An article link dropped in my in-bin reads “Should Remote Workers Earn More?“.  First reaction: h*** no!  (Note: I haven’t yet read the article yet – will give my reaction/thinking, and then see if the article offers any insights I hadn’t considered.)

Argument 1: Remote workers don’t have the same commuting expenses as do local workers.  Thus their compensation package doesn’t need to cover that cost of going to work.  (Counter argument: but you need to set up a home office, which does cost more.  Some of that may be covered by tax breaks for home offices, I imagine, though I’m no tax expert.)  Still come down on: no, don’t pay remote workers more.

Argument 2: Remote workers don’t have the same office distractions as do local workers, and thus are more productive.  Hmmm….  if that’s true, then that better performance would be rewarded by greater pay, regardless of the locale.  But no ipso facto relationship: if it is an effect, then better pay should be granted, but until said effect is indicated, no better pay.

Argument 3: The local office doesn’t have to pay for the cost of the office space of the worker, and thus that worker is cheaper, in terms of overhead expenses.  Ergo, the company can pay more for the remote worker.  One, that logic only works if a significant portion of your labor force works from home: no one can shift their expense structure that much for one worker being in or out of the office.  Two, so what?  If it costs me less as a company to utilize you, that doesn’t mean that you get the money.  It may mean you get more opportunities to work, because my profit rate for you is higher, but that doesn’t mean I have to share it with you.

Argument 4:  Hey, working from home is less burdensome for the employee…  It’s a perk (no commute, no dress code, flexibility in hours), that ought to be considered as part of the total compensation package.  By that logic, the remote worker should actually get paid _less_.  If one perk goes up, and that employee is comparable to other employees, the pay package ought to go down.

All arguments, before reading the article, still lead me to the “employees might be willing to take a pay cut to work from home” rather than “employees should get a pay raise to work from home”.  (Note: I could only intermittently work from home, as I have 3 kids at home: productivity with a 2 year old running around just isn’t high on any sustained basis.)

Aha: the article uses the term “remote worker” to mean the guy who works a regular day job, and then is expected to bring work home at night.  The argument against paying these folks more is that “Show me one employee who doesn’t waste time at work,” the Colorado-based author said. “I see so much abuse of working hours by employees—personal phone calls, socializing, checking eBay listings, booking personal travel, etc.—that I don’t believe it’s unreasonable for an employer to want a bit of work on personal hours.“.  Hmmmm….  isn’t that more of a cultural/management issue, that unwanted behaviors are occurring on the clock?  That doesn’t mean you get to change the clock, particularly without specific evidence on an individual basis: ok, you took away 2 hours of “my” time, I’m going to take away 2 of yours.  (Sounds like a parenting punishment I’ve used before, actually.) Particularly since in reality it’s more like, OK, you may have taken away some amount of hours of”my” time, so I now have carte blanche to require additional hours of yours.

Note that I’m one of those sick twisted individuals who has a need to keep abreast of the field, checks her email constantly, and would probably be very addicted to a Crackberry, were I to have one.  So I’m a remote worker, just by nature.  But I do it for me, for my own twisted personality deficiencies.  I feel very strongly that I don’t “owe” that to my employer, and were an employer to ever indicate that I owed it to them in any large measure, I’d indicate that there is no compensation package large enough to cover such an agreement.  Folks quibble over vacation time in compensation packages, but allow employment overage to eat into just plain ol’ life time.

So to bring it full circle, using their definition of “remote worker”, yes, remote workers should EITHER be paid more, or work less at work.  Either way to solve the equation works for me.  But if remote workers are required to work more, over and above, just at home rather than at work, then they should definitely be paid more.  They should assess the likely hours burden over the year, and use that times their approximate hourly rate to determine what they should be compensated.

These kinds of opinions make me unpopular with services companies.  One day, when I have my own company, this post may come back to bite me when I’m older/wiser/burdened by realities of business, rather than just the philosophies of business.  I hope I hold true to my statements.