MYTH: A typical teleworker is a work-from-home mom.

TRUTH: Surprise! Today’s teleworkers are most often 40-year-old professional males with college degrees. (Telework 2011: A WorldatWork Special Report). Both men and women seek workplace flexibility options to help them manage their work and personal/family challenges. (Men and Work-Life Integration: A Global Study, WorldatWork and WFD Consulting)

MYTH: Telework is a ploy used mostly by parents to get childcare on the cheap.

TRUTH: Teleworkers who happen to be parents are required to arrange and pay for child care during their working hours regardless of their work location. Staying home to provide primary childcare is never an acceptable reason to approve a telework arrangement. (Alliance for Work-Life Progress)

MYTH: People who telework are slackers.

TRUTH: Telework requires above average organizational and communication skills and is actually more valued by top performers. Progressive organizations have learned over time that you need not offer telework to everyone.

MYTH: Negotiating and managing individual telework arrangements takes too much of a manager’s time and effort.

TRUTH: Granting a slew of individual accommodations is not how telework is done in today’s workplace. Flexibility is best practiced as a team sport, since most work today is done in work groups, many of which form and reform in response to different projects. Nothing lasts forever, including telework arrangements. Properly constituted teams establish goals, enforce compliance, handle under-performance and take care of every member’s life events over the course of a project or a career. (Leslie A. Perlow, Harvard Business Review)

MYTH: For telework to work smoothly, employers simply need a written agreement signed by both the employee and his/her manager.

TRUTH: Telework success depends on leaders who manage by objectives, not by observation, and this critical skill needs to be taught and learned. Only 21% of employers train managers on how to implement and support flexible work arrangements, and only 17% train workers on how to be successful as an employee with a flexible work arrangement. (Telework 2011: A WorldatWork Special Report).

MYTH: Speed and quality are often sacrificed when teleworking.

TRUTH: Businesses lose $600 billion a year in workplace distractions. More than two-thirds of employers report increased productivity among their teleworkers. (Workshifting Benefits: The Bottom Line, The Telework Research Network)

MYTH: Telework negatively impacts employee morale or company spirit.

TRUTH: A majority of surveyed employers say flexibility programs have a positive or extremely positive effect on employee engagement (72%), employee motivation (71%) and employee satisfaction (82%). (WorldatWork Survey on Workplace Flexibility, 2011)

MYTH: Teleworking increases an organization’s security risk.

TRUTH: A vast majority (94 percent) of CIOs said they do not think official telework programs pose a data security threat. (Remote Control – Federal CISOs Dish on Mobility, Telework, and Data Security)

Adapted from: http://WorldatWork.org – “WorldatWork Fact Sheet: Myths and Truths About Telework”