Jobs are better without the office

Free telework day highlights benefits of work alternatives

Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH Victoria Hayden of Hughesville is happy to work from the telework center in Waldorf rather than commute to her job at the Pentagon. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Victoria Hayden almost quit.

Her high-level, high-stress job wasn't worth spending four hours a day getting to and from the Pentagon, she reasoned.

But about five weeks ago, Hayden's supervisor gave her the option to try working full time from a remote center in Waldorf that would allow her to connect to the Department of Defense's server and to complete virtually all her duties as the Air Force's contract finance officer.

"It was a true blessing. I love my job now," Hayden, clad in gym clothes, enthusiastically told visitors Monday at the Southern Maryland Telework Center in Waldorf's Smallwood Village Center. "It's so relaxed here. I think the biggest thing people are afraid of is losing control of their people. But they're only a click of a mouse away. I'm proving to them that it works."

The U.S. General Services Administration, which funds telework centers in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia, including one in Waldorf and one in Prince Frederick, offered government agencies the opportunity to place their employees in the centers' rent-free Monday as part of international Car Free Day, which takes place every Sept. 22 with events held by organizations to take more cars off the road that guzzle fuel and pollute the environment.

Since Hayden began teleworking she's much happier, exercises every day, cut her $600 monthly gas bill by three-quarters and opted out of a $100-per-month government transportation subsidy and a compressed work schedule she doesn't need anymore, she said. She's even able to connect to international calls, make travel arrangements, call in to meetings and meet with clients at the center.

As the price of gas has spiked over the last year, Jill Wathen, director of the Southern Maryland Telework Centers, has seen a 40 to 50 percent increase in inquiries from remote worker "potentials." But the number of actual workers using the centers has increased only about 5 percent, which leads her to believe employees aren't having success getting approval from managers.

So Wathen hopes opportunities such as the Car Free Day promotion give managers and employees an excuse to try out the centers because it doesn't cost them anything, and hopefully fall in love with them.

"It has to be supported at the top," Wathen said. "When GSA allows us to run free trials, that's our biggest retention. When gas was hitting the $4 mark it was going crazy here. People just don't know we're here. The marketing really needs to happen from the inside."

There are 53 seats at the Prince Frederick and Waldorf centers that house teleworkers who work there as much as every day and as little as two days a month, Wathen said. Since its creation in 1994, the Waldorf center has been expanded three times. They are equipped with workstations and can be connected to each agency's server. There's online and in-person technical support, a fax machine, copier, scanner, telephone and voicemail.

Only 9.5 percent of eligible federal employees are teleworking, according to the Office of Personnel Management's 2006 Status of Telework in the Federal Government report.

About 39 percent of federal employees telework less than once a week but at least once a month; 35 percent telework one or two days a week, and 25 percent telework at least three days a week, the OPM reported.

Maria Price Detherage, director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' executive office who manages 360 employees nationwide and over 100 in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, came to the Waldorf center Monday to see if expanding telework policies in her office could work.

"This facility is pretty awesome. I knew the centers were available. I will actively support it," the Accokeek resident said. "It just confirms you can see increased productivity" because there's less office chit-chat and distractions.

Currently, about 50 percent of Detherage's employees participate in some sort of telework.

"It gives a lot of employee flexibility and allows them to balance work and family life," she said.

Managers as open to teleworking as Detherage are "few and far between," Wathen said.

But Monday was also an opportunity for Detherage to explore ways to test business continuity and her workforce's ability to provide services remotely in case of a national disaster in the nation's capital. Allowing telework also saves on overhead costs for office space and parking to agencies. Agencies pay $42 per day to the GSA to rent a telework workstation.

"It was just a personal testament to the convenience of telework centers. I think for me, because I was promoting this from the policy perspective," it was natural. "What's missing is educating managers to hold everyone to the same standard of production by productivity, not sight, and what teleworking is not, such as a substitute for child care," Detherage said.

About 60.5 and 59.3 percent of Charles and Calvert County residents, respectively, commute out of the county to work — two of the highest numbers in the state. About 29.3 percent of residents in St. Mary's County commute outside the county to work, according to U.S. Census Bureau data collected from 2007 American Community Survey results released Tuesday.

That's compared to 46.6 percent of Maryland residents overall and 27.5 percent nationally.

Full use of the centers, working from home and federal workers' compressed work schedule flexibility, which allows them to work longer hours each day to get one day off every other week, could keep more people off the roads that are not built to handle their car volume more of the time, Wathen said.

"I loved it. It was fantastic," said Maria Price, a St. Leonard resident who took advantage of the Prince Frederick center's free day for the first time.

It usually takes Price about two hours each way to get to her job as a management and program analyst at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington, D.C., by commuter bus.

"We're going to working one day a week from home at some point this year [at the bureau]. We thought it'd be a good idea to go check it out and pull together some information together. I thought it was excellent," Price said. "I didn't even know what to do with my [free] time yesterday."

Calvert County residents have the state's longest commute to work, averaging 40.3 minutes, followed by 38.6 minutes for Charles County residents. The St. Mary's County and Maryland average is 31.1 minutes — all of which are higher than the national average of 25.3 minutes, according to the census data.

About 79 percent of Charles County residents drove to work alone in 2007, compared to 82 percent in Calvert County, 74.3 percent statewide and 76.1 percent nationwide.

"Now you gotta get up earlier and earlier. I don't think people are sleeping anymore," Hayden said. "I was so stressed out. This changes your whole outlook of your job."

The centers often help workers transition from operating out of the centers to working at home. But many workers who don't have the discipline, high-speed Internet connection or tolerance from isolation that is required of them working from home stay there.

The trend is catching on quickly in the private sector, though less than 10 percent of Southern Maryland's telework center users work for private companies, Wathen said.

kkulp@somdnews.com