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Preparing for Telework: It’s Not Just About The Technology

Telework has brought measurable benefits to many organizations in the form of cost savings, reduced environmental impact, improved employee retention, and continuity of operations. Last December, President Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 into law to ensure that these benefits were realized more broadly across agencies and to provide more workplace flexibility for employees. The new law now provides a government-wide framework for Telework and stipulates a July 2011 deadline for agencies to establish Telework policies, determine which employees are eligible for Telework, and notify them of their eligibility.

However, there are significant hurdles to implementing Telework in a timely, successful manner. In its July 2010 report titled On Demand Government: Deploying Flexibilities to Ensure Service Continuity, the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton uncovered three barriers to Telework:

• Management resistance
• Employee concerns about reduced face-to-face management contact
• Technology-related security risks

Much of the discussion around Telework has focused on selecting and securely deploying the best communications and computing infrastructure. Yet, the people-related challenges of implementing Telework are equally daunting. The focus of this paper will be on the first two barriers to Telework success: management resistance and employee concerns around career development. In order to address these two hurdles and implement Telework programs in a timely and successful manner, agencies need to revisit how they manage people from performance and development perspectives.