Education Freestyle

Source: New York Times

Couched first as a joke, a plan by Max Chafkin, a senior writer for Inc. magazine to have everyone work remotely for one entire issue of the magazine, goes off with few hitches.

“I thought it would involve so much change that it wouldn’t be feasible,” Mr. Chafkin said.

Then Jane Berentson, Inc.’s editor, gave the go-ahead. And in February, the staff of about 30 — editors, reporters and producers — created the April issue outside of the business magazine’s office in Downtown Manhattan. The issue goes on sale o April 6.

The production went off without a major hitch, with the staff members using nothing more than readily available technology, including Skype and instant messaging. And Ms. Berentson described Mr. Chafkin’s cover piece, “The Office Is Dead. Long Live the Office,” which is infused with first-person details, as richer and more unusual than it would have been without the experiment.

“I think about the magazine industry and how we’re going to use all of this new technology, such as the iPad, but there’s innovation in this very basic way as well,” Ms. Berentson said. “Why are we in the office in the first place?”

Away from the office, some staff members struggled to adjust, Mr. Chafkin said, as minor technical hiccups arose and parents working at home had to find ways to separate their work from their children. But in the end, most employees discovered that they could and should work out of the office more often — though they did not want to eliminate the office entirely.

In the P.J.s:
Imagine IF a significant percentage of the country’s workforce were to telecommute? Would you be meeting the small business lender at his or her home over coffee and a muffin? How exactly would you be able to trust a small business finance company if their store front was a two-bedroom bungalow in West Los Angeles and the owner answered the door in shorts and a flip flops?

For some, there is an inherent need to physically visit a bank, a store, or a retailer. The need to interact, whether you’re selling promotional golf shirts, work as a Bronx construction accident lawyer, or market the HCG Drops diet plan. Nothing can replace human contact when it comes to trust and product confidence. That also goes for workers.

Mr. Chafkin, 27, who has been at the magazine since 2005, found himself working more hours than usual in February and pining for the company of his colleagues.

“I was way more productive, but way less happy,” he said. “I think one of the reasons people get into magazines is that it’s collaborative.”

The collaboration that did happen needed to be arranged in advance, like setting a time for a conference call, rather than relying on an encounter in a hallway or chatting at a desk. Only once during the month did the entire staff gather, at Ms. Berentson’s home on the Upper West Side.

When everyone got together, she said, it was “exactly like seeing old friends.”

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My Take: The whole telecommuting industry has really turned the world upside down for me. I’ve been a stay-at-home worker since the late 1990s, and I can tell you that the joys of being alone in my p.j.s with my cat purring nearby and the hum of my laptop, are often accompanies with a good deal of isolation and sometimes frustration.

Working alone from home without the network of office friends to chat with or go to lunch with can be isolating. I think everyone from Denver civil law attorneys to the best Brooklyn slip and fall lawyer has imagined what it would be like to not have to go inside a courtroom. But even the newest criminal lawyer in Denver Co knows, you gotta have human contact in order to get some jobs done right.

I’ll admit, it’s much harder to take time out of your day at work and get on the phone to make personal calls for personal needs, like trying to compare car insurance rates or line up a house painter. Let’s face it: you can obtain a car insurance quote over the internet in about a minute these days, but you never know what’s going to happen during that minute you’re surfing the Net at work. In the privacy of your own home, you’re free to allocate your time to the tasks you have on your plate in any way you see fit, provided you meet your deadlines.

But there are a lot of things you miss out on when you don’t have a cubicle to visit on your morning break. Perhaps most critical is the need for tech support should things go wrong with your network or your hard drive all of a sudden decides to die. Working from home is a trade off: you give up the corporate gifts of having access to office supplies and in-house networking opportunities in exchange for being able to take a lunch break and mow the front lawn before that 3:30 conference call.

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