Telecommuting offers well-known benefits to the worker and to the environment, and yet millions of employees who want to work from home aren't allowed to or aren't able to. One reason is that IT infrastructures often make it too difficult, writes Mark Gibbs in a post at CIO magazine. Gibbs outlines six ways IT departments make it easier.

Improving the email system can go a long way toward making telecommuting a successful endeavor. If there is a wide range of email clients being used from a wide range of devices, there can be compatibility issues with attachments and other problems. What's more, there have to be processes in place to ensure that sensitive data is properly handled by remote users. "If IT doesn't know what email clients staff members use and that they are correctly configured it is pretty much guaranteed that something will go wrong," Gibbs writes.

"Instrumenting" the telework infrastructure can help by enabling greater oversight and making it possible to record usage patterns, misuse, error conditions and error rates. If you don't have control over the services and facilities telecommuters use, you can't identify problems and you end up wasting money by over-provisioning or wasting employees' time by making them sit and wait for slow services.

Testing the telecommuting infrastructure can also improve the odds of telework success. However, testing must be ongoing to detect problems that don't show up on error reports, such as usability difficulties, Gibbs writes.

Remote library access and "serious access control" are important for employees to use vital company materials, such as databases, documents or CAD drawings. Projects requiring teamwork can potentially benefit from videoconferencing and other video collaboration tools. Finally, employees have to be trained in the skills needed to use telecommuting tools, and some require more training than others. 

For more:
- see Mark Gibbs's post at Computerworld

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