To explore the influences of common telework practices on employee dependent care responsibilities, job performance, and work experience, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 863 teleworking federal government employees with dependents. Respondents reported that teleworking positively influences their job performance and intentions to remain with their organizations. Teleworking assists them in meeting their dependent care responsibilities, but current policies and management practices undercut the full potential of telework as a mechanism for meeting employee caregiving demands and reaping the associated benefits to the employer. Results show that employees would like dependent care to be a formal factor in telework policy and that they would like to telework more days than currently allowed. Findings suggest that management should consider the circumstances under which dependent care needs could be a formally accepted rationale for telework.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is examining the feasibility and utility of home based employment (HBE) as a tool for improving employee recruitment, retention, and other aspects of personnel management to meet the workforce challenges of the coming decade. This paper discusses the findings of a comprehensive review of the area and presents recommendations regarding HBE program design. The discussion covers HBE background, evaluations of HBE programs, and desirable design characteristics for HBE programs. By For the past several years, socieconomic and technological factors Wendell H. joice have spurred a relatively quiet but increasing level of interest and activity in home-based employment (HBE). A recent study (Link Resources, 1987)estimates that 23.3 million American workers are actively engaged in HBE, the employment condition which workers perform some or all of their job-related work at home. The same study projects that this number will range from 25 to 40 million by 1990. While recent HBE activity has tended to include increasingly broader categories of workers, earlier activity consisted of successful utilization of HBE for the special needs of specific categories of workers. Two illustrative areas of this earlier activity are (1) employment of disabled persons and (2)Federal employment of auditor/examiner personnel, such as Federal Credit Union Examiners. • Disabled Workers. HBE activity in this area if exemplified by a series of projects conducted by George WashingtonUniversity's Rehabilita tion Research and Training Center. Starting with the Homebound Em ployment Project in 1969, the Training Center, assisted by Federal funding, conducted several long-term projects demonstrating the fea sibility and successful utilization of the homebound job placement model with disabled workers. Wendell Joice is a Personnel Psy chologist with the Office of Per sonnel Research and Development, U.S. Office of Per sonnel Management (ΟΡΜ). Dr. Joice earned his Ph.D. in psy chology at Howard University.

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