Post from November, 2005

Nov 30

Managing Adults 101?

Wednesday, 30. November 2005 11:51

November 30, 2005

My friend Jim Ware of the Future of Work posted a Blog today entitled "Is That a Shopping Basket in Your Cubicle? His Blogs are always a great read, well written and informative. We are more often than not of one mind. This one in particular caught my
attention. It  had lots we agree on, especially the latter half. The following is my reply comment.

Jim :

You hit the nail on the head with me on this one. Besides the great stuff about men doing more on-line shopping at work than women and the blur between work and non-work, what really caught me was the part about being treated like a child at work. Though with me you are preaching to a choir member on this topic, the more people I talk to the more I am finding we are not alone. There is a virtual cacophony of singers out there.

The key notes you hit – not to be “treated like little kids” and the relationship to the college experience. The former is the first lesson you learn when going to college. You are not in high school anymore. You are in the big world now and no one is there to push you to do your homework or go to class. It’s up to you, to pass or fail. This is one of those adulthood thresholds. Entering the work world is, or should be, the same. You are in the big work world now.

Then how come, to paraphrase your eloquence, when we get to that work world, we are treated like kids again? What I see emerging is that the “why” is not really significant, but the fact of the behavior is. If the companies aren’t getting it, the employees are. So important is the precept that being treated like an adult is good
management, it is fast becoming a key criteria for taking a job. “Does the company allow me to telecommute?” is no longer just about work/life balance. It is a key indicator of how you will be treated by the company (read adult vs. child) and how advanced are the skills of its managers.

This brings up the big word I keep hearing from companies that “allow” flex work or telecommuting – TRUST. They trust their employees will do the job. If they don’t, they deal with the work issue, not the location issue. And the reason companies have these programs and practice the accompanying management principles – “it’s all about [good] business as usual.”

- Catherine

Category:Business Process | Comment (0) | Author: Catherine Adams Lee

Nov 22

Are You Prepared?

Tuesday, 22. November 2005 11:47

November 22, 2005

I’m not a doom and gloom person. I’m an optimist. It’s what gets me up in the morning. The desire to explore the possibilities the day may bring. I also don’t believe in generating hysteria. So when I talk about diasaster, my intent is not to creat a Chicken Little the-sky-is-falling syndrome. However, if there are two* things the Red Cross has taught me, one is that a little preparation goes a long way.  

That is why I firmly believe that being prepared for work life’s, as well as personal life’s, exigencies. Business interruption, or what I call a business WorkQuake™, will happen. It may caused by natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, geopolitical
events like 9/11 or just everyday disruptions like a traffic accident or spill that closes a freeway –  whatever keeps people from getting to work. Someday, any day without warning, your business may suddenly need to expand the usage of its remote access
infrastructure exponentially, and immediately. Are you prepared to do so?

If the above is not enough to get you moving, let me show you part of the White House’s plan for a bird flu pandemic.

Excerpted from National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza

“Roles and Responsibilities –
The Private Sector and Critical Infrastructure Entities

  • Establishing an ethic of infection control in the workplace that is reinforced during the annual influenza season, to include, if possible, options for working off site while ill,
    systems to reduce infection transmission, and worker education.
  • Establishing contingency systems to maintain delivery of essential goods and services during times of significant and sustained worker absenteeism.
  • Where possible, establishing mechanisms to allow workers to provide services from home if public health officials advise against non-essential travel outside the home. “


What is Business Preparedness? It means keeping business flowing as usual, preferably seamlessly, with as little down time as possible. It means having the technology in place for people to access the necessary data to keep doing their job. It also means having your business backed up or residing on servers elsewhere
so your company records and active data are not lost or inaccessible.

Ok – you know about preparing the technology, but what about preparing the people. Business preparedness also includes readiness for you and the other people in the company. After all, you are the other software that actually makes the business hardware run. Are you or they prepared? You better be.

What does people preparedness mean in a business sense? In general, here are a few basics everyone should do.

  • Know how to access the company data and systems. If access is via a VPN, making sure that everyone has the code or password and knows how to log on
  • Learn the remote version of communication skills
  • Know how to use the communication software
  • Have the infrastructure hardware installed at home
  • Be experienced in the actual business usage of the remote hardware and software at home, in other words,  practice telecommuting


The later is really the most important. Not just knowing how to do all of this, but actually doing it. There is no substitution for experience. When I was in Baton Rouge for Hurricane Katrina as a trained Red Cross volunteer, I could tell who had taken Red Cross disaster preparedness classes and who had not. Who had been through a disaster recovery effort before, whether national or local, and who were first-timers.

Obtaining life skills is an experiential process. Obtaining business disaster survival skills is the same. To “know how”, learning the concept, is absolutely the necessary first step. But we are talking about brain knowledge coupled to physical enactment. The other
part of “know how” is to imprint the knowledge to the brain, which is only done by physical application, by practice.

lass="text">So let’s all be prepared. To paraphrase, with all due respect, the Red Cross -  together we can save our business lives.

* ask me about the second thing

Category:WorkPlace Preparedness | Comment (0) | Author: Catherine Adams Lee

Nov 21

Telecommuting Tax Fairness Act

Monday, 21. November 2005 11:40

November 21, 2005
The Supreme Court recently refused to hear an appeal on New York state’s enforcement of its telecommuting taxation actions, as spotted in a www.siliconvalley.com article. It seems that New York believes is has the right to acquire 100% of an employee’s state
income taxes for any person working for a New York based company, no matter where they may live.

As the article states,

    “New York lawyers argued that the state was entitled to tax Huckaby’s earnings because the worker chose to live in another state “solely for his own convenience.” The income would have been exempt if he were required to work elsewhere, under the state system.”

The decision appears to hinge on the premise that living in another state was for the employee’s “convenience”. This argument has bothered me ever since I read it. What is an employees’ convenience? Did the employee originally live in New York when hired by the company and then for the fun of it move to Tennessee? This might be for his onvenience.

Did he already live in Tennessee when hired by the company? This would seem to be for the company’s convenience. With technology advancements as they are today, the ability to hire good employees where ever they live is a clear advantage. Did the
employee start in New York and then move to Tennessee to take care of ailing or aging parents, yet maintain his existing job? This would seem to be a convenience for both parties.

Since the article didn’t explain this ruling in detail, I decided to do more research.  Here is the basic problem. It is not really about which State gets your income tax. Some people may not care. It’s about double taxation. For instance, you work for NYCompany
(NYCo) in New York and actually work in the company’s New York office 40% of the time. New York taxes you on that part. You work for NYCo and live/work for NYCo in State ‘X” 60% of the time. New York taxes you 100% because your NYco was in its state. And,
State ‘X’  taxes you again on the 60% income because it was produced in its state. In order for you to avoid double taxation, State ‘X’ must grant a credit for the taxes you paid to New York.

Even if State ‘X’ grants the credit, you still may wind up paying more for the “convenience” of telecommuting if New York’s tax rate is higher than your home state’s. Additionally, your state looses the benefits of your tax dollar. The money that would go for your local roads, schools, public utilities and other services, will go to New York. Which is why you should care where the money ends up..

Yet other work is afoot. A Bi-partisan group of Senator and Representatives have introduced legislation in both houses known as “The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2005.”  The bills are “ To amend title 4 of the United States Code to prohibit the double taxation of telecommuters and others who work at home.” S. 1097  H. R. 2558 are currently in committee in both houses. Let’s hope they pass. It only seems fair.

Category:newworkplaces | Comment (0) | Author: Catherine Adams Lee

Nov 18

Telecommuting: Is the ‘Need’ there?

Friday, 18. November 2005 11:54

November 18, 2005                                             

Should you or should you not telecommute? While discussing new workplaces with a women the other day, she told me that her company recently started a program that encouraged people to work at home one day a week. The intent was to help employees reduce stress and improve their work/life balance, a laudable move.

She immediately told me she tried it and telecommuting definitely didn’t  work well for her. That was it, she worked better at the office, said in a tone that meant, don’t talk me out of it. She liked to be around people, liked the concept of going-to-the-office, wanted the personal interaction – all the normal, and valid, reasons for not working elsewhere.

Talking further about individual work styles, I tossed out my sentence about prescriptive change and how just telling people to go home rarely works. The most successful home workers have a personal ‘need’ to work at home.

Well, that opened the floodgates. Turns out that her husband is retired and works at home. Also her adult kids drop by all the time and have demands. And the dog chews the paperwork … It  isn’t that she can’t get herself to sit down and work, isn’t a self-starter or not capable of self-managed work. She has a NEED to work elsewhere. For her, going to work is going to her productive work environment and an escape.

So what do you do if you have to or want to work at home, but it isn’t necessarily the type of atmosphere  where you concentrate best?

Here are three key tips:

  1. Pick your home office location with privacy in mind. Be able to close the door in order to block out other household activities. Closing the door also helps with the
    visual privacy. But unless you are hermetically sealed, noise may still float under it. Adding a personal CD player and a set of headphones can help. Or try a desktop fountain. Something to create ambient noise and block or diffuse other sounds.
  2. Creat a set of rules or guidelines for others to follow. You are at work after all. When you are at your company office, does do family members phone every time the mood strikes? Being present implies accessibility. Ask them to please modify that behavior.
  3. Be sure that working in your current company or home office workspace is truly the way you work best. Experiment by working in different types of environments. Some type of noise may be distracting to you and another kind may not. Or, as in the above case, it is not only about the physical distractions, but the psychological ones – the difference between being treated as ‘Wife’ and ‘Mom’ versus ‘Co-worker‘.

Incidentally, all of the above holds true for office workers. For those whose work style includes the need for quiet and no distractions, setting up rules of engagement is the mandatory first step for productivity. Enforcing these boundaries is the next.

Category:newworkplaces | Comment (0) | Author: Catherine Adams Lee