Telecommuting plans hit overdrive
Nancy Liberman won't fight traffic during the week of the Democratic National Convention. The Charlestown resident will forgo her daily commute to her Bedford office and work from home instead.
''I don't think anyone wants to take the chance of getting stuck in God only knows what," said Liberman, vice president of marketing at EnvoyWorldWide Inc.
She said about 10 other employees -- about a quarter of the company's staff -- also will work from home because they live in downtown Boston, Charlestown, and Quincy -- all of which will be affected by the closing of Interstate 93 and other traffic restrictions.
Companies throughout Greater Boston are scrambling to adopt procedures to get through convention week as highway closings threaten to create traffic headaches all around the city. Much of their energy is focused on helping workers get through the week with minimal disruptions, although area business leaders said some executives are also rearranging delivery schedules and travel plans to ensure work goes on despite the hoopla at the FleetCenter.
''A lot of companies are talking about it, their response being that their plans would be the same for a snowstorm or severe weather. A lot of the reason that they're putting it in those terms is because of the unknown nature of this, just like a snowstorm," said Laura Avakian, president-elect of the Northeast Human Resources Association and vice president for human resources at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Avakian's association last month asked businesses how they plan to cope during the convention, set for July 26 through 29. More than half of the 300 association members that responded, most from Greater Boston, said it will be ''business as usual." But 46 percent plan to alter work schedules, 36 percent are encouraging employees to take vacations, and 32 percent are encouraging telecommuting.
''A lot of people are getting worried about it. We really don't know what the impact is going to be," said Karen Stopyra, a human resources supervisor at the Marshalls Inc. distribution center in Woburn, near the interchange of Interstate 93 and Route 128, which are expected to be hit hard with traffic.
Some companies are encouraging workers to start their days early.
''The main objective at this time is creating more flexible schedules," said Jim Morgan, senior vice president and chief investment officer at the Savings Bank Life Insurance Co. of Massachusetts. The Woburn company, about a mile away from the 93-128 interchange, sent notices to its 200 or so employees asking them to let managers know if they expect commuting problems.
Nearly half the workforce, however, lives locally and won't need scheduling accommodations, Morgan said. But others come from western suburbs out near Westborough or South Shore towns, and they might find getting to work to be a challenge.
Morgan expects many of those commuters will opt to start their workdays earlier or later than normal to avoid the crush of traffic expected in the late afternoon and early evening.
That seems to be a common approach, said Caroline Connor, executive director of the Route 128 Business Council, a transportation management association that works with area businesses. Connor said some companies have already asked her to bump up the times for the council-run commuter shuttles that go from major public transportation hubs to area businesses.
The council's first bus from Alewife usually departs at 6:40 a.m., but companies have asked the start time be moved to 6. The first return trip in the afternoon would be bumped from 4 to 2 p.m.
Cubist earlier this month sent a memo to managers asking them to work with all affected employees. The plan, Ciotti said, is to let employees who anticipate commuting problems work 7 to 3 instead of the usual 8:30 to 5.
''We put into this a healthy dose of, 'Be flexible, be reasonable, and come to a solution that works for the company as well as the employee,' " she added. ''It calls for the entire group to work together as a team."
Businesses are working together on solutions.
Woburn-based Intranets.com Inc., which provides on-demand collaboration services for small businesses or departments and groups inside large organizations, is offering its products free of charge to Boston-area companies through Aug. 31 to help them cope with the convention. As of early July, some 40 companies have looked into the offer, said Karen Leavitt, Intranets.com's vice president of marketing. More than a dozen have signed up.
The company's collaboration service allows workers to share documents, schedule meetings, exchange database information, assign tasks, post announcements and conduct meetings -- all online -- without having to be physically in the office.
Leavitt said the company's product will help many of its own employees, too. ''We will have a number of employees who find it difficult to commute in, and they will be telecommuting," she said. Liberman and others from EnvoyWorldWide in Bedford will use Intranets.com as well during the convention to make telecommuting as smooth as possible.
But some business leaders said there's a limit to what they can do.
''Many companies cannot shut down during this period of time, and they can't tell their employees to take the week off. They just don't operate that way anymore," said Joseph Bevilacqua, president and CEO of the Merrimack Valley Chamber of Commerce.
That's the approach taken by
She said company executives and other employees are asking questions but taking the anticipated traffic tie-ups in stride.
''I think anyone who commutes up 128 know it's like a perpetual Democratic National Convention," she said. ''And coming down 93 is pretty heavy. They know what bad traffic is like."
