An article authored by Kurt Cagle, online editor for O’Reilly Media, does a great job exploring telework which he defines as
…employees and contract workers performing their work out of the office – from home, from distributed work centers, from coffee-shops, indeed, from wherever those workers may happen to be at the time.
Probably the job most commonly performed off site for medical practices is transcription, with billing a close second. More recently I’ve heard of triage nurses and registrars teleworking and if you think about it, any job that can currently be filled by outsourcing (appointment reminders, appointment scheduling, switchboard, etc.) could be performed by your own employees offsite.
If you’re like me, you may have considered teleworkers for your practice, but worried about managing off site employees and keeping them bonded to the team. Cagle discusses the ever-growing list of technologies available to stay connected, but does not underestimate other problems historically associated with telework.
Telework requires a certain degree of self-starting and responsibility. Ironically, a number of studies, including one performed by Sun in 2007 showed that one of the older stereotypes of teleworkers as people who would tend to do a little work then skip to some other activity, watch TV or surf the web actually proved to be something of a myth – for the most part most teleworkers actually tend to put in longer days working than they would in the office …
Other benefits of teleworking for employees:
- Savings on gas, parking and wardrobe
- Ability to self-schedule
- Gain personal time eliminating commute
- Customized workspace for each person: temperature, light, sound
- Reduction of the carbon footprint
Other benefits of teleworking for employers:
- Saves on expensive medical office square footage
- Fewer distractions could increase productivity
- Allows practice to grow without physical expansion
- Expands employee pool – employees can live anywhere
- Reduction of the carbon footprint
