Actors

• Employee:  John Simmons
• Supervisor:  Melanie Lopez

Background

John Simmons is an analyst with the budget division. He has worked in this division for the last 3 years and is responsible for developing and analyzing the operating budget, developing issue papers, and generating weekly budget reports for his supervisor, Melanie Lopez. John works on a team of four analysts who are each responsible for a different aspect of the budget. Their work products are interrelated, which requires a lot of team work and coordination during the work week. John has proven to be a dependable and self-motivated employee and has received overall performance evaluations which are fully successful or higher.

About 6 months ago, John bought a new home and on a good day, his commute is one and one half hours, one-way. Last week, John approached Melanie about the possibility of changing his schedule. Melanie took some time to review the matter. She wanted to consider a number of key factors, including how well suited John was for telecommuting, how well suited she was as a supervisor to manage a telecommuter, whether the position and the associated tasks would adapt easily to a telecommuting situation, and whether she could put in place the appropriate infrastructure to support the telecommuting arrangement.

She asked John to join her in a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue further…

Watch video scenario
(The video scenario requires audio playback capability and the Macromedia Flash Player version 6 or later. Get the Flash Player plugin.)

Text version of scenario