Steve Cichon left a radio job to start his own company and work from home. He’s at his computer by 5:15 a.m
At 7:30 on a sunny weekday morning, as commuters begin to fill the Thruway on their way to the office, Steve Cichon pours himself a cup of coffee and takes a seat at his dining room table. The longtime Buffalo media man recently walked away from the grind of the office and joined a growing number of people opting to work from home.
Indeed, a report by Global Workplace Analytics found that more than 3.1 million Americans work from home.
Cichon is taking it a step further He left his post as news director of radio station WBEN-930 to start his own company, Buffalo Stories LLC. He said he now faces the challenges and opportunities that confront every former office dweller.
“For me, I feel like I’m still new to this and still getting settled in (to working from home). But right now, the challenge is getting into a routine and a flow,” he said.
Don’t be fooled by the image of him sipping coffee and playing with his dog Willow — who he jokes is his office manager and has her own LinkedIn page. Cichon is up and at his computer most mornngs by 5:15 and said he often works into the night.
One of the knocks against working from home is the potential for a drop in productivity. But he and others say it’s not true. The freedom and flexibility that come from working outside a traditional office are driving forces that lead to greater productivity, they say.
“At 5 o’clock, you shut down your computer, lock your office and go home for the day,” he said. “For me, I have that flexibility working at home, but that also means there are nights that it is 10 o’clock and I’m still working.”
For Cichon, being a business owner provides plenty of motivation — after all, he needs to generate business if he wants to continue eating and paying his mortgage. But what about employees whose boss works in a brick-and-mortar office while they telecommute from home?
John Cimperman is a principal at Cenergy, an East Aurora marketing business in which five of his 32 employees work remotely. So how difficult is it to motivate an employee living 1,500 miles away in Denver?
“With our employees, motivation is never an issue, but connectivity is,” he said. “We are in the business of generating ideas, and ideas are generated in brainstorming sessions around a white board, around the water cooler, at a happy hour. So for remote employees, we need to work harder to make sure they remain connected.”
Remote employees of Cenergy have home-based offices, he said, and in his field it makes sense, given that most are out on the road and meeting with clients every day. The company currently has remote employees in Boston, Atlanta, Denver and Chicago, he said.
“There are two reasons why we have folks work remotely,” he said. “Most importantly, we put account managers in the places where our clients are located. The other reason is, in the case of our event manager, he is probably on the road 200 days a year, so where he lives isn’t as relevant.”
Recruitment has a major impact on the decision to have remote employees.
“If we can’t find someone in this market that has the experience and talent that we need, then we will go find those people with national experience, wherever they may live,” Cimperman said. “And the fact is, there is more of the specific type of talent we need in those larger markets.”
Once seen as a non-traditional perk for employees, working from home has evolved into a strategy that many employers utilize to control office-related costs and other expenses.
But even with happy employees and a stronger bottom line, are there potential legal pitfalls to having employees working from home?
Yes, according to Michael Schiavone, an employment attorney and partner in Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria. He said the risks must be carefully weighed before an employer decides to let someone work remotely.
“The first concern that comes to mind (for the employer) is, how do you deal with the nuances of employment law in an ever-changing climate where technology may be outpacing the laws dealing with this issue,” he said.
He advises employers to have a strong policy set in advance.
“It is obviously easy today for many employees to work from home,” Schiavone said. “But employers need to be concerned about the criteria they set for eligibility.”
He has seen numerous cases in which an employee request is granted without the employer stopping to consider the pitfalls involved in setting a precedent.
“Do you wind up having different standards based on who it is that does what for the company? And once you permit people to work from home, how do you regulate what is going on in comparison to what you could do if the employee were physically present in the office?” he said.
Schiavone said another example where an employer could run afoul of the law is in dealing with the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs employee hours and wages.
“Assuming that a workweek is 40 hours, how do you know that an employee isn’t working more than 40 hours from home?” he said. “What if the employee then makes a claim down the road that he has been working more than 40 hours and hasn’t been properly compensated?”
He said he doesn’t discourage clients from offering telecommuting as an employee option, but he does suggest that businesses of all sizes do their homework.
Example: If an employee slips and falls in the office and is injured, it is a clear-cut workers’ compensation claim. But what happens when an employee working from home slips on the kitchen floor on the way from the bathroom to his home office during so-called work hours?
“Well, (employers) need to talk with their insurance people who provide their workers’ comp policy to see where people are covered,” the attorney said. “Whether or not a workers’ comp policy would extend to the worker’s home is probably an endorsement that would need to be applied for by the individual employer.”
According to Schiavone, larger companies are typically well-versed in such rules and nuances, but there’s concern when it comes to smaller organizations in which the decision to allow telecommuting is more informal. “Small companies that may view this as a way to save on office space or other related expenses and elect to have people start working from home, (they) need to start thinking about the ramifications of those decisions,” he said. “And they need to consider whether they have the proper policies in place to protect the company.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/buffalo-law-journal/2013/08/the-number-of-americans-working-from.html?page=4
