Feature

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Telecommuting

CareGroup CIO John Halamka takes an in-depth look at the policies and technologies necessary for supporting flexible work arrangements.

Flexible Work Policies

Over the past three months, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has explored the policies needed to support remote work arrangements for our call center employees, medical record coders and our desktop engineering team. We determined these three groups of employees were ideal for the pilot for a variety of reasons: JetBlue previously demonstrated with its customer service staff that call center employees can successfully work from home. We chose medical record coders because they're difficult to find in Boston and because their work doesn't have to be done in a traditional office space as long as they have access to patient medical records. Finally, the IS engineers who design Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's infrastructure benefit from a quiet environment that's conducive to the concentration required for their work.

The goal of the flexible work arrangement we're piloting is threefold: to enhance productivity and cost savings, improve employee recruitment and retention, and to more efficiently use existing office space. We chose employees for the pilot on the basis of whether letting them participate in a flexible work arrangement would advance any of those three goals.

We modeled our flexible work policy on one established by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, which has been an early leader in homesourcing. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts created a flexible work arrangement worksheet that's designed to help managers evaluate if an employee's job tasks can be performed remotely. The worksheet also establishes an agreement between an employee and manager about the employee's job performance and productivity while working remotely. We are in the process of customizing our own flexible work arrangement worksheet based on Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts's.

Creating a policy that is flexible enough to support many employee roles while specific enough to identify which employees can work remotely and which cannot is challenging. Blue Cross's policy provides employees and managers with a framework for discussing the possibility of flexible work that sets mutual expectations, identifies the employee's responsibilities and codifies criteria for success. This framework has enabled me to have open discussions with pilot employees interested in flexible work arrangements and to maintain a sense of equity since everyone understands what can and cannot be done. Extending this framework to the entire population at Beth Israel Deaconess is still a work in progress. The next step is a series of focus groups scheduled for April and May 2008 with over 40 managers from throughout the medical center who will document their unique needs and the challenges facing their departments with respect to flexible work arrangements.

With a pilot policy in place, we can think about the infrastructure required to support flexible work arrangements.

My Personal Pilot

From November 26 to November 30, I tried working from home. I replaced my own scheduled plane flights with video teleconferencing, moved my in-person meetings to conference calls, and attempted to avoid all commuting for five days. I was almost successful. I had to go into the office for 30 minutes for an unplanned meeting with a new senior vice president of facilities. First-time meetings—with new employees or to kick off a project—seem to be the one case where "face to face" is truly important.

I was more productive during my week at home because I could work when I'd otherwise be stuck in Boston traffic. Although it's true that I have my BlackBerry with me at all times, I do not read or respond to e-mail while the car is moving, especially in bumper to bumper traffic.

For a home office to work, it must be a dedicated space with a door that can isolate the remote worker from distractions. There really needs to be a sense of mental separation: As I close the door to the home office, I've commuted to work and will commute home when I exit my workspace. It is impossible to work from home while also caring for children or other members of the household, answering the door for UPS deliveries, or competing with the family for use of the phone. A home office should have its own phone line. My time at any office, home or corporate, requires a laser-like focus on hundreds of e-mails, dozens of phone calls and numerous negotiations—all of which require my complete attention. I can't be distracted by dishes in the sink or laundry in the dryer.

Achieving mental separation is one challenge. The other challenge associated with working remotely is getting used to not being on the front lines. Typically my day takes place in data centers, hospital wards, board rooms and cubicles. Although I may be as productive working remotely as I am when I'm in the office, I feel emotionally separated from the action if I cannot walk to a colleague's office or assess a critical situation in a hands-on fashion. This problem is more about perception than reality. With the basic technology tools I've outlined in this article, I can achieve all the communication, coordination and leadership needed, but I've not yet personally adapted to virtual management. It's a bit like telesurgery. You expect to feel the heat of the operating room lights, the sights and smells of cutting and sewing, and sounds of all your coworkers around you. Technically, telesurgery can be as good as in person surgery, but it requires the surgeon to have a mind-set that sets aside the sensory cues of the traditional operating room.

I have been an effective CIO while traveling 400,000 miles a year, so I know that I can lead via BlackBerry, phone calls, Web-based collaboration and teleconferencing. I should feel as connected in my home office as I do while sitting in an airport. I'm sure that emotional comfort will come over time.

--John Halamka

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