SiteSell Inc. president Ken Evoy happily admits he doesn't have a clue what his employees do during the regular workday.
He's never seen most of his customer support staff in the flesh, and considers his Australia-based programmer a good friend, despite having never met him. Indeed, Dr. Evoy only knows the majority of his 36 employees as a voice on the phone, or a name on an e-mail.
"I don't know whether my employee is working at four in the morning, or whether he's asleep at four in the morning," the intense, ever-smiling Dr. Evoy said. "All I measure is one thing: output."
Since its inception in 1998, SiteSell has been a teleworking -- or telecommuting -- company in the truest form of the term. The company, which sells Internet business development software, has no head office. Dr. Evoy directs business behind three gigantic plasma screens at his home in Hudson, about 45 minutes outside of Montreal.
As such, he has none of the workaday hassles associated with your average nine-to-fiver. He doesn't wear a tie, he doesn't have to go outside in the minus-30-degree weather, and the only commuting he does is in his slippers -- usually from the office to the kitchen.
SiteSell employees, meanwhile, are scattered around the globe. There are software people in Australia, England and France. In Kentucky, an employee works for the company's telemarketing and e-mail sales -- a department headed up by a fellow in the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla.
His employees "would get chewed up in a big company," according to Dr. Evoy. "They're not game players, they're not politicians, they're not strokers. They're the kind of people who get taken advantage of in a big company. They're self-motivated, they work hard, they put out good quality work, [but] they don't self-promote very well. This doesn't count when it comes to teleworking. All that counts is quality and quantity of the work you put out. It speaks for itself, there can be no game playing."
As a purely telework-based company, SiteSell is somewhat of an anomaly in Canada, according to InnoVisions Canada, a telework consulting organization.
"Most people have not clued in yet," said InnoVisions president Bob Fortier, noting that the lion's share of Canada's 1.8 million teleworkers work for larger, office-based companies.
Several companies are experimenting with telework, including Compaq Canada, Bank of Montreal, Nortel Networks Corp., Ontario Hydro and Imperial Oil Ltd., among others. Still, though, teleworking is in its infancy in this country.
One of the main barriers to implementing telework, according to Mr. Fortier, is the misconception that working from home is synonymous with slacking off. Another problem is what Dr. Fortier calls "Jurassic" managerial models -- old world managers "who like the idea of having their employees around them."
For someone like Dr. Evoy, though, the classic office setting is itself dysfunctional and rife with the kind of people who want to do as little as possible for their paycheck. "I've worked in a big company, and hated it," Dr. Evoy said. "I can't stand going into an office; I can't stand the games, the politicking."
When SureFire Commerce, a once high-flying dot-com, bought SiteSell in 2000, Dr. Evoy says he found it difficult having to deal with the gridlock of upper management that suddenly had a say over his company. Though he was (and remains) friendly with SureFire executives, he found the experience difficult.
"I used to think Dilbert was funny as a hypothetical construct," he said, referring to the popular comic strip that skewers the world of cubicles and water coolers. "After working in a company, you understand Dilbert on a very profound level."
