telecommute, Part 1 of 2

Are you desperately trying to find a telecommute job so that you can quit your current one? Hold on! Your job just might have the potential to be done from home.

With the right approach, a little research and a good proposal, many employees are selling the idea of telecommuting to their employers.

In this first segment, we focus on the steps you should take in order to determine whether or not your job is a candidate for telecommuting.

Many jobs are well suited for telecommuting…and many aren’t. Your first step should be to evaluate your current job and determine whether or not it is feasible to do it from home.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does your job depend on resources that are only available at the office? If your job only requires Internet access, phone and fax, it is definitely possible to do it from a home office. However, if you are a receptionist in a medical office, you probably have other responsibilities that require you to physically be there, i.e. having patients fill out paperwork and filing.
• Do you work well without supervision? Some people are perfectly content to work on their own. Others need the support of having a supervisor and co-workers nearby. Monitor yourself for a week. Be aware of how often you rely on others and how you would deal with it if you had been away from the office. In some cases, a supervisor may feel that getting phone calls from a remote employee is disruptive, while a quick question in the hallway is not.
• Do other companies offer telecommuting for your job type? Do some research and find out if it’s already being done. Having evidence of success with telecommuting can go a long way in convincing an employer that it can (and does) work.
• Does telecommuting fit with your company culture? If your company has a culture of empowerment and trust, telecommuting may be a perfect fit. If they have a more hands-on management style, it may not work. Think about how your company manages their employees and whether or not the hands-off style required for telecommuting is possible.
• Could you cope with the isolation? Some people crave office gossip, lunches with co-workers, water cooler chats and all the human interaction that comes with a traditional job environment. If this sounds like you, you may need to give serious thought to whether or not working remotely is for you- it may turn out to be more like solitary confinement!

Here are some useful resources for evaluating your current job and for determining whether telecommuting is right for you:

• Skills and Motivations Needed to Telecommute
  
• Work From Home and Save Time, Stress and Money
• Telecommute! Go to Work Without Leaving Home

In Part 2, I will discuss the ways that you can convince your boss to let you telecommute. Look for that post tomorrow.

Tags: telecommute, telecommuting