AT&T’s Pioneering Telecommuting Program in Jeopardy

AT&T has set an example as an employer willing and able to make successful use of a telecommuting workforce. Unfortunately, there may be a reversal of that policy in the works:

AT&T, a company that once was a poster child for telecommuting, is downsizing its long-running telework program and requiring thousands of employees who work from their homes and other virtual offices to return to traditional AT&T office environments, according to sources.

“It is a serious effort to reel in the telework people,” says Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the Telework Coalitions, an organization in Washington, D.C., that promotes telework through education and legislative efforts.

He says AT&T is in the process of reconciling the human resources policies of the legacy AT&T, SBC Communications, which acquired AT&T in 2005; BellSouth, which was acquired in late 2006; and the former Cingular wireless operation, previously co-owned by BellSouth and AT&T.

“We have recently merged [these] very large companies, each of which has separate policies on everything, and we’re in the process of integrating all of those policies and coming up with integrated policies for AT&T overall,” Sharp says. “I believe the teleworking policy is expected to be integrated some time next year.”

The article continues.

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