Telecommuting

Some important information was not mentioned in your recent story on telecommuting (“Clean Air Plans Call on Telecommuting” July 2).

I was quoted in the story as saying that some managers resist telecommuting because they fear they will lose control over the performance of their employees. The story didn’t mention that this resistance can be overcome fairly easily by training managers to manage what employees produce, rather than the effort they seem to put into their work.

The story said that few employers are aware of telecommuting, but this isn’t true in Orange County. As a part of our training program for company transportation coordinators, the Orange County Transit District’s Commuter Network has been offering a seminar on telecommuting to Orange County employers for the last year or so, and approximately 100 company representatives took this course. We have recently revised our training so that every company coordinator we train will learn the basics of telecommuting.

Finally, the story stated that no government agencies in Orange County are planning to implement telecommuting, and that few employers have made telecommuting a part of their plans to satisfy the Southern California Air Quality Management District’s Regulation XV to reduce the number of people who drive alone to work. A pilot telecommuting program is part of OCTD’s Regulation XV plan, and it is scheduled to begin in August.

We will conduct a careful evaluation of our pilot program so that other employers considering options for satisfying Regulation XV will have solid data on the effects that telecommuting has on employees and on the organization, and a guide for implementing a program of their own.

CHRISTOPHER McKEEVER

Research Analyst,

Orange County Transit District