The Business Case for Telecommuting

Transcription

1 The Business Case for Telecommuting 1

2 The Business Case for Telecommuting Of all the flexible scheduling options, telecommuting has proven to provide both employer and employees with the most benefits. For employees it eliminates time-consuming commutes, increases their control over their schedules and gives them more discretionary time. It saves money on clothes, car payments, auto insurance, gasoline, maintenance and parking expenses. Teleworking employees report reduced commute time, better quality of personal life, flexible work hours, better quality of work life, improved productivity, environmental concerns, reduced cost of commuting and flexibility in dependent care. Employers have found improved productivity, reduced employee turnover, increased employee satisfaction, commitment, engagement and loyalty, and reduced office facility costs. And communities benefit from reduced air pollution, reduced need for non-renewable energy sources, reduced traffic congestion and improved family life. And research proves it. Recent news More and more research is providing evidence of the benefits of telework. These digested stories have appeared in the Work-Life Newsbrief in just the past two years. The numbers at the end of each article refer to the number in our searchable archives. New e-calculator finds telework could save $500 billion yearly A new Telework Savings Calculator shows how much could be saved if companies implemented telework; if totaled, it tops $500 billion. U.S. companies alone could add more than $260 billion a year to their bottom line, say Kate Lister and Tom Harnish, researchers and authors of a new book of advice and resources for remote workers called Undress For Success. Using new census figures and data from more than 250 studies, the calculator quantifies what every city, county, region, congressional district and state in the nation could save through telecommuting initiatives; a customized option allows users to model it for their own company or community. Lister and Harnish say their research shows that 33 million non-teleworkers are eager to work from home and hold jobs that are compatible. If they did so just half of the time (roughly the national average for those who already do), businesses could improve their bottom line by over $7,900 per new telecommuter per year, the result of lower real estate, electricity, absenteeism, and turnover costs together with increased employee productivity. Best Buy, British Telecom, JD 2

3 Edwards and American Express are a few of the many companies that have shown homebased employees to be 20-40% more productive than their office counterparts. To try the calculator, go to # Press release, UNDRESS4SUCCESS, Fed office says the payoff for teleworking is extraordinary The office of the Inspector General for Tax Administration may be the current federal champion when it comes to teleworking, with 86% of its employees now working remotely. The agency has been able to close a few offices, and productivity levels have gone up every year exponentially, says Jennifer Donnan, who helped get the program going. The office has taken steps to improve communication, purchasing computer video cameras for the staff. All have agency laptops, and Associate Inspector General Larry Koskinen says the cameras make for more efficient meetings with good personal interaction. Conducting one conference online saved about $7,000 in travel costs. Says Koskinen, It s really pretty extraordinary. Most federal agencies have expanded their telework programs or at least held steady, but the Pentagon cut its numbers of remote workers from 34,880 to 17,921. A report gave two reasons having to do with security and war efforts, but neither, says this article, fully explain the cutback. #2407 The Washington Post, New survey: multiple benefits from telework More than two-thirds of companies believe telecommuting has led to greater productivity, lower costs, and better recruiting and retention. So says a new survey by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). The increased productivity, say respondents, is due to workers spending less time going to and from work. Nearly six out of 10 said cost savings came from reduced use of officerelated materials and resources and lower vehicle-related expenses. Nearly 40% said their companies have access to more qualified staff because of their telework programs, and 37% said telecommuting helped improve employee retention. Other reported benefits of telecommuting: improved employee health (25%), promotion of safety through reduced highway use (18%), and environmental benefits (17%). A related article offers a few tips for implementing a remote work and telecommuting program. Take the time to develop concrete policies and procedures (and develop your own, as opposed to doing a Google search). Don t overinvest in technology (look carefully at the jobs your virtual employees will perform first and buy the technology that makes sense for those jobs). Train your managers; distance managing requires skills that may be new to most. And pilot the program first, with 10 or 15 employees. Then, after the pilots succeed and the policies and procedures are in place, take the initiative far and wide. # Press release, Comptia, WorldatWork,

4 Teleworkers produce more, say both workers and managers The Clean Air Campaign has conducted a survey of more than 150 metro Atlanta teleworkers and their managers and found that those employees working from home do more work. About 57% of the teleworkers reported that they use the time they save (an average 91 minutes a day) to perform more duties for their employer; and more than two-thirds (68%) say they believe their productivity has increased as a result of being allowed to work from a home office. Significantly, more than half of their managers agree, and another 42% say they ve seen no drop in productivity. In addition, half the telecommuters say they ve been able to spend more time with their families as a result, and nearly a third (32%) are even getting more sleep. Nearly 60% of teleworkers say they re less likely to look for another job as long as they re allowed to continue the practice. The big news, says this report, is how managers have been won over by their teleworking employees; 91% said they now believe the practice is good for their organization. # Press release, CLEAN AIR CAMPAIGN, Study says telework aids productivity Productivity either increases or stays the same for their teleworking employees, say 87% of managers who were polled in a new survey by the National Science Foundation. The NSF surveyed both its employees and managers and found that one-third of its employees telework on a regular basis, with just over half doing so regularly or occasionally, and two-thirds of their managers also work from home. The study found that each teleworker is on the road 62 hours less than office workers a year, saving $1,201 each in gas and other costs. The survey was commissioned by the Telework Exchange. A related study by Tandberg found most federal employees could telework part- or full-time, but more than a third say they re unaware of their agency s policy on the practice and 42% don t know whether or not they re eligible. This study concluded that individual federal employees could save an average of $5,878 in commuting costs annually and produce 9,060 fewer pounds of pollutants if they worked outside the office three days a week. Says the report, To offset the amount of CO2 emissions feds disperse in the environment by commuting, we would need to plant 32 million trees a year. # WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL, GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE,

5 More teleworkers could mean major cuts in oil dependency Telework researchers Kate Lister and Tom Harnish have examined some data from EPA, DOT, etc., and come up with a startling conclusion about the impact of more telecommuters. They estimate that about 40% of the U.S. workforce, or about 33 million Americans, hold jobs that are suitable for remote work. If they were allowed to work from home, those workers would collectively avoid 154 trillion miles of driving a year, saving $110 million a day and 7.5 trillion gallons of gasoline. They d be responsible for reducing gulf oil imports by 24% to 48%. Collectively, the 12 million employees and 16 million self-employed people who work at home at least one day a month are already saving the equivalent of 24% of gulf oil imports and avoiding producing 33 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year. A related study by research firm IDC predicts nearly 75% of the U.S. workforce will be mobile by the end of 2011, as companies are pushed to provide more work-life balance and aided by technology. The global study found the U.S. had the highest percentage of mobile workers in 2006 (68%) but Japan s percentage will increase the most in the next three years, going from 53% to nearly 80%. The study pointed out the benefits, but also warned of the risk of losing sensitive data, and stressed the importance of a plan to secure devices. # Press release, UNDRESS4SUCCESS, BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL, Study zeroes in on telecommuting benefits The estimated 3.9 telecommuters in the U.S. cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 14 million tons, a number equal to removing 2 million vehicles from the road every year. Just one day of telecommuting saves the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household s electricity use, said a study commissioned by the Consumer Electronics Association. Researchers focused on workers who spend one or more days working from home each week, and compared the energy consumed by telecommuting with that used in the office. A teleworker with a one-way commute of 22 miles putting in five days a week working from home would save about 320 gallons of gasoline, said the report, and reduce CO2 emissions by 4.5 to 6 tons per year. That worker would also save an amount of energy equal to roughly 4,000 to 6,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, the amount consumed by an average household in four to six months. # CONSUMER ELECTRONICS ASS N.,

6 Some organizations experiences Here are some experiences that have been reported in the media over the past few years by companies and organizations, both small and large. Society for Human Resource Management, Washington, DC The Society for Human Resource Management s call center, staffed by 14 HR professionals with master s degrees and from five to 15 year s experience, gets about 350 calls a day. Deborah Keary, director of the SHRM Knowledge Center, says it takes at least six months to train one of these workers, and she was losing too many of them to job stress, irate callers and "the rotten commute to SHRM s downtown D.C. office." Five years ago she started a four-day work-at-home program. Keary says that was the end of turnover. Kaiser Permanente, Honolulu, Hawaii After an employee survey in 1996 triggered a quiet revolution at this Kaiser Permanente facility, 3% of staff now telecommutes. Most save at least an hour a day by not spending it on the freeway. Says Kaiser s Kathy O Brien, "We found it saves on office space and parking, and it saves the community from pollution because there are fewer cars on the road. CH2M Hill, Englewood, CO Engineering firm CH2M Hill says its telecommuting program will reduce real estate costs by $20 million over ten years. Spokesman Bill Hayes says offering employees the option of teleworking has also saved money by lowering the company s turnover rate, and has been a valuable recruiting and retention tool. The company has about 700 teleworkers out of a staff of 16,000. J.D. Edwards, Denver, CO J.D. Edwards has a goal of having 8% of their workforce telecommuting. They say it s a retention tool for valuable IT workers (whose loss they estimate at 2½ times yearly salary), and as a way to diversify the workforce, retain new mothers and recruit both the disabled and geographically challenged. Sun Microsystems A related article says Sun Microsystems is encouraging anyone who is able to work from home to do so permanently. The company says it saved $50 million in one year by having employees telecommute, and CEO Scott McNealy wants all 35,000 employees to be prepared to abandon permanent desks and be ready for telework. 6

7 The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office That office now has 150 of its 250 attorneys working from home, most full-time. The government pays for a computer, high-speed data line, telephone line and a phone. Telecommuters have higher productivity as a group than those who work in the office, and the big savings has been in space; the agency has been able to give up three floors, saving $1.5 million a year in rent. The State of Georgia Georgia s Gov. Sonny Perdue has introduced a program to improve morale, boost productivity and get 25,000 state workers off the road. The State of Georgia will begin phasing in a telecommuting program for its workers with a goal of sending 25,000 home to work after a six-month pilot last year resulted in 39 state employees eliminating nearly 30,000 driving miles. The test group reported that they were more productive, more satisfied with their jobs and had less stress. And 96% said they wanted to continue teleworking. Communications companies Communications companies have been leaders in experimenting with telecommuting in order to test their own products. Here are some of their results: AT&T At AT&T, nearly one out of three telecommuting managers report that telework has had a positive effect on their career, and nearly half of those who had received competing offers said the ability to telecommute kept them at AT&T. Remote workers are more likely to be rated as promotable, and consistently report gaining at least an extra hour of productivity a day. Most of the commute time they save has been redirected to work activities. Telework is now thought of as the new operating model rather than an employee perk or an alternative work arrangement at AT&T, which expects their telework program to reap a benefit of more than $150 million this year by increasing productivity, reducing real estate costs and enhancing retention and recruitment. Nortel Nortel now has nearly 15,000 teleworking employees, out of a staff of 35,000; their telework program is nine years old and they ve measured the results. Nearly all of their teleworkers (94%) report that their productivity is up, and 65% of managers agree with them, with the average increase from 15% to 20%. Nortel calculates that a 15% increase is equivalent to 1.2 hours more productivity per day, and applying that to the 3,000 full-time telecommuters adds up to about $325,000 a day (most of their remote workers are manager-level employees). Their remote employees are 11% more satisfied, they say, and 41% more motivated than their in-office colleagues. For each office-based worker the company estimates a cost of nearly $24,000 a year, while home-based employees cost a little more than $3,000. Nortel 7

8 figures its remote work program saves more than $20,000 per worker on office expense alone, and the company reports improved employee satisfaction, increased work-life balance, and $15 million a year in real estate cost savings. BT, the UK telecommunications giant, has evaluated its use of telework and found 78% of teleworking staff saying they were from 10% to 20% more productive; 90% were satisfied with the arrangement, and 22% said they had worked when they would have felt too ill to do so had they not been telecommuting. The company said it had saved 100 million per year in space costs. Call centers These call centers have found a payoff for both company and employees. Alpine Access, Golden, CO Alpine, a virtual call center outsourcing firm, now has more than 600 agents working from home and is increasing staff to more than 2,000. In one study, home-bound agents closed 30% more sales than their office-bound sales staff; customer complaints dropped 90%. ARO Call Center, Kansas City, MO ARO reduced yearly turnover from 60% to 5% and operating costs by 30%, when they sent 95% of their call center workers home. ARO processes life insurance applications for major insurers, which makes productivity easy to track. It improved by an average 20% to 30%. Holland America, Seattle, WA Holland America began its remote agent program back in 1994 and reports telecommuters stay with the company an average six years, compared to two years for in-house reps. Says telework manager Joe Potts, We send our best employees home as teleworkers. Working at home, he adds, teaches them self-sufficiency and problem-solving skills they might not develop if they stayed in-house, so they re more attractive for leadership roles." Since its inception five years ago, the airline has run its reservations department using homebased agents. Today JetBlue employs 900 reservation agents working from home in the Salt Lake City area. JetBlue This airline allows all 350 of its reservationists to work from home, and work part-time. Employees bid for shifts, and then team up with another employee so one mother can watch the other s children while she works, and vice versa. The only rule: Employees must work in a quiet room no children s noise allowed. Turnover rates are exceptionally low at 4% annually. Agents enjoy the flexibility of working from home, and the company says it shows in their performance. 8

9 Other telework news The U.S. Congress is strongly encouraging its agencies to create effective telework programs. In 2000 it enacted legislation that encouraged agencies to offer the option to every eligible worker, and in 2004 they strengthened the law to penalize those agencies that don t by withholding funds. Researchers E. Jeffrey Hill and Vjollca Martinson of Brigham Young University, and IBM s Maria Ferris have found that home-office workers scored higher than traditional employees in the areas of retention, career opportunity and work-life balance and were more likely than in-office workers to agree that they would be willing to put in extra effort to help the company succeed. A study by ITAC, the association for advancing work from anywhere, found that teleworkers working remotely just one day a week with broadband could save their employer as much as $5,000 a year, more than paying for installing broadband access. And earlier research... These studies were released between 1997 and 2007 Telework can bring financial benefit A study commissioned by the GSA finds employers who support telework programs can gain substantial returns on investment. The study by Booz Allen Hamilton found that telecommuting is low on most federal agencies priority list, despite urging by Congressional leaders and the promise of significant benefits. The study found that a 100,000-employee organization investing $16 million in telework technologies would reap $36.2 million in benefits if 50% of staff worked from home. An organization of 10,000 that invested $220,000 would gain $3.4 million in returns. # GOVEXEC.COM, Telework could give back 98 hours The online community Telework Exchange says federal employees spend an average 233 hours of their life commuting each year. Teleworking just three days per week would give an employee back 98 of those hours, they say. A full-time teleworker could save an hour a day, time that would allow them to earn an 9

10 MBA 35% faster, read 25 books, clean out 83 closets or train for a marathon. With Congress considering legislation that would withhold $5 million from agencies that don t improve their telecommuting record, what s stopping those agencies from sending their workers home to work? Telework Exchange director Stephen O Keefe says that although practically every agency has a telework plan, only about half of their workers said they were aware of the plan. And of those who were interested, just 21% believed they were eligible and only 5% knew where to go to find out. The average federal employee spends nearly $10,580 a year commuting to work five days a week and disperses eight tons of pollutants into the environment. If everyone who was eligible teleworked twice a week, says O Keefe, the federal workforce could save $3.3 billion a year. # Press release, TELEWORK EXCHANGE, Study finds everyone benefits from telework Atlanta, GA has been running a six-month telecommuting pilot with 13 metro employers participating. The results: when employees are allowed to work from home, everyone benefits. The Clean Air Campaign s "Telework Leadership Initiative" helped each company get started; each got $20,000 worth of equipment and resources, up to $10,000 in direct consulting services, and a unique incentive of up to $10,000 in reimbursement for staff time devoted to program development and implementation. At the pilot s conclusion both telecommuters and their managers were surveyed. Nearly 90% of teleworkers reported that the ability to work from home improved their morale, and 80% of managers agreed that staff morale had improved. Not commuting saved each an average of minutes for every teleworking day and more than 70% spent that time doing more work. More than 85% of managers felt productivity had either improved or stayed the same, and among those who saw improvement, the average increase was estimated at 20%. All the participants plan to expand their programs, with each manager adding about four new teleworkers. At current levels, that means a reduction of 9.4 million vehicle miles from metro Atlanta roads each year. For more, contact Candace McCaffery or Lisa Sharp at CLEANAIR. # Atlanta, GA, BUSINESS WIRE, Telework saves $$ in real estate Engineering firm CH2M Hill says its telecommuting program will reduce real estate costs by $20 million over ten years. Spokesman Bill Hayes says offering employees the option of teleworking has also saved money by lowering the company s turnover rate, and has been a valuable recruiting and retention tool. The company has about 700 teleworkers. A related article says anyone thinking about a job transfer to Milwaukee should consider asking about remote work options. The biggest public works project in Wisconsin s history is expected to cause havoc on Milwaukee streets beginning in October, and local and state officials are urging more 10

11 workers to telecommute. To help them do so, partnerships are being created with Internet service providers like Time Warner Cable, which is offering discounted service to those who sign up before the project begins. Companies -- from the smallest accounting firms to Aurora Health Care, Wisconsin s largest private employer with 22,000 employees -- are signing on, saying they ll make the work-from-home option available to employees. # CANWEST NEWS SERVICE, Minneapolis, MN, STAR TRIBUNE, Study finds no downside to telework A study has compared three work settings, traditional office, home office, and virtual office (working anyplace it makes sense). Researchers E. Jeffrey Hill and Vjollca Martinson of Brigham Young University, and IBM s Maria Ferris, have taken a closer look at data collected from more than 5,500 IBM workers, about one-fifth of whom were either working from home or were relying on portable technology and had no office. They compared the three groups to see how the work setting influenced both work and personal lives. Their conclusion: other than the fact that virtual workers had more difficulty with work-life balance, there was no downside to alternative work arrangements. Home office workers scored higher than traditional employees in the areas of retention, career opportunity and work-life balance. And both virtual work and working at home had a significant and positive influence on job motivation. Employees in both arrangements were more likely than in-office workers to agree that they would be willing to put in extra effort to help the company succeed. # DOES IT MATTER WHERE YOU WORK? 9-03 Utah Valley State College (Susan Madsen) Those who work from home at least two to three days a week report having lower levels of work-family conflict than those who don t. Reducing work-family conflict is one way to increase productivity; telecommuting is another. New research, by Susan Madsen of Utah Valley State College, has found a cause/effect relationship between the two. First, she reviewed the literature and found several studies proving that increased levels of such conflict have negative consequences for both home and work, and decreasing those levels are linked to more organizational commitment. Then she surveyed employees from seven different organizations with well-established telework programs, looking for any differences between remote workers and their worksite colleagues in perceptions of work-family conflict. She examined three kinds of conflict time-based, strain-based and behavior-based and their impact both at home and at work. Her findings: remote workers had lower levels of conflict in every area. There were also some gender differences; male teleworkers had higher levels of behavior-based conflict in both directions, and experienced more work infringement on family time. Teleworkers reported slightly higher health levels, and worked more hours per week. Madsen suggests practitioners design such programs as a way to reduce work-family conflict. # HR DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, Vol. 14, No. 1,

12 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Two years ago we wrote about a newly expanded telecommuting pilot at the Patent and Trademark Office; the results are in. The U.S. agency now has 110 of its 250 attorneys working from home, most full-time; next year 40 more will join the voluntary program, which was developed with its union. The government springs for a computer, high-speed data line, telephone line and a phone. Lawyers who want to telework must have a record of successful performance, and once approved by their manager, are chosen by seniority. The agency keeps one office for every five attorneys, who reserve space as needed (they re required to work in the office two hours a week). Telecommuters do have higher productivity as a group than those who work in the office, but the big savings has been in space; the agency has been able to give up three floors, saving $1.5 million a year in rent. # WORK/LIFE TODAY, 8-03 IBM About a third of IBM s workforce is "mobile" the company saves about $10,000 per year per employee on facilities costs alone. That s a calculation every firm is making now before letting staff work from home, say experts quoted here. IBM, says Pamela Stanford, director of the company s on-demand workplace initiative, has worked hard to develop an environment conducive to mobile workers. Back in 1993, when their first telecommuters started, they were pioneers. Their joke was that IBM stood for "I m By Myself." Now each mobile worker gets a ThinkPad, a highspeed Internet connection and a second phone line for business calls, and workers say they enjoy the autonomy and scheduling flexibility. When someone in Dallas has to call a client in Europe or Australia, they can get up at 3 a.m. and walk over to the computer rather than driving to the office. "The people who consider it a perk, and are concerned about not seeing people in the workplace," says Stafford, "come from command and control cultures. Command and control doesn t cut it anymore. This kind of mobility is just right for us." # Dallas, TX, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Nortel 2003 Nortel now has 12,000 teleworkers out of a staff of 35,000; the telework program is nine years old, and they ve measured the results. Nearly all of their teleworkers (94%) report that their productivity is up, and 65% of managers agree with them, with the average increase from 15% to 20%. Nortel calculates that a 15% increase is equivalent to 1.2 hours more productivity per day, and applying that to the 3,000 full-time telecommuters adds up to about $325,000 a day (most of their remote workers are manager-level employees). Their remote employees are 11% more satisfied, they say, and 41% more motivated than their in-office colleagues. One compensation analyst who has been working from her home office since the program began points out an unexpected advantage. She works with highly sensitive information, and says working from home actually provides security benefits. The information is always tightly controlled, whether in the office or at home. But at home there s no chance that someone could be looking over her shoulder. Finally, for each officebased worker they estimate a cost of nearly $24,000 a year, while home-based employees cost a little more than $3,000. So Nortel figures its remote work program saves more than 12

13 $20,000 per worker on office expense alone. # FLEXIBILITY.CO.UK, U.S. Department of Labor The U.S. Department of Labor has issued a report on telecommuting, and suggests it can increase a company s competitiveness. The highly readable and comprehensive report is called Telework: The New Workplace of the 21st Century. It s a compilation of 12 studies prepared by different scholars and researchers on nearly every aspect of telecommuting. It raises questions (e.g., "What is the definition of overtime for the teleworker?") and explains why and how Americans are moving toward bringing the work to the worker, rather than the other way around. It reviews all the evidence, and suggests that the practice has the unique potential for positive impact on the "triple bottom line" financial, environmental and social goals (it has been reported to affect recruitment, retention, absenteeism and productivity, reduce building and parking costs, and improve employees lives). But the potential financial advantages of telework are not universally understood, says the report, nor realized by employers, and the evidence is not sufficiently persuasive. Even though some studies estimate savings as high as $10,000 per employee per year, many still regard telework as cost-prohibitive, or lack the management expertise to implement telework programs. For those who want to know more about how to convince them, or about the impact and the future of telecommuting, this report is available at # BNA DAILY LABOR REPORT, Sustel A Euro research project called SUSTEL has taken a close look at BT, a UK telecom company, and evaluated its use of telework. They found 78% of teleworking staff saying they were from 10% to 20% more productive; 90% were satisfied with the arrangement, and 22% said they had worked when they would have felt too ill to do so had they not been telecommuting. The company said it had saved 100 million per year in space costs. SUSTEL (for sustainable telework) is a two-year project financed by the European Commission. Its goals: to enhance understanding of the economic, environmental and social impacts of teleworking, identify ways these impacts can be influenced by organizations and governments, and develop tools to make telework more sustainable. Last January they began to study its impact at five companies. For British Airports Authority it was important to save commute time, and telework did so for the 64 out of 250 workers who work from home. Total kilometers saved by working from home between one and eight days a month: 128 each. Find full details and news about eight more European case studies at # WFD A new study, commissioned by the American Business Collaboration, is called "When the Workplace is Many Places; The Extent of Off-Site Work Today." Their goal: to have, for the first time, a complete snapshot of telework and other forms of offsite work in America. The study found offsite employees work longer hours and, with the exception of customer site workers, are less drained at the end of the day. Teleworkers, their managers and coworkers all agree that their productivity, retention, commitment and job satisfaction are positively affected by most offsite work arrangements, and they rate as well as, or better than, onsite 13

14 staff. Half as many teleworkers and remote workers as onsite staff say they plan to leave their employers in the next two years, and most give the credit for that to their offsite work arrangement. Regular teleworkers and remote workers have the easiest time balancing work and personal life; more than two-thirds rated their work-life balance "better" or "much better," and their families report almost no difficulty related to the work arrangement. Work & Family Trend Report, September, 2002 Wideforce Systems A survey of call center execs has found more than three-fourths saying telework has improved both retention and productivity. Wideforce Systems says more than three-fourths of call center managers surveyed reported turnover went down to less than 20% when they allowed employees to work remotely. And those managers also experienced a 12% increase in productivity. Half of managers who used only traditional workers reported turnover rates of more than 20% a year. A related article says communications giant Nortel has nearly 15,000 teleworking employees, and the company reports improved employee satisfaction, increased work-life balance, and $15 million a year in real estate cost savings. # ITAC TELEWORK NEWS, 6-02 TrueCareers A survey has found 92% of employees saying the ability to telework would be a key factor in deciding if they would accept a job. The survey is by TrueCareers, a Reston, VA online job board that provides companies with pre-screened candidates. Pollsters also found 91% believe they would be more productive if they could work from home. Of the 1,963 respondents, two-thirds had either already tried it or are considering it. The reasons? They want to spend more time with families, have more flexibility, and eliminate costly and stressful commute time. The survey found 60% of respondents now have at least a 15 mile commute to work each way. A related article says a poll by the Positively Broadband Campaign found similar results. More than half of those surveyed think telework would improve the quality of their lives, and among those who spent more than an hour a day commuting, the number was 66%. People said they thought it would make them a better parent or spouse, and about a third would take the option to telework over higher pay. # San Jose, CA, SAN JOSE BUSINESS JOURNAL, , Press release, Sales & Marketing Management Salespeople who telecommute are just as productive as office-based workers, says a survey of New York small-firm executives. More than 86% of them, surveyed by Sales & Marketing Management, agreed with that statement. About 46% of small companies allow telecommuting and when telecommuting started, says the report, there was the suspicion that people wouldn t be doing their jobs. "Now they see it as a good option, and a way to recruit workers." # BUSINESS WEEK SMALL BIZ, International Telework Association and Council (ITAC) The ITAC annual survey found numbers are going up. About 20% of the workforce 28 million people now spend some time working someplace besides the office. A fourth work 14

15 on the road, 22% work from home and 12% work from either satellite offices or telework centers. Most are men, white and college-educated, married and earning at least $40,000. Two-thirds say they are satisfied with their jobs, 80% feel a greater commitment to their employer because they telecommute, and 75% report a quantifiable increase in both productivity and work quality. Another 14 million people want to telework but don t, either because they think their jobs aren t suitable or their bosses won t let them. While remote workers admit working longer hours than their office-bound colleagues, most say their jobs interfere less with their personal lives. # NET.WORKER NEWS, U.S. Department of Labor The U.S. Department of Labor issued a report on telecommuting, suggesting it can increase a company s competitiveness. "Telework: The New Workplace of the 21st Century," reviews all the evidence, and concludes that the practice has the unique potential for positive impact on the "triple bottom line" financial, environmental and social goals, having been reported to affect recruitment, retention, absenteeism and productivity, reduce building and parking costs, and improve employees lives. But the potential financial advantages of telework are not universally understood, says the report, nor realized by employers, and the evidence is not sufficiently persuasive. Even though some studies estimate savings as high as $10,000 per employee per year, many still regard telework as cost-prohibitive, or lack the management expertise to implement telework programs. # BNA DAILY LABOR REPORT, KPMG Peat Marwick A study of 106 human resource executives at some of the largest U.S. companies found nearly one-fourth have employees who regularly telecommute either part- or full-time. Fiftythree percent of those said workers enjoyed "increased productivity and job satisfaction" and one-third reported "lower real estate costs and reduced employee turnover."# Minneapolis, MN, STAR TRIBUNE, Lexis-Nexis Lexis-Nexis has cut its operating expenses by more than 45% by implementing a telecommuting program and a flexible work environment; 20% of their workforce participates. The Ohio-based electronic publishing company has 5,000 employees, and plans to expand the program, one unit at a time, to the entire company. Telecommuters get equipment, two telephone lines and an allowance for home furnishings. The cost-cutting resulted from higher productivity, fewer facilities, greater geographical hiring pools, being able to hire the physically challenged, and better use of technology. # WORK/LIFE TODAY, 9-97, pg. 4 15