At least not if you are an AT&T employee, according to a recent Network World article. The communications giant, recently merged with other communications giant SBC, is apparently reversing formerly liberal policies regarding working remotely from home, and is bringing drones back into the cube farm.

In some senses this is surprising, and in others, not so much. It is surprising in that most businesses which elect to head down the teleworking road generally find it a positive program, with improved employee morale and sometimes significant cost savings. While certain staff or departments may venture back and forth on the issue, it is generally an efficiency issue that is isolated to certain types of work or particular employees and not a general trend based on distrust or economics.

It is not surprising in that the merger has put a new management team in place, and those who have less experience with teleworking tend to be more apprehensive of it. Then, too, there is often a knee-jerk reaction of new managers to assert their authority in some sweeping but ultimately counter-productive manner. Although AT&T has denied to Network World that this has any larger implications, that's not the story that staff inside the company are hearing, and it sounds like a message is being sent.

In any event, it's an unfortunate turn of events not just for AT&T staff affected, but also for remote work in general. It's hard enough to convince many corporate executives that they can trust staff to get work done in such circumstances, and AT&T had previously been a Shining example to point to when making that argument. My feelings, as with employee monitoring and control in general, is that if you are that concerned about your staff, you should be replacing them anyway. If you don't have metrics by which you can measure performance rather than "time served" then you need to re-think the utility of the position in the first place, and if you can't terminate someone for poor performance, well, then you're the government... and you're legally compelled to get more staff working remotely.