I was a supervisor and manager for more than 15 years at other agencies. I always assessed the performance of my staffs based upon the quality and timeliness of their work. Their work was either good, timely, and appropriate or it wasn't. I can't imagine making staff assessments by "looking at them." What would that really tell me? I made assessments by "looking at their work" and getting feedback from our customers. I once worked in an office where staff were so dispersed at one site, that I often didn't see some of the employees for days. Yet, I was still able to assess their performances based upon the bottom line: appropriateness, completion, accuracy, and timeliness. I once allowed an employee to telework before our agency had a telework policy. The employee was responsible for a major office move and renovation. She was house-bound for several days due to a severe ice storm and her son being home from school. She asked for leave, but promised to keep the project on track from home. She had planned ahead and taken a copy of the blueprints and her contact numbers home with her. I said any work you do at home is on the clock. She didn't miss a beat. The project was completed perfectly and on time. Shame on me! I allowed an employee to do something good for her personal safety, her family, our customers, and me, her supervisor -- all without my agency having a policy! I'd do it again!

I have been a manager for 11 years. I currently have 3 subordinate supervisors and 31 employees. With the exception of two individuals who do not have docking station laptops all are authorized to telework. Six individuals have chosen to not telework, 15 telework two days per week, and the remaining individuals telework once per week. Two of my three subordinate supervisors telework at least once per week. We have been using telework for almost five years and I have found no issues with the program. In those five years I have only denied one person the opportunity to telework and that was for performance reasons. We have become so accustomed to having folks telework that it is often hard for me to know if they are in the office or at a remote site. Most telework from home and are required to provide a safe alternate workspace form before beginning their telework for the first time. We have recently begun using Jabber as a quick method of asking questions during the day. The office phone is forwarded to the individual's alternate work site so our customers do not have any problem with making contact during the duty day. During pending inclement weather I have authorized all employees to AD HOC telework at their discretion. My two requirements are: 1. that they notify me when they are on the network, and 2. That they open a Jabber session. So my experience and support of telework has been very successful.

I've been a manager for over 25 years. My observation is that high-performers who are highly self-disciplined and highly self-motivated in the office are also high performers on telework (perhaps more so), ---- and unfortunately for the individual and the organization, those who have historically not performed to their maximum capabilities continue to underperform and often fade away into a kind of non-performing obscurity that serves nobody's interests. When telework was rolled out at EPA, unfortunately we managers did not work closely with AFGE to ensure that our telework staff would be as personally connected, "technologically", to mimic the in-office staff personal availability to customers, colleagues and managers. We failed to ensure that each teleworker would be connected to the office through high-speed internet and would immediately answer phone calls, to simulate the in-person experience at the office. We relied on a vague concept of "portable work" which, without overall consistently-applied groundrules, was implemented very haphazardly throughout the regional office. This has most unfortunate for past underperformers who weren't provided the opportunity to truly understand what top performance "looks like" (they aren't sufficiently connected to witness it in colleagues day-to-day)and, consequently, are ill-equipped for excelling at challenging assignments and demonstrating personal promotion potential to a managerial or expert position or atttractive to another orgnaization as a lateral merit-selectee. It is not too late to remedy the situation and restore opportunities for top performance to all staff, but it would require, I believe, a true partnership between regional management and AFGE with a common goal to dramatically improve the overall peformance of and perhaps restore the prior singularly stellar reputation of the region in terms of delivering environmental protection and cleanup services to the citizens of the Great Lakes states.

Telework agreements are not permitted. However, within my office, since we infrequently meet in person and spend most of our time on the computer or phone, I allow my staff to telework informally whenever I can and it works great. I expect I will eventually be told to stop allowing it since it is not allowed in the other offices.

I managed telecommuting staff for a number of years. While we originally had concerns about the security of protected data, we found ways of dealing with the issue. I found that some participants were more productive at home than they were in the office. This could have been due to their wanting telework to be successful, that there were fewer interuptions, or both.

Some years ago, I reviewed information for some of my staff who participated in our work at home program,covering the 3 years prior to their entering the program and the 3 years after. I found the following: -none of the staff were as productive following their entry into the program as they were prior to it. -they all accumulated SL and AL after entry into the program at a rate that far exceeded the rate prior to their entry. The above are matters of fact, but, in addition, I have observed the following: -"walk-in" work is disproportionately assigned to staff present in the office. There is often no alternative. -the beneficial, synergistic effects of smart people bouncing ideas off of each other and collaborating seem to have diminished over time. Certainly this could take place between staff in different locations, but it just doesn't. As people make decisions in the future about this program, my experience suggests the following: -seek factual data to supplement the anecdotal assessments of the past effectiveness of work at home programs -consider a percentage limit of staff in any one location participating in the program at any time -consider limiting the continuous duration of an individual's participation in the program, for example, 2 years on and 2 years off. -reduce the number of days per week permitted for working at home. -establish a means of continuously monitoring the overall effectiveness of the work at home program in the future