Thank-you Donna and Good Morning.

As Donna mentioned, I work for Wakefern Food Corporation. I am currently a project analyst and have been working as a Wakefern employee for just over ten years. For anyone unfamiliar with Wakefern, we are effectively the backbone of the Shop Rite supermarket co-op, handling all of the purchasing, warehousing, logistics, payroll and of course information processing.

To give you a little background information on myself, I was born and raised in Sayreville, which is not far from here. I got my B S in Accounting from Trenton State College in 1979 but wound up coaching and teaching gymnastics for a few years after graduation. I moved to Texas in 1982 and I got my master's in economics from the University of Texas in the spring of 1987. Shortly after coming back up to New Jersey I had a diving accident on August 21, 1987 that resulted in my quadriplegia.

While in rehabilitation at Kessler Institute I was lucky enough to meet Donna Kozberg and be introduced to Lift. Thankfully, I also passed all the interviews and tests and about a year-and-a-half after my injury, in the spring of 1989, Donna presented an opportunity for me to work at Wakefern. I have to admit that Donna did a little arm-twisting with me. Although I had done some programming while in graduate school and a little on my own, I was somewhat skeptical about choosing it for a career. She convinced me to give it a try by telling me that she had the same response from several other people and in the end they wound up loving it. I went through the normal interview process with Wakefern and, to her credit here I am, almost twelve years later, living proof that she was right. I do love it and it has been a real lifesaver for me.

I was asked to speak mainly about working from home so I'll try to tackle that.

As I said earlier, I have been a Wakefern employee for almost 10 1/2 years. I worked as a consultant through Lift for a year before my hire and completed the 6-month coordinated training program prior to that. I have been telecommuting the entire time. I began by going in to the office once a week to review my lessons with my mentor and continued going in once a week for the first half of my consultant work but for the past eleven years my schedule has been three days at home and two days in the office. I began as a programmer trainee and now I am a project analyst so I think the arrangement has been a win-win for both Wakefern and me.

I think it's easiest to discuss telecommuting by breaking it up in to three general areas:

First, the physical and technical aspects of setting up a home office; second, accessibility of and communicating with employees; and last but certainly not least, monitoring employees and quality control.

I'd like to address each one in order.

1. Setting up a home office.
Given the current state of technology the technical aspects of setting up a home office are much easier than they were in the past. I began with an IBM PS/2 at home and a dumb terminal at work. I had a dedicated phone line and modem on our mainframe computer and the whole set up was quite expensive. Now I have the same laptop, monitor, docking station and keyboard at work as do the rest of my co-workers and an additional similar docking station, monitor and keyboard at home. When I am in the office I connect directly to our network and when I am home I dial up through our firewall and have the same access to our network as I do in the office. The transition between home and office is fairly seamless.

Physically, a home office or work area needs to be separated from the rest of the house. Although a separate room is not necessary, the work area should be partitioned in some way as to allow the employee to focus and to keep all his or her materials organized. I began by working in one section of my bedroom on a long flat desk we set up which allowed for all my equipment and materials to be very easily accessible. I now have more room and was able to have an office set up in a separate room physically tailored to my situation. Being in a wheelchair, my home office is at least if not more productive than my work office because of the set up.

2. Accessibility of and communicating with employees.
Regarding the accessibility of and communicating with employees, it is imperative that one part of setting up the home office is to have a separate phone line or access method for the computer. Broadband access would be preferable although it is more expensive and more difficult to set up initially. In that way someone working at home is always available by telephone and can call or receive calls without interrupting their work.

E-mail and access to a common scheduling and/or calendar platform are also extremely valuable tools. Not only are there obvious efficiencies inherent in these tools such as allowing contact with several co-workers in varied locations and the ability to schedule meetings easily, but a subtle and important benefit is a company point of presence in the home office and the sense of inclusion and community they impart on the home employee. The home office becomes an extension of the office rather than an isolated workstation and an interactive flow of information and continuous contact between home and office can be achieved.

It is also important that an individual working at home have a set work schedule and that he or she be available to attend meetings, if necessary, which may be scheduled on days they would normally work at home. Wakefern recently began having more people work at home as part of an alternate work program not only to comply with the state regulations to reduce peak traffic flow but also as part of an employee satisfaction program. One of the requirements of the employee requesting an alternate work schedule is a signed contract describing the proposed work schedule. Once agreed upon, those are the hours the employee is required to work and be available for both internal and external company contacts. A list with home phone, office phone and pager numbers of the employees in our group was distributed internally, along with our work schedules

3. Monitoring employees and quality control.
This is the area that usually draws most of the concern for managers considering work at home arrangements, but one of the benefits of the IT area is that it is project and results driven. The life cycle of a project, from analysis to specs, coding, testing and implementation, has fairly well defined estimates for time and resources.

Because of this, monitoring employees who work at home is not much different from monitoring employees in the office. Estimates are set and, within certain parameters, either they are met or they are not met; output should not diminish because someone works at home. On the other hand, that person should not be held to a higher standard simply because he or she works at home. Quality control is also the same. Sloppily written, buggy programs are equally apparent whether written from home or at the office.

The same management skills and employee evaluation criteria used for employees working in the office are applicable to employees working at home. Employees have varying degrees of ability, whether working in or out of the office, and a manager must know these in order to be effective in either case. An employee needing more supervision will need that regardless of his or her location.

An area of concern specific to employees who have disabilities is that of off-hours support. A home office enhances the support capability of any employee by making travel time generally unnecessary. Because travel is more difficult and time consuming for a disabled employee, support capability is enhanced even more than that of an able-bodied employee. For the individual with severe mobility impairments, late night support, which would be virtually impossible without a home office environment, is even a possibility with the proper setup. Because the inconveniences of late night support calls are greater for a disabled individual, there is an even greater desire to produce the high quality of work that would reduce the need for such calls.

Working at home is not for everyone; a person who takes five coffee breaks in the office may well take ten at home, the workaholic may find him or herself working many more hours at home than the office. A person needs to have enough discipline not to be distracted by the home environment nor overtaken by the home office. Many people also choose not to work at home for a variety of valid personal and professional reasons. Also, if an individual functions more in the management area, the ratio of days in the office to at home will need to be higher.

Overall, with the right combination of factors; a willing, disciplined employee, willing management, a structured work schedule, standard evaluation procedures and the proper physical environment, working at home can be quite a successful arrangement.

On a personal note, working at home has worked very well for me.

As an individual with a disability who does not drive it has made working full-time a reality. Transportation is always a difficult issue for someone with a disability and commuting is time consuming for everyone but, when compounded with approximately two hours of prep time to get up and out of the house, traveling to and from work can take up valuable time.

Wakefern has also been extremely accommodating, but it is not feasible to recreate in the office all the support systems I have in place at home. Having ready access to those systems has made working much easier. In the event that I do need personal time or special assistance, the time is shorter, the assistance more readily available and the time is easily made up at home without the additional burden of leaving work and returning and then staying extraordinarily late at the office.

Professionally, I have been able to progress very well. I have worked under several individuals, worked in teams, supervised consultants and other employees, and worked on a variety of projects. We have a 24/7 shop and I have been on call and accessible many times on off-hours and weekends. I meet with our users in meetings and speak frequently on the phone with them. I do not make a point of informing people of my disability unless it is necessary for accessibility or accommodation reasons. I have entered more than a few meetings to very surprised looks from people whom I had been dealing with for years on the phone or through e-mail yet never met in person. They had no idea that I was disabled, nor the extent of my disability. I suppose it is testament to the feasibility and success of disability, telecommuting and, of course, the Lift program that their expectations of me, based on their experience, were to meet a qualified, knowledgeable and capable individual, which I think they did.