Not all morning commutes happen between the white lines during rush hour.

For Mark Wolfe, who lives and works in Charleston's East End, leaving one section of the house and entering another is all it takes to shift his days from Mark Wolfe the dog owner with a Victorian home to Mark Wolfe Design, the business with a client waiting space in the home's foyer.

"I started my home-based business on Charleston's West Side back in 1994," Wolfe said. "I started working out of the house, and let me tell you, that wasn't popular.

"People thought it was crazy and asked me what I was doing, but this July, I'll celebrate my 15th year of business working out of my house, and I haven't looked back."

'Norm of the Day'

At Marshall University's Lewis College of Business, Uday Tate, director of the school's Executive MBA program, described flexible working conditions as "the norm of the day."

"If you're a sales person and you're making sales electronically, you still have those obligations to meet," said Tate, providing an example of a profession that lends itself to a flexible work schedule. "And preliminary research indicates that productivity has gone up because of empowerment.

"One of the keys to having this flexible work is I can set up my own timing schedule and do other things with my personal time. We have become multi-taskers, and that matches very well to these flexible working conditions."

Tate said the college of business offers its instructors and students some online classes to help participants balance their day jobs, their families and social lives and their education.

"The three areas sort of demand your time and energy, and for that reason alone many companies recognize that it can be very stressful if only one domain is dominant," he said. "All these trends are really important, and if you add to all that a fourth dimension, that is social networking -- we got Facebook, YouTube, all these things going on, and companies are getting into it and asking employees to get involved in blogging or Tweetering.

"More effort should be made to really promote these flexible working conditions."

Tate said not every job can operate with flexible hours or locations, but it's a trend that should be noted.

"This is just the starting point of a stable and long trend," he said. "I'm not saying that we're going to get rid of the face-to-face, physical environment, but certain jobs, customer relations jobs, may also look at this as part of cost cutting -- just look at the time spent in commuting."

He said organizations should take advantage of the trend and establish protocols so their employees are effective while working from home.

For example, some professionals could take advantage of a drop-in office center or business incubator, such as Biz-Tech in Kearneysville. A drop-in office provides space and some support services or amenities for a home worker who may need them on a short-term basis.

"I believe we should have workshops as to how to handle work at home, and the students are way ahead of us," Tate said. "I believe there needs to be more effort in this direction because this is not going to go away. The Internet is not going to go away. ...

"It's good to know those trends and promote this flexible work, because if we don't do it, others will do it."

Working at Home

Wolfe said he carefully treats his time at home as work when there's work to be done.

Wolfe said he realized, in working for three different advertising agencies, that he liked working from the comfort of his own home and without a staff or a storefront.

"If I have to work late, I don't have to be away from my house," he said. "Sometimes I'll be hit with inspiration at an odd hour or on the weekend, and I can hammer it home right there."

"First and foremost, you have to have a mentality to be able to do this," he said. "If you don't work, you're not going to get paid."

Wolfe said he starts each day with the same routine he would have if he were going to an office that day.

Wolfe, who described his business as a micro agency, said he creates printed and digital advertisements, creates logos, radio jingles, television spots, annual reports, brochures and even promotional kiosks from his home office.

"If you're going to live where you work and work where you live, you want to make sure that you keep it really presentable because you never know when a client is going to stop by," Wolfe said. "In my opinion, it's also good to keep business hours.

"While you might be tempted to work longer than eight hours a day, and you may have to especially if you're the sole proprietor, it's good to let people know you keep business hours because people will show up all hours of the day and weekend."

But those who want to do their work at home don't always have to start a business to do it.

Steve Burke graduated from West Virginia University in 1999 after studying with the school's hybrid electric team.

Burke said he got a job doing fuel economy engineering for hybrid electric vehicles with a Detroit automaker but always wanted to return to his native Wheeling.

"My wife was in medical school and did her residency there, but when she finished her residency, I started saying I was serious now about trying to move back to West Virginia," Burke said. "I formally told my management I was moving back to West Virginia in July, and this was probably in March of 2007.

"I said, 'This doesn't mean I have to quit; I love my job, and I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think I can do it from anywhere.'"

Burke said his work entails tasks such as analyzing driver data or figuring out new software for vehicles, so he struck a deal to telecommute from his home in Wheeling.

"They have a virtual, private network you can log into, and it's exactly like being at the office," he said. "The network drives are available, and even when I print, it prints in Michigan.

"So when we have meetings and I have a handout, I'll print out five copies and call the guy who used to sit next to me and say, 'Will you grab those and take those to the office?'"

Burke said he tried working early on from an area college library, but nothing beat the quiet comfort of home for his work.

"It takes a bit more discipline, I think, than going to the office," he said. "One of the great things about working from home is the peace and quiet. ...

"There are a lot of long-term projects that I had thought of back at the office but never had time to work on; once I started telecommuting, I was able to get a lot of stuff done."

Burke said he still takes about five trips a year to his former office in Michigan for some face-to-face time with old and new co-workers.

Mort Gamble took a position that traditionally requires a lot of travel and planted it where it was most convenient for him.

"I joined the Bethany College staff in July of last year, and my title is assistant to the president, but Bethany is about four hours away from Charleston," Gamble said from his home office in Charleston. "I travel to Bethany periodically for meetings, athletic events, special convocations and such, but the bulk of my work is done via telecommuting from Charleston.

"Basically what I do -- correspondence, grant proposals and direct-mail pieces -- can be submitted electronically, so it's worked out beautifully for me, and it also keeps a presence for Bethany here in Charleston."

Gamble said despite spending his higher education career on college campuses, he enjoys networking with Bethany alumni who live in Charleston,

"It's an advantage to be able to telecommute in many ways, but I have to be fully aware of what's happening back at the main campus and stay on top of developments up there," Gamble said.

Extra Hours

Working hard, no matter when or where, traditionally nets rewards, but today's lifestyles crave a new kind of benefit.

EQT Corp., a natural gas company headquartered in Pittsburgh, implemented the nine-80 program in April. According to Charlene Petrelli, vice president of human resources at EQT, 92 percent of the company's employees take part in the program, which allows them to work 80 hours in nine days, so the 10th day, or every other Friday, the employee is off.

"We think that we are a very performance-driven organization, and we evaluate the people, our employees and our company based on the results they achieve and not based on the number of hours they spend in the office," Petrelli said. She said the company had its best year ever in 2008, and she suspected a big part of EQT's success stemmed from employees who continued working at home long after they left the office.

"We know that if someone does leave the office at 5'o clock, that doesn't mean they're not connected," Petrelli said. "People are finding ways to do a better job of balancing work and life."

Petrelli said EQT also instituted "no-meeting Fridays," and the company has noticed an increase in productivity when employees have to work on Friday.

"The feedback is overwhelmingly positive," she said. "Our employees do not want to lose this now that they have it, so they're going all out to make sure the work is getting done."

Wayne Desbrow, director of corporate communications for EQT, said the nine-80 program is a way for EQT to demonstrate that it is willing to be innovative and trust its employees.

"I believe at least 50 percent of our gas reserves are in West Virginia, so we've got a big future in West Virginia, and we need to protect that future and promote it," Desbrow said. "One way you promote that is by being innovative."

Petrelli said she believes employees also are better able to focus on work when they know they have time off every other Friday to use for elder care, child care or self-care, and that's more than worth the company's efforts in the program.