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The
Property Report: Firms, employees look to home offices again _ Across the
nation, interest in telecommuting rises following the attacks By MOTOKO RICH The Wall Street Journal Just stay home. That's the feeling of
some workers nervous about going into the office because of the Sept. 11
attacks and the possibility of further terrorist strikes. Across the nation, more
people are requesting to work from home, companies and consultants say,
wanting to avoid buildings that could be potential targets and to stay closer
to their families at a time of heightened anxiety. At the same time,
companies are thinking about giving more employees remote connections to
ensure they can work even if buildings become inaccessible. Before the attacks,
telecommuting was seen as a stagnating trend, as bosses decided it was too
difficult to manage a network of dispersed remote workers, and employees felt
stigmatized if they weren't seen around the office. But the terrorist attacks
have caused many workers to re-evaluate their priorities, and some companies
are listening. "If such a
significant event can happen and end life so swiftly," says Victoria
Whiting, an assistant professor of management at Westminster College in Salt
Lake City, "people are thinking that maybe they want to balance home
with work a little more." Len Erlikh is one of
those people. When the planes hit the World Trade Center, the 43-year-old Mr.
Erlikh, co-founder and chief technology officer of software maker Relativity
Technologies Inc., was on his way back from vacation in Italy with his wife
when their flight was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It took them several
hours to find out if their eldest daughter, who attends high school two blocks
from the World Trade Center, was safe, and another three days to get home
from Canada. Mr. Erlikh, a Russian
immigrant, was so shaken by the event that he is now working exclusively from
his home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, instead of Relativity's offices in
midtown Manhattan. The terrorist attacks "really changed my perspective
in life," says Mr. Erlikh. "My feeling is there is no reason to put
myself or my family in jeopardy by going back to Manhattan." Mr.
Erlikh's company, based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., plans to close the
New York office. "I don't have a choice," says Vivek Wadhwa, chief
executive of Relativity, "I have a chief technology officer who is
scared to death of commuting to the city." Such feelings aren't
limited to those who were close to Ground Zero at the time of the attacks.
Before Sept. 11, Janet Switzer, a 38-year-old marketing consultant from
Southern California, was looking for an office in Los Angeles. After the
attacks, she abandoned her search and began setting up business in the
oak-paneled library of her Thousand Oaks home, about an hour outside Los
Angeles. "I don't want to be out," says Ms. Switzer. Calls from companies
looking to enable home-working have increased 30 percent since the attacks,
says Fred Crandall, a partner at the Center for Workforce Effectiveness, a
Northbrook, Ill.-based consultant that specializes in creating virtual
environments. TManage Inc., an Austin, Texas, firm that helps companies set
up telecommuting networks, says inquiries have tripled since Sept. 11. Some companies are
looking to set up home connections as a defensive measure -- if their offices
become inaccessible, they want workers to be up and running right away.
Indeed, for many of the companies directly impacted by the World Trade Center
attacks, that was an immediate concern. Within days of the
disaster, Zurich North America, a unit of Zurich Financial Services Group
that had 625 employees in One Liberty Plaza, near the World Trade Center,
began shipping laptops and cellphones to its workers. Several hundred employees
of American Express Co., which had its headquarters in the damaged World
Financial Center and additional offices in 7 World Trade Center and on Wall
Street, are now working "virtually" while the company sets up
temporary locations in New Jersey and Connecticut. The company has invested
heavily to install extra phone lines, fax machines and printers in employees'
homes. American Express says it
is too early to say whether these workers will remain at home permanently. But
some employees who have been working from home since Sept. 11 already see the
perks of such arrangements. Julie Gerdeman, a 30-year-old vice president for
account development for the New York region of American Express's
corporate-services division, has set up a home office in her Montclair, N.J.,
home. Having lopped time off her commute, she says, "Now I spend the
time I would be in the car or in the train making early calls to
customers." Other firms outside of
New York are reviewing their policies. "The question of where we work is
on the table because there was an unprecedented attack on our
workplace," says Laurie Anderson, a business consultant based in
Chicago. Executives at San
Francisco-based Charles Schwab Corp., who were already considering increases
in telecommuting options before Sept. 11, are now looking more intensively at
their plans. Parkash Ahuja, executive vice president of global support
services for Schwab, says the crisis will likely accelerate telecommuting.
"People would like to be closer to their families in case something like
this happens again," says Mr. Ahuja. Balancing workers'
desires with employers' needs, though, is a delicate task. When a group of
about 170 administrative employees with DePaul University's marketing, alumni-relations
and student-recruitment divisions moved into two high-rise towers in downtown
Chicago last year, says David Kalsbeek, vice president for enrollment
management at DePaul, the departments immediately saw the benefits of working
together. Communication "literally just happens around the water
cooler," he says. Those companies
considering requests for virtual working don't want to send people home for
the wrong reasons. "For business reasons and for the benefit of an
employee, we are happy" to evaluate home-working requests, says Bruce
Jacobs, executive vice president for technology, infrastructure and
operations at ABN Amro North America, a Chicago-based unit of Dutch bank ABN
Amro NV. He says inquiries from employees who want to explore telecommuting
options have increased since Sept. 11. "But if the reason
is just fear of terrorism," says Mr. Jacobs, "I'm not sure that's a
good idea." Copyright 2001 Associated Press.
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