Beware: NET-A-PORTER

[Adrian Howard]

On 11 Dec 2011, at 20:46, David Cantrell wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 05:23:40PM +0000, Adrian Howard wrote:
>> On 9 Dec 2011, at 13:16, David Cantrell wrote:
>>> This idea that with the right magic pixie dust teleworking can be made
>>> to work regardless of the company, the colleagues, and the employee is a nice idea, but I have seen no evidence whatsoever that it is true.
>> A whole bunch of CSCW and social science folk have looked at how teams produce work, and distributed teams come out worse and so called "radically colocated" teams come out best ("war room" type setups where everybody on a project in in the same room).
> 
> Of course, if your people are made of pure Awesomium then you might be OK
> with taking that performance hit because you're still coming out ahead
> despite your people being in Narsarsuaq and Tataouine compared to if
> you'd employed less awesome people happy to work with you in a damp
> basement in Preston.

Of course ;)

Although it might be worth considering how much _more_ productive you might be if they were all in the same room (I've know a couple of orgs who fly folk together for a month - paying hotel, etc. - because it's _worth_ it). 

Telecommuting also wins against folk who have terrible work environments (the stereotypical noisy half-cube farm for example).

Cheers,

Adrian
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