The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office uses telework as a cost-effective way to manage human capital, boost productivity, and improve the quality of employee lives.
Today, as federal agencies wrestle with issues of employee recruitment, retention, and cost containment, telework has emerged as a vital tool that many of them, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), use to address management challenges.
USPTO runs seventeen telework programs, the two largest of which are the trademark work-at-home program and the patent hoteling program. The telework program in the trademark office started as a Council for Excellence in Government (CEG) cohort project ten years ago, and today 86 percent of those eligible to telework in the trademark operation-more than 230 trademark attorneys-work four days a week from home. In the patent operation, more than 1,000 patent examiners also telework four days a week. Employees in both organizations reserve space-referred to as "hoteling"-at the Alexandria,VA, campus on the day they come into the office. Over the next several years USPTO expects to hire 1,200 new patent examiners each year, and by 2012 it expects to have some 3,000 examiners teleworking.
Federal agencies that embrace telework accrue many benefits, from better morale and employee productivity to lower absenteeism and reduced need for office space.Telework is a versatile approach to managing federal human capital costs and improving employee quality of life. In USPTO's case, it has also increased employee retention and helped meet agency quality, e-government, production, and efficiency targets for several years.The telework initiatives also help USPTO fulfill continuity-of-operations (COOP) planning requirements for federal agencies.
Lessons Learned
Top Leadership Champion
To successfully implement telework in an agency, top leadership has to be a strong champion of its value to the organization. USPTO is very fortunate that the director, Jon Dudas, is an enthusiastic supporter of telework. He often speaks about how telework and hoteling have become a critical part of USPTO's business model.
Work Measurement
Telework is easiest to implement in situations where employee work is easily measured and quantified. In USPTO, the work of trademark attorneys and patent examiners is production-driven, easily measured, and done in regular work cycles. Trademark examining attorneys systematically review trademark applications in a structured sequence of steps. Patent examiners work much the same way in their approach to reviewing patent applications. For these reasons, where the trademark attorneys and patent examiners live or the precise hours they work really don't matter. As Danette Campbell, USPTO's telework coordinator, puts it, "We think our employees can work any time and from anywhere."
Strong Business Case
For telework programs to succeed, an agency needs to articulate a strong business case for teleworking to senior executives and middle managers, most of whom are baby boomers who started their careers before the advent of computers and the Internet. For that reason, they are sometimes skeptical of the real value that telework can offer an agency and concerned about employee productivity dropping if employees aren't physically in an office near their supervisors. Building a powerful business case can overcome resistance to telework:
* Outline the cost savings or avoidances that an organization can realize. Take time to estimate the likely money that will be saved annually by letting "x" number of employees telework instead of working in physical offices at your agency's location. The savings add up quickly: for most agencies, rental costs for real estate are a major, if not the major, administrative budget item. Projecting dramatic cost reductions in this area is likely to generate interest among your agency's top leaders.
* Calculate the "soft" benefits an agency can reap. Typically, sick leave usage goes down when people telework from home. Take this into account in crafting your business case. Employees' productivity also goes up-and their stress down-when able to telework. For one thing, they aren't spending many hours a week on 1-95 or the Capital Beltway commuting to and from work-which means they're able to be working more of the business day.
* Include data on employee recruitment and retention. The new generations of workers entering federal government are more technology savvy than previous generations. They're accustomed to working in casual surroundings with laptops and wireless networks. In many cases, they're looking for flexible work arrangements that will give them both autonomy and flexibility in their work schedules.
Attracting this demographic group to government and retaining it require federal agencies to create attractive employment options and family-friendly work policies. Telework has become an important recruiting tool for USPTO and for a growing number of other federal agencies. It offers potential employees a reduction in commutes and other workplace stresses that, if not addressed, can hinder their effectiveness-or prompt them to leave their federal jobs for seemingly more attractive private-sector opportunities.
A recent study by CDW Government, an information-technology (IT) consulting firm, found that federal workers who are given the choice to telecommute are generally happier in their jobs (91 percent) than those who don't have the option to do so (80 percent).The survey also revealed that 84 percent of federal employees would telecommute if their agency gave them the option to do so.
* Launch telework pilot programs to educate line managers in their efficacy as an employee work option. Properly managed, a three- to six-month telework pilot program can, in most cases, convince skeptical managers of the benefits of telework and assuage manager concerns that people won't work efficiently or productively out of their supervisor's sight. USPTO has run many pilots over the years, and managers typically see employee productivity and satisfaction go up when telework is instituted.
Telework Policies, Procedures, and Guidelines
The roles and responsibilities of all parties involved in telework arrangements need to be clearly defined. The best way to do so is having managers and employees develop and adhere to telework agreements. Such agreements establish common work expectations for managers and employees. They should discuss the following in crafting the agreement:
* What is the scope of work duties to be done at home?
* How will the manager know the employee is at work?
* How will the manager know work is being completed?
* What technologies will be used to maintain contact?
* What is the weekly or monthly telework schedule?
* What is the daily telework schedule?
* If necessary, how can management or the employee terminate a telework agreement?
The agreement should also include the following:
* Location of the telework office (home, telework center, or other location)
* Equipment inventory-what the employee is supplying, what the agency is providing, and, if applicable, what the telework center is providing
* The specific job tasks to be performed while teleworking
* The telework schedule
* Telework contact information (phone number to use on the telework day)
* Safety checklist-certifying the home office meets certain safety standards
* Expectations for emergency telework, specifying, for example, whether the employee is expected to telework in the case of a COOP event, pandemic health crisis, or shutdown of agency operations.
Managers and teleworking employees should periodically evaluate their telework arrangements, make changes if necessary, and renew them. Managers and those directly reporting to them should do so annually. A good example of a sample telework agreement resides on the Office of Personnel Management's Web site (www. opm. gov).
Performance Management
Work specifications and metrics by which people's job performance will be evaluated are key to any telework program, especially to establish manager trust in this alternative to traditional, workplace-based work approaches. Managers and employees should agree ahead of time on work standards, performance goals, how to document and monitor work completion, and how work performance will be evaluated periodically. Managers and employees also need to agree on the frequency of direct contact (face to face and by phone).
As noted earlier, patent and trademark work is production-driven. Attorneys review trademark applications using a structured protocol. In the patent area, work is similarly structured. In both cases, people's work is easily measured. Telework succeeds because management can easily monitor and evaluate job performance, even remotely. Nonproduction work situations make use of telework more difficult. Like many federal agencies, USPTO is trying to figure out how best to set performance metrics and measure them in nonproduction work settings.
Consistency
Bringing consistency to telework programs is important. USPTO has a full-time telework coordinator, Danette Campbell, who works on telework issues organization-wide (see box). She works closely with all lines of business and has developed a telework model that managers throughout the organization can use if they want to embark on a telework pilot. Campbell helps managers set up telework programs and evaluate their effectiveness over time.
The civil rights and human resources offices recently completed telework pilots. Other telework pilot programs are underway in the general counsel's office, chief financial officer's office, and office of external affairs. Campbell also helps managers draft appropriate telework agreements with employees and oversees telework training that enables both managers and employees to develop the technological and communications skills necessary to collaborate effectively in a telework environment.
IT Support
Robust IT systems need to be in place to support telework programs. Strong IT support is critical in making these programs work, and agencies often struggle in this area.
One issue is security. USPTO has to move massive patent application and trademark agreement documents back and forth online continuously, which means it must be able to do so in a very secure, error-free environment. It has spent a good deal of time devising ways to encrypt all the data on which people work in an online environment. It has also gone to great lengths (given recent news stories about breaches of records security in government agencies) to be certain no critical data are stored permanently on USPTO-issued employee laptops, so information is stored on a USPTO server, not on the laptop itself.
Another IT issue is bandwidth. Because of the size of the documents with which both the patent examiners and trademark attorneys work, USPTO could never operate in a dial-up environment, for example. It needs large bandwidths to move information, and the agency has spent much time building the IT infrastructure needed to support the operations.
Another technological consideration with telework is choosing appropriate collaboration tools to support people's online work, including e-mail, voice mail, file sharing, screen sharing, instant messaging, video Web conferencing, data encryption, and other capabilities. Having substantive collaboration tools available to teleworkers is critical to ensuring effective communication, coordination, collaboration, and work completion online. These tools can be expensive, but a small expense compared with real estate, justifying the business case for allowing people to telework.
USPTO has learned much about effective use of collaboration tools and continues to be on the cutting edge as it perfects their use. Good collaboration tools-for example, those that allow people's faces to pop up on screens during meetings as they speak and those that allow access to needed files during important conversations-greatly boost productivity. Training people to maximize the use of collaboration tools is one of the key success factors as USPTO rolls out the patent examiner telework program.
Training
Good training is key to effective implementation of telework programs. USPTO requires every teleworker to get non-IT and technology training ahead of time. Within USPTO, both trademarks and patents have their own telework training programs. In the case of patents, the patent examiners go to a two-week, intermittent training program. This group trains managers of teleworkers as well.
One byproduct of telework training for management is that it often turns telework skeptics into advocates. Familiarity with telework practices and technology-and seeing telework practices in action-can turn even reluctant managers into telework supporters. The training heightens manager awareness of the need to successfully communicate, not only in a virtual environment, but in the brick-and-mortar environment as well.
Choosing the Right Employees
A teleworker needs to be able to work independently and thoroughly understand job tasks, agency policies, and procedures. As in any work situation, communication is key. Telework may not be appropriate for new employees who need to learn office procedures or to physically perform their work with office colleagues, and it is also not appropriate for employees who need on-the-job training.
Position eligibility for telework should be based on business unit needs, and it should enable the same production, quality, timeliness, and customer service delivery as a position at the primary office location. elework is an appropriate work option for those who perform jobs that involve thinking and writing, who prepare reports, conduct data analyses, review cases and reports, perform telephone intensive duties, or have occasion to work from the field for other reasons as part of conducting their job. Teleworkers should be self-motivated, results oriented, and independent.
The Future
The potential for more federal employees to telework will grow in the future, as a new, technologically oriented generation of workers begins to work in government, as federal agencies continue to explore ways to cut operating costs, and as advances in technology create even greater work transparency for those who work from alternative work locations.
Telework will play an increasingly important role in government in the years ahead. It will grow in importance as a recruiting tool, helping agencies attract and retain a new generation of workers to government service. It will also help agencies cut critical operating costs, while improving worker productivity and contributing to a flexible, family-friendly workplace that serves the needs of both federal employees and the missions of their agencies.
Conversation with Danette Campbell, USPTO Telework Coordinator
Implementing telework initiatives in a federal government environment requires strong leadership support and a visible organizational commitment to helping line managers understand and embrace its benefits. USPTO has a full-time telework coordinator, Danette Campbell, who reports directly to the chief administrative officer's office and is responsible for helping implement telework pilots and train line managers and teleworking employees. Recently, Danette spoke of the nature of her job responsibilities at USPTO.
Author: Your role at USPTO is unique. How do you support the agency's telework initiatives?
Campbell: USPTO places a lot of importance on telework as part of its model of doing patent and trademark business. That's why my position, as our agency's telework coordinator, resides in the executive office. My role is to work with all of our business units-to spread the word, if you will-about the value of telework and the benefits our various lines of business can realize by implementing it in their organizations. Tor that reason, I spend a lot of my time educating line managers and employees about how to set up telework pilots and emphasizing the importance of training and technology as critical components in making telework initiatives work successfully.
Author: Why do some managers in federal agencies resist telework as an option for employees?
Campbell: A lot of it is based on a lack of personal manager experience with telework. Some managers are concerned that people won i be productive if they're allowed to work from alternative work locations. Others worry that they won't be able to effectively supervise people who work remotely. That's why, as part of implementing telework initiatives, it's important for managers and employees to craft telework agreements that outline the nature of people's job responsibilities and how the employee's work performance will be measured and evaluated. The work our patent examiners and trademark attorneys do is very specific and routinized, which means it is relatively easy to evaluate and measure. As an agency, we're still working to create performance metrics that can be used to support telework in nonproduction environments.
Author: USPTO is committed to using telework as a human capital planning tool. Why?
Campbell: Two years ago our agency's leadership said, "We're going to hire 1,200 patent examiners a year for the next five years." That created a whole new set of challenges for us, including how to deal with serious space constraints. So, our leadership decided to make a huge paradigm shift. We decided that we would hire additional people over multiple years, provide them with ample training, and then send them home to work. And today that has become a central element in how we recruit and manage our staff of patent examiners. We want to train and send as many people home to work as possible. Not only has hoteling allowed us to avoid additional real-estate costs but it has led to improved employee morale. People like the flexibility that telework affords. And, to attract high-quality patent examiners and trademark attorneys today, we need to be able to offer benefits like telework, because it makes us competitive with the private sector.
Author: Before USPTO employees can telework, they must go through intensive training. Why?
Campbell: The training is used to acquaint employees with the various kinds of technology that they need to use when working from alternative work locations. So, it focuses on how to use the USPTO-issued laptops we give people and various online collaboration tools. Training also focuses on basic technology troubleshooting and on helping people learn how to put equipment together when they get home. Managers also get training on how to manage people remotely, which is very important in helping them develop confidence that telework can really work for them in their department or workgroup.
Author: Who is eligible to telework at USPTO?
Campbell: We continue to revisit positions to determine potential eligibility for telework. Tor an individual employee to qualify for telework, the supervisor first has to agree to it, a telework agreement and safety checklist must be signed, and the individual must participate in training. The individual has to have a current job performance rating of at least "fully satisfactory" to be considered for participation in telework.
[Author Affiliation]
Vickers Meadows is the former chief administrative officer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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