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Susan Garmes' commute takes about half an hour. Awake at 7 a.m. Put on the coffee. Rouse a comatose teen from bed. Log on to the home computer by 7:30 a.m.
A single mom, Ms. Garmes started working from home in 2000, when the needs of her seven-year-old son started trumping those of her job at Bell Canada. Since then, she's managed to persuade the higher-ups at the telecommunications company to let more of its workers adopt the same morning routine.
In the process she's become a sought-after telework consultant worldwide, regularly hop-scotching the globe to speak at various conferences about the slow but steady corporate acceptance of working outside the cubicle.
But that tight-knit teleworking community has been stirring for the past month with the news that AT&T - perhaps the single greatest promoter of telework in the 1980s and early 1990s - is downsizing its telework program, if not axing it altogether.
"We were all a little shocked," says Ms. Garmes, who was attending a conference in Japan when she heard the news. "They've always been such a leader."
The online protests were instantaneous. Disgruntled AT&T home-workers flooded online message boards while bloggers speculated that the announcement could mark the unofficial end of the life millions of workers like Ms. Garmes have come to lead.
AT&T denied that the cutback is as severe as the 10,000 to 15,000 workers some critics claim, but refused to provide a solid number.
Company spokesman Walt Sharp called the outcry "an overreaction."
But considering some recent trends in telework, the naysayers may not be far off. Late last year, Hewlett-Packard made a similar slash to its telecommuting program, making AT&T's recent move the second high-profile cutback to a trailblazing telework program in a year.
Statistics Canada painted an even bleaker picture in July, when it reported that the number of Canadian teleworkers dipped by 100,000 to 1.3 million between 2000 and 2005.
Are we witnessing the death of telework?
Two decades ago, august publications such as BusinessWeek were heralding "the age of the telecommuter." Ten years later, during the dot-com boom, tech gurus said we'd all be kicking our heels at home offices by now. Working from home was supposed to save companies billions in real estate, increase productivity and make us all shiny, happy workers.
Bob Fortier, president of the Canadian Telework Association, was one of those gurus. He has since tempered his rosy predictions for the future of at-home work, likening our transition out of corporate offices to the 100-year migration workers made from farms to cities during the industrial revolution.
"It may take us just as long to go in the other direction, from our offices back to our homes," he says.
Most telework proponents blame short-sighted managers for hanging up on telework. Many managers don't want to "relinquish a small piece of the control they have over their employees' production environment," says Matthew Murphy, a telecommunications worker who recently quit a job that refused to adopt a telework policy.
Security is another big worry. Last year, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs cracked down on its teleworkers after a thief stole 26.5 million veterans' records from an analyst's home.
Such concerns are easily addressed, Ms. Garmes says. At Bell, most BlackBerrys and laptops are password-protected.
And managers who prefer to see workers in office chairs need to realize that "just because you can see them doesn't mean they're not shopping on eBay," says Ms. Garmes, who's seen the average Bell worker boost production by 20 to 30 per cent when they abandon life in the cube.
"Yet there's still this hesitation to let workers out of sight at many companies."
But some research raises questions about whether toiling from home increases output at all.
In a study of 200 teleworkers during the late 1990s, University of Western Ontario professor Derrick Neufeld found a "statistically insignificant" increase in productivity.
"The gains and costs of telework tend to be stated in exaggerated terms," says Dr. Neufeld, whose survey did find that working away from the head office made for much happier employees.
Workers may have to wait until the baby boomers start retiring en masse before the next telework revolution.
"Just try telling the gaming and instant-messaging generations that you can't work remotely," Mr. Fortier says. "Companies that don't get with the program then are going to lose out."
That's because their workers may head to Japan. The new president of Japan is encouraging telework as a way of getting more women into the country's strapped work force.
But at least some North American companies are realizing that teleworking programs look great for their corporate image. Bell workers prevented 11,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere last year by staying off highways.
In the past two years, the company has encouraged workers to stay home by opening nine suburban offices where home-workers can drop in to use meeting spaces and unassigned desks.
"If you believed all the rumours, telework has died several times in the last 15 to 20 years," Mr. Fortier says.
"Then as now, rumours of its death are greatly exaggerated."
