In September 2000, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) launched a pilot telework program to investigate ways to give the people who work there “the flexibility to work from anywhere.” The pilot was supposed to last nine to twelve months.
It didn’t take that long. Six months later, executives had seen enough. They knew they were onto a good thing, so they cut short the pilot and moved to full implementation. The program rolled out in August 2001.
Even so, seven years later, a senior executive there told me: “We’re still learning how to make all this work well.” He’s not alone.
Many companies have similar programs. Best Buy’s Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) probably gets most of the coverage. Check out “Anytime, Anywhere” in a recent Human Resource Executive Online.
Bank of America’s My Work program has been around since 2004. Portfolio just published an article, “No Longer Desk-Bound,” on the program which includes satellite offices as well as teleworking. Currently, 19,000 bank employees work are in My Work and bank officials expect that to double within two years.
That’s a lot of people, but it’s still less than a tenth of all bank employees. These programs are only in a small percentage of organizations. And they’ve been around for less than a decade.
All of those factors contribute to why “we’re still learning to make this work.” We have to work out issues of supervision and evaluation and discipline. We have to push the envelope of who and what sort of work can be productive this way.
But one question seems conspicuously missing. What does this mean for talent management?
We don’t yet have clear ideas about how careers will play out under a “work anywhere” system. We don’t know how personal development plans should be developed.
If your organization is experimenting with giving more people the flexibility to work from anywhere, you need to explore more than the daily management issues. It’s time to start thinking about how effective talent management will happen and how satisfying and successful careers will develop in this brave new world.
