The Telecommuting Imperative

We’ve written about telecommuting before:

How productive are telecommuters? It depends.

Fascinating Facts About Telecommuters

Discussion of the benefits of telecommuting has often focused on its impact on employee morale and the cost savings to the employer in terms of reduced space needs.

Now, rising gas costs and concerns about contingency planning for natural disasters such as bird flu and hurricanes have highlighted additional benefits: employee fuel cost savings and employer operational flexibility if traditional workplace concentrations of employees become impractical or impossible due to disaster.

The following item, “Changing Work, One Gallon of Gas at a Time,” was contributed to this Blawg by Rita Mace Walston, General Manager of The Telework Consortium.

The Telework Consortium plans and implements telework and distributed work programs. It provides hardware and software, management processes, infrastructure configurations, and measurement techniques to aid in working and collaborating from remote locations.

This is about much more than just cell phones, Blackberries, IM, email, and remote access to company networks.

For example, the Consortium says: “High-quality video is a core technology for telework. Traditional work engagements where employees are physically located in an office allow for visual cues that only come from face-to-face contact. For effective communication and collaboration with colleagues and managers, teleworkers also require visual interaction.”

There’s nothing like a crisis to get folks to change the way they think. When a gallon of gas costs the same as Big Gulp, most people aren’t too concerned about the cost of long daily commutes to and from work. When all is well in their world, few lose sleep worrying about how their work would get done if a pandemic, natural disaster or other unforetold crisis were to keep them from reporting to their place of work each day.

But gas prices are rising, fear of the bird flu is mounting, and the 2006 hurricane season is upon us. And people aren’t just starting to change the way they think, now they are changing the way they act. In response to these timely issues, consumers are preparing their homes, stockpiling food and water and snatching up hybrid cars like crazy – sales of hybrids in the U.S. doubled in 2005, according to Auto News.

Companies are doing something too. More are finally adopting telework, sometimes known as telecommuting, as a means to offer employees a way to save on gas and other commute-related expenses (auto insurance, depreciation, insurance, etc.)

According to a study by Sperling’s Best Places, U.S. drivers travel an average of 43.5 miles per day. Let’s do some math.

According to AAA 2005 data, the average total commuting cost (including depreciation, maintenance, insurance, gas) is $.64 per mile when gas prices are $3 / gallon. For a commuter driving a mid-sized car averaging 20 mpg, commuting 43.5 miles per day and paying $3 / gallon for gas, the estimated daily total cost for the commute is $27.84 (43.5 x $0.64).

If that driver works from home one day per week all year and saves $27.84 in total cost each week, the yearly savings to a driver working 50 weeks of the year is $1,392 ($27.84 x 50). Now, that is no small change!

Granted, not everyone’s job is conducive to telecommuting. By the nature of what they do, mechanics, construction workers and countless other labor-intensive professionals would be hard pressed to try to do their jobs from home.

But, believe it or not, many unlikely industries can be good candidates for telework plans if attempted. In fact, Nova Medical and Urgent Care Center in Northern Virginia has used telecommuting technology to enable remote staff communication. Since it’s been so successful for them, the medical group is exploring opportunities to integrate telework efficiencies with patient care.

For those who can work from home, or work from anywhere for that matter, the benefits go far beyond cost savings of gas.

Teleworkers generally enjoy an improved work/life balance and an increase in job satisfaction and productivity. Employee recruitment and retention are other key benefits to employers.

But perhaps most importantly, many employers now regard telecommuting as a critical strategy to ensure business continuity if crises like health pandemics or natural disasters prevent large numbers of employees from reporting to their workplace.

Hopefully, it is finally hitting home with American workers and employers alike: work is what you do, not where you go.

What do you think? Are pains at the pump and fear of this summer’s hurricane season enough to cause your company to finally support working from home?

The Telework Consortium’s website is a great resource on the latest thinking and practices in telecommuting. In particular, the Theory & Practice page contains a useful collection of reports and white papers.

At first glance, employers may think fuel cost savings benefit only employees. But I suggest viewing such savings as the equivalent of tax cuts — they effectively increase take-home pay, which should reduce pressure for wage increases, directly benefiting employers.

Additionally, while not an increase in productivity as traditionally measured, the output of salaried employees can be increased through reduction or elimination of commuting.

The employee can start and end the workday when he or she would have started and ended the commute (which is part of the workday in that it precludes all non-work activities, leisure and otherwise). obviously, this means the employee can get more done (except to the extent he or she is already converting commute time to work time by doing business over the cell phone while driving).

photo credit: MishaGirl via flickr

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