Charities Find That Telecommuting Helps Recruit and Keep Workers – Despite Glitches

A year and a half ago, Judy Leibrook was in New York, in her 30th year of

working for the Girl Scouts of the USA — and worried about her mother.

Her mother was hundreds of miles away, in her mid-90’s, and living on her own when she wasn’t staying with Ms. Leibrook’s brother or sister. At the time, though, Ms. Leibrook could do little more than worry, because her mother was too frail to visit her apartment.

“She lives in a rather small-town environment in Ohio, and I lived in Queens, three floors up, and she couldn’t make that,” Ms. Leibrook recalls. “And the weather was so cold.”

This winter, however, her mother is staying at Ms. Leibrook’s new home in Las Cruces, N.M. Ms. Leibrook, a longtime area director who manages Girl Scout organizations in eight Southwestern states, now does her job mostly from home, thanks to a policy enacted by the charity’s board of directors in fall 2000 that allows employees to telecommute.

Ms. Leibrook moved to New Mexico both because she loved the Southwest and because she felt that it would be easier to tend her assigned territory from the territory itself. To keep up with what is happening at headquarters, she spends a few days every month or so working at the Scouts’ Manhattan office. She says her interest in her job has been refreshed now that she can work from home and adjust her personal life to her schedule. “I’m getting to the age when I might have thought about retiring,” she says. “But now I feel I’m just getting started. Now that I’m living in a healthier and sunnier environment, I will probably work longer.”

Popular Benefit

Not all charities allow their employees to work at home and not all charities could, even if they wanted to — but the practice appears to have gained a foothold. In The Chronicle’s new survey of employee benefits offered by 151 nonprofit groups, 68 respondents said they allow their workers to telecommute, and five said they plan to begin letting their employees telecommute in the next year. A growing number of other employers, in a variety of fields, do the same. Thirty-seven percent of employers — and 31 percent of nonprofit employers — allow telecommuting, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2001 benefits survey of 754 human-resource professionals. The number of respondents who said they allow workers to telecommute jumped 11 percent from 2000.

Some organizations may not declare work at home as a blanket or official policy, but allow it in certain circumstances. For example, in its response to the Chronicle survey, Focus on the Family, a Christian organization in Colorado Springs, said it did not allow employees to telecommute, but in fact, says Doug Guilzon, the group’s director of compensation and benefits, a few of its 1,400 employees — notably those who edit the charity’s Web site — perform some work from home. Those who telecommute, he says, do so only at the request of their supervisors.

Many employees who work at home do so only part time. And employers who allow telecommuting often do so on a case-by-case basis, says Thomas W. Mesaros, vice chairman of the Alford Group, a management and fund-raising consulting company in Skokie, Ill., that specializes in nonprofit groups. “I’m not seeing it offered as a benefit,” he says. “I’m seeing it as, ‘We’re open to it, if you can do the work that way.’”

The Girl Scouts added telecommuting as part of an overhaul of its benefits package that began two years ago, says Michael Watson, the charity’s director of human resources. The organization was seeking to respond to employee requests for greater flexibility, and sought to strengthen its hand as a recruiter. Though fewer than 5 percent of the Girl Scouts’ nearly 500 national staff members work from home, Mr. Watson says, the new ability to offer the telecommuting option has helped the Scouts recruit for its national staff from a wider geographic area.

At the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, in Atlanta, at least 15 employees have been hired in the past year largely thanks to the work-at-home option, says Nell Fielden, the group’s vice president of human resources. It can be less costly to let workers telecommute than to require them to work full time at an organization’s offices, she says, because the employer doesn’t have to pay relocation expenses. Though many charities that allow telecommuting, like the Boys & Girls Clubs, provide employees who work at home with equipment and training, Ms. Fielden says that is not an added expense, because organizations would have to provide the same tools and support to their office-bound workers. Technical support for Boys & Girls Club telecommuters is handled from the Atlanta headquarters, though some organizations line up local computer-repair specialists for their employees who work from home.

Mixing Work and Home

Often the option to work at home helps employees at critical decision stages in their careers. A year ago, Lloyd Tolle, a 28-year employee of the Boys & Girls Clubs, was serving as director of the charity’s Salem, Ore., organization and yearning to have greater impact in his professional life. But taking a promotion to become a regional service director would require him to relocate and work from the charity’s regional office in Long Beach, Calif. He didn’t want to leave the Northwest, where he and his family had been settled for years. “I just turned 50,” he says. “I didn’t want to start over.”

But when the charity said he could do the job from his home, in Salem, Mr. Tolle accepted his promotion last April — and stayed put. He says that his decision satisfied both his personal needs and his desire to have greater influence professionally. “In Salem, I was reaching 12,000 kids,” he says. “As a regional service director, I am reaching a quarter-million.” Even though he estimates that he spends 70 percent of his time on the road, he says, living in the middle of his assigned Northwest territory has helped him keep overnight travel to a minimum.

Regina Puzzuto, a family-services worker at Central Pennsylvania Community Action, a charity that offers assistance to low-income families, has also found that telecommuting helps her spend more time at home. Though most of the time she works at her organization’s headquarters in Clearfield, Pa., she has been telecommuting occasionally since August, soon after the birth of her daughter.

Ms. Puzzuto, who performs administrative duties for her organization and helps arrange transportation to health-care providers for low-income people, says her work is well suited to telecommuting, and doesn’t interfere with caring for her infant. “I can do my job while I’m holding her,” she says. “I can take a break and feed her. I keep track of my time — when I take a break, I write it down.” Sometimes, she says, she works into the evenings to make up for time spent with her daughter.

Matters of Fairness

For employers, the advantages that the telecommuting option brings for recruiting and retaining employees must be weighed against issues of productivity and fairness.

To offer telecommuting to its employees, an employer must first consider not the worker but the work itself, says Jerome L. Mattern, human-resources manager for Quebecor World, a printing company in St. Cloud, Minn., who is chairman of the compensation and benefits committee of the Society for Human Resource Management. Many organizations, especially those that have a lot of contact with the public, require employee presence in their offices in order to run smoothly. But even at those charities, certain administrative or accounting jobs might be suited for work-at-home arrangements, he says.

The skills and personality of the individual worker must be taken into account in deciding whether working at home is an option, says Ed Avant, manager of employee benefits for AARP, in Washington. The nonprofit advocacy organization, which includes two charitable foundations under its umbrella, allows employees to telecommute, but Mr. Avant says that not all employees have the discipline to be productive at home. He says that employers need to know their employees’ abilities to work independently, and keep an eye on how much they do. “How do you know if someone is producing?” he asks. “From the product.”

It’s up to employees to make a case for why telecommuting will help them produce more efficiently, and not merely request it because it’s more convenient for them, says Mr. Avant. For example, he says, the AARP has a firm rule: No employees are granted permission to work from home simply because it will allow them to take care of their children. Workers must instead present an argument of why their work could be accomplished far better from home.

Organizational Skills

Before supervisors at the Boys & Girls Clubs grant permission to telecommute, Ms. Fielden says, they are given a checklist of criteria for both the job’s requirements and the individual’s work habits. For workers, the criteria include strong organizational skills, trustworthiness, and self-sufficiency. If the guidelines are not met, Ms. Fielden says, the request to telecommute is denied, and if the guidelines are met, the request is reviewed by the charity’s human-resources department before being approved.

Technology Glitches

Even the most productive and conscientious employees who work at home can find their efforts hampered by the limitations of their available technology. Elizabeth Lane, coordinator of AARP’s Work/Life Program, says that managers at her organization initially worried about telecommuters’ productivity and communication with their supervisors. “In our experience, those have just been dwarfed by the technical challenge,” she says. “It’s something we have to re-evaluate.”

To support an employee who works at home, Ms. Fielden says, an employer should provide training and find a computer-repair specialist who can make service calls to a telecommuter’s home if necessary. Telecommuters should be ready to clearly explain any computer problems when they arise and become as knowledgeable as possible about their office equipment, says Ms. Leibrook.

Isolation can become a problem for any telecommuter, but in the collaborative nonprofit culture, it’s especially important to stay connected. Mr. Tolle stresses the importance to telecommuters of visiting the office regularly so they do not become marginalized. He works two or three days a month in his charity’s regional office in California. In addition, he says, honest communication between a telecommuter and his or her supervisor is key: “The telecommuter must be very accountable. Document everything you do to establish that trust relationship.”

When not in the office, Ms. Leibrook says, it’s vital for the telecommuter to maintain a connection there. She says she relies on an administrative assistant in the Girl Scouts’ New York office to provide her with a daily mail log and keep her posted on office news.

One secret to success as a telecommuter, she says, is to create some boundaries between work and life. Keeping the home office distinct from the rest of the home — and keeping a regular schedule — can help a telecommuter increase his or her discipline and not become overwhelmed by work demands, she says. Charities can help their employees in this area. At the Girl Scouts, for example, telecommuters have to sign up with the organization’s human-resources department to work a specific schedule.

Between the need for discipline, the potential for isolation, and the occasional technological snafu, working at home requires strong commitment from an employee — and consistent support from an employer. Ms. Leibrook, however, says that the experience is worth any obstacles, as long as everyone involved strives to make it successful. “My mother likes to say that old age is not for sissies,” she says. “Well, telecommuting is not for sissies either.”

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