by Shane O'Neill

In Pictures: The 8 Unfriendliest Cities for Teleworking

News
Jul 8, 20113 mins
CareersRemote Work

You would think in this day and age all businesses would be doing everything possible to support remote workers. But a surprising number of companies in major American cities are still behind the teleworking times, according to a recent Microsoft survey of 4,500 information workers. Here are eight major cities that finished at the lower end of Microsoft's rankings.

8. San Francisco

The City by the Bay ranks pretty high in the Microsoft survey for providing tech support to remote workers and for using social media to communicate in the workplace. But when it comes to businesses using secure, internal networks to collaborate with third parties like vendors and customers, San Fran is below average. San Francisco respondents also rated themselves lowest in productivity when working remotely. Slackers!

7. Houston

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Houston workers rated high in being productive while working remotely (in contrast to San Francisco) and also report good support from colleagues for teleworking. However, businesses in Space City fall below the national average for using social networking tools internally to collaborate with colleagues and customers — probably a good reason why Houston ranked highest for employees being fired and punished for misusing public social media. That snarky status update on Facebook about the CEO? Probably not a good idea.