Announcements:
City of Santa Barbara has a server and is featuring web pages from different departments.
Grand Jury also has a web page.
Jeff Carmody: SBC Air Pollution Control District has a page at Silicon Beach. They are linked to related agencies across the US.
Nancy Oster: Went to the City Council to hear about the Cable issue. The city council gave Cox an extension.
Dale: Next SCTA meeting may feature Phil Arraguin who will talk about the development of a venture fund for small telecommunications companies and what small companies need to do to use this fund.
Jill Charbonneau announced the formation of a multimedia computer lab using the old SB High School girls locker room.
Tonight's Panel on telecommuting featured Lois Philips (a management consultant), Don Gilman, Candace Robinson. Lois moderated:
Lois Philips
Slide Show: Telecommuting as a substitute for the trip to work. What is at issue is how managers manage-- do they hover and goad their employees or do they look at the work output. They will discuss the home approach and the telecenter approach.
The Ventura college telecenter was funded by CalTrans. They set it up in a portable building in 7 days and it handled the load for several students who would have commuted to Northridge after the big earthquake.
Myths: You have to be a technical/computer person. It has to be permanent.
Doesn't work for employees who need to interact on an unstructured basis. Telecommuters need to be self starters and independent. They must be aggressive in seeking answers to the questions which may arise during performance of their work. Its very attractive to employees not able to afford expensive real estate in the company town. It improves employee retention-- they tend to stay on in spite of lower salaries. It decreases long term disability costs. It reduces office costs. Employee output is higher for telecommuters.
The city of Los Angeles is particularly interested in telecommuting because of office space and freeway problems. The total number selected for a test was 490 people. It began with training the employees and the managers. The supervisors and the employees agreed on how the work would be done including meetings, reports, and output. It was estimated that the number of people who could telecommute was about 15,000. The conclusions were that not only did it significantly reduce pollution and energy, but it delivered on all of the positive aspects.
A telecommuting implementation group is needed to insure an organization takes full advantage of telecommuting. Co-usage (of company facilities) between organizations improves the overall cost savings.
Questions to consider:
Candace Robinson
Candace talks about a specific telecenter. She is a site administrator for 2 telecenters. They were funded through CalTrans. They had to determine what equipment a telecommuter would need/want. The centers have 5 workstations/PCs. They "marketed" the telecenters-- sold the idea. It was hard to get people to use the center. Those who did liked it. Why did they have such a hard time selling the idea? They were told it was the mind set of managers inhibiting the process. They are developing a curriculum of education for managers/employees about telecommuting. The necessary change in management style, management by objective, is a prerequisite to telecommuting. A positive aspect of a telecenter is the social interaction. They have both data workers and phone oriented workers. Some do word processing, others do Internet research.
They have found that most jobs have some aspect which could be telecommuted. They have video conferencing, but this is not used as much as they would like it to be. They charge about $75/hr for video teleconferencing, half of Kinkos rates. The telecenter is $50/mo for 1 day a week and $250/month for 5 days a week. They are still a research center, but other telecenters cost up to $350/mo. They are open 24 hours. The Moorpark facility is limited by library hours.
Don Gilman
Don Gilman, telecommuting consultant: Management is the problem. Telecommuting is harder to manage because it has to be done intelligently. We have to leave the Industrial Revolution mentality behind in order to do this. It doesn't seem to be a generational attitude. Its also a problem for the non-telecommuters. You have to have a good reason that another employee cannot telecommute. It is a very hard sell. Another problem is that telecommuters tend to be motivated and thereby positively influences others--being away too much lowers everybody else's productivity. It may also be a way to allow more independent employees to do better.
Internet Addresses:
lphill1833@aol.com (Lois)
vcetec01@west.net (Candace)
c44dgg@dso.hac.com (Don)-- will change
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