NETWORK WORLD TONI KISTNER'S TELEWORK BEAT 10/12/04 Today's focus: City of Austin bounces back
Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED], In this issue: * After layoffs and restructuring, telework is growing again * Links related to Telework Beat * Featured reader resource _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Veritas Meta Group Whitepaper Database Infrastructure Performance Challenges: Approaches to Better Manage Application Database and Storage Subsystem Performance Corporate relational databases now manage the majority of business-critical data within the enterprise. IT organizations face continuing challenges in managing increasingly complex, data-driven application environments. Read this white paper to discover several factors which will converge to challenge the IT organization's ability to manage its database software infrastructure. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84689 _______________________________________________________________ WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NEW DATA CENTER? Sign up for Network World's Data Center Newsletter in which Johna Till Johnson and the team at Nemertes Research will provide an ongoing assessment of current data center business drivers and future trends; concrete advice and guidance for IT executives seeking to consolidate data centers, improve disaster recovery, and deploy virtualization techniques. Click here to subscribe: http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84820 _______________________________________________________________ Today's focus: City of Austin bounces back By Toni Kistner The City of Austin's telework program is a model to emulate, in good times and bad. Three years ago, when most government offices dismissed telework as too costly, Austin launched an aggressive pilot program with only an $85,000 grant from the Texas State Energy Conservation Office. Rather than burn through the money buying laptop PCs, the city instead funded a mandatory telework training program and bought a corporate license of GoToMyPC, the PC remote control service that lets employees access office workstations from their home computers. (GoToMyPC is now part of Citrix Systems.) Employees used their personal computers and broadband connections; the city pays for help desk support. Hundreds of employees took the training and began working from home three or four days per week. But then fortune frowned. A fiscal crisis resulted in back-to-back years of layoffs, restructuring and a dramatic scaling back of the city's telework program. More than 50 teleworkers were called back to the office, many others cut back, some upper level managers were prohibited from teleworking altogether. "The downturn changed the face of telework," says Pharr Andrews, the city's telework program manager. "We lost a lot of people. The air quality program, which had four people, dropped down to one, so of course that person had to come back to the office. People came back in because they needed to handle their own administrative work, to man the phones. Every month, the telework training classes got smaller and smaller. Telework came to a crawl." More than 200 of the city's 11,000 employees were laid off in 2002 and 2003. But the telework pilot hung on, and this year even began growing again. Initially used to decrease vehicular emissions, telework also became a tool to help Austin city agencies, particularly the health and IT departments, deal with employees' increased workloads. "After the restructuring lots of people were working late every night and coming in on the weekends. It didn't matter that people got laid off. Deadlines still needed to be met," Andrews says. Some agencies even began requiring workers to telework rather than stay late, even some hourly workers eligible for overtime pay and unionized workers who typically can't. But Andrews makes it sound easy. "We just have them record the hours they work at home on their time sheets same as they would if they were working in the office. People were grumbling when they had to stay late. But this makes them feel better," she says. The fact that no further layoffs are planned and that the city is hiring again, makes employees feel better, too. The telework program is up to 684 participants, 84 more than its target goal. "We're committed to this program through 2012 and report our results every quarter, the number of new teleworkers and emissions saved," Andrews says. Andrews' advice to municipal governments looking to employ telework? "Be flexible, come up with innovative ways to use it. Telework doesn't have to be five days a week. Use it for overtime, and to get people off the roads during peak hours." _______________________________________________________________ To contact: Toni Kistner Toni Kistner is managing editor of Net.Worker. Contact her at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Veritas Meta Group Whitepaper Database Infrastructure Performance Challenges: Approaches to Better Manage Application Database and Storage Subsystem Performance Corporate relational databases now manage the majority of business-critical data within the enterprise. IT organizations face continuing challenges in managing increasingly complex, data-driven application environments. Read this white paper to discover several factors which will converge to challenge the IT organization's ability to manage its database software infrastructure. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84709 _______________________________________________________________ ARCHIVE LINKS Archive of the Telework Beat (formerly Net.Worker) newsletter: http://www.nwfusion.com/net.worker/columnists/ Breaking telework and SMB news: http://www.nwfusion.com/net.worker/ _______________________________________________________________ FEATURED READER RESOURCE THE NEW DATA CENTER Today's top companies are accelerating toward Web-based computing. That means building the new data center -- where grids, virtualization, autonomic computing and other big changes shatter the traditional boundaries on applications and information, and bring the extended enterprise to life. Learn about The New Data Center on NW Fusion's Research Center at: <http://www.nwfusion.com/topics/datacenter.html> _______________________________________________________________ May We Send You a Free Print Subscription? You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered at your fingertips each day. Now, extend your knowledge by receiving 51 FREE issues to our print publication. Apply today at http://www.subscribenw.com/nl2 International subscribers click here: http://nww1.com/go/circ_promo.html _______________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World e-mail newsletters, go to: <http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/Changes.aspx> To unsubscribe from promotional e-mail go to: <http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/Preferences.aspx> To change your e-mail address, go to: <http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/ChangeMail.aspx> Subscription questions? Contact Customer Service by replying to this message. This message was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please use this address when modifying your subscription. _______________________________________________________________ Have editorial comments? Write Jeff Caruso, Newsletter Editor, at: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Inquiries to: NL Customer Service, Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 For advertising information, write Kevin Normandeau, V.P. of Online Development, at: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Copyright Network World, Inc., 2004 ------------------------ This message was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
