With gas prices soaring, the desire of IT professionals to work remotely is on the rise once again. However, from my vantage point, things today don’t seem to be any different than they were 3 or 4 years ago. That is, very few companies are willing to let employees, particularly new ones, work from home to any significant extent.

It seemed that it would just take a while for the remote work thing to take hold, however, things haven’t seemed to progress much. Sure, certain jobs make it more difficult to work remotely for any significant portion of time, but most don’t. This has led to a little bit of frustration amongst the rank and file.

So why hasn’t this concept been more fully realized? Is it that IT workers just aren’t productive at home? Is that work environments are too complex and can’t be successfully navigated outside of the office?

I hadn’t really given this much thought until recently. What I’ve come to realize is that this is just as much about the Managers as it is the remote employee. Let’s face it, managing workers remotely takes a different kind of manager, or at least one with a larger set of skills. Today, many managers receive little training on how to be managers and are put into that role often because of other successes (or even failures, but that’s another blog altogether). As a result, some managers merely manage by feel. That is, walking around and seeing what their employees are doing. So here’s the rub. Employees working remotely are out of the comfort zone for many of these more traditional managers. With remote work, management by walking around is taken away and the manager must rely on their communication and core management skills. If these skills rely on the employee and the manager being face to face, then remote work places an additional burden on the manager, thereby reducing the likeliness of newer employees having that opportunity.