Payment for DSL Connection from home

Roman

We have only three or four co-workers who may need to access the information system from home to respond to very occasional questions. Two are in our IT Services department. Two are in Finance.
They do not have normal telecommuting hours. But they believe they could respond to problems if they could access the system from home. Presuming we set this up, should the employer pay for the DSL monthly fee for each ee who has the occasional need to access the system? Keep in mind we are not paying for computer equipment in the home. Co-workers would be using their personal computers and their families would be able to use the DSL service as they do now whenever they want.

System

There is no legal requirement to pay for the DSL. It would be up to your firm. What I see is more of a FLSA issue. Your employees believe they could respond to problems if they could access from home. You'll be getting into some pay issues if they are allowed to do so. I see that as a bigger issue than whether or not you should pay for their DSL.

Rockie

We pay for this service for a few of our people who need to be able to respond remotely. These are salaried people. We would never allow an hourly person to do this because of the FLSA issues that could arise.

We learned our lesson on this. An employee took it upon herself to type up a policies and procedures manual from home. She was not asked to do this, but kept a "diary" of how many hours she worked on this manual. When she applied for another position, she made a point of letting me know she had done this. She stated no less than three times "Well, I don't expect to be paid for this....", which translates into "if you don't pay me, I will file a complaint."

She had previously worked for me in HR, so I knew she knew something of the law and I advised her of the same. (One reason she no longer worked for me was the attitude issue). Anyway...we paid her based on the diary, but I informed her and made her sign a statement to the effect that we were paying her these hours based on her statement that she worked them, but in the future, she was prohibited from working at home and if she did this again,she would be terminated.

Don D

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 01-19-05 AT 07:21PM (CST)[/font][br][br]That aside; all they want is for the company to pay for their internet connections. Tell them to forget it. It's like all these VP types who have the finest and newest in miniscule cellphones with shiney, colorful hides and other neat techno-gadgets companies provide to people to satisfy their egos. Sorry for going off on a tangent. The expenditure ain't gonna benefit the bottom line. And if it does not, it should not be done.

Whatever

We don't pay for internet. Almost every morning I do work from home (it's amazing what I can accomplish at 5:30 without interruption). The company does pay for "Gotomypc" so that I (and a few others, all of whom are salaried senior people) can access our office computers.

TN HR

Give them a free NetZero CD from Kmart and wish them the best of luck........Actually, I have it installed on my laptop for those rare ocassions where I can't plug-in to high-speed or hit a wi-fi hot spot (believe it or not it still happens from time to time) and I have to resort to that archaic form of electronic computer communication protocol known as dial-up.

Yes, it's free, yes, you get a stupid banner, yes, it's sometimes slow. But when all you need to do is a quick email check, not too shabby.

Gene