One issue that telecommuters raised only indirectly, but bears addressing, is: Who pays for all of those tools? (See "Out of Pocket: Financial Questions for Telecommuters and Managers" which enumerates questions you should answer.)

Figuring out the software and services that a team needs isn't always an easy process. Expect to devote some time to finding the resources you need. Christy Tucker, an instructional designer at Performance Learning Systems, telecommutes full time, as do her boss and the other members of her team. "The biggest thing facing our team now is just finding the tools and spaces to share and collaborate," she says. "I wish there had been some anticipation of the fact that we need a shared space to store and exchange files, not just e-mailing zillions of attachments back and forth."

It's important for the enterprise IT support department to actively help telecommuters. Judith Underwood, a software architect at Telelogic UK, emphasizes the importance of telecommuters being part of the infrastructure, and a remote worker's tech support needs being equal to an in-office worker. "The VPN is really important. We need to know when it's going to be down. We need to know where to go when we have problems setting up a new router at home," says Underwood. The IT department may be irked when a telecommuter's home computer setup doesn't match the standard office setup. It has to understand that a telecommuter whose VPN access is problematic isn't a minor annoyance; it's keeping her from getting work done.

For telecommuting to succeed, you may need to change, or at least examine, a team's workflow. For example, a team may be used to project tracking based on shouting over the cubicle partitions. With a telecommuter on staff, that won't work. You can and should use software that can help you track project progress. Then, nobody has to waste time asking for status reports that are clearly stored in a tracking spreadsheet on the shared network drive. "Most firms don't centralize their daily task data and business processes on a central webified portal or workflow application," says systems architecture consultant Dodds. "Thus, they feel the compulsion to meet in physical space, hashing over questions with which a central repository — blog, content management system, wiki, combinations — could easily deal." A company that provided a webified index to project documents would be far ahead of most firms' practices, Dodds adds.

Telecommuting provides significant benefits to the people who live the lifestyle, with unparalleled flexibility and power over their schedule (not to mention their wardrobes). It definitely helps enterprises too, since the company can hire the "right" person for the job without regard to relocation or hour-and-a-half rush-hour commutes. However, as in all things, there are trade-offs. To gain the benefits, IT managers must learn new people skills, establish new working styles and expand their understanding of worker productivity.