| Why your employees should stay at home.
If
it were proven to work and be effective, most companies would insist
that their employees work from home. This proof may not be long
in coming.
Imagine what it would do for a corporation's bottom
line if they had to provide office space for only a hundred people,
instead of two thousand. Imagine how much time or gas you'd save
if you didn't have to commute to and from work. Gridlock might
never happen. The time you saved you could spend with family or
friends, relaxing, or, if necessary, working.
How would your city look with a few less high rises and a few more green areas?
That
slice of utopia may never happen, but the theory is much farther along
than you may realize. Already nearly half of all American
companies are offering a telecommuting option. That's a growth of
nearly 50% since 2001. Of course working from home full time is
the exception rather than the rule. Today, working from home for
a day or two every week is a more realistic expectation. But it's
a start.
To make sure we're all on the same page, the American
Heritage Dictionary's definition of telecommuting is "to work at home
using a computer connected to the network of one's employer."
So,
the first hurdle is to have a network which allows employees to do
their work from home. Obviously it does little good to allow
someone to work from home if he can't access the tools and information
he needs to work while he's at home. With the level of technology
available today it's easy to assume that it must not only be possible
to telecommute, but that it's easy. Not necessarily so. And
not everyone is lucky enough to be able to do their work with nothing
more than Internet access and e-mail.
How do you get two
or three people to sign off on a document or a requisition?
That's a challenge that's beyond your standard e-mail client.
This requires access to very specific tools. The ElectronicTender
System is a product which places such tools at your disposal. It
was designed specifically with the idea in mind that you can access it
from wherever you are, in the office or out. The reason you're
out of the office - business trip, ill, telecommuting - makes no
difference. The ETS is a complete, future ready package.
Okay, no argument, telecommuting is great. But what are some of the concrete advantages of telecommuting?
A
survey has shown that nearly 50% of the chief financial officers
interviewed found telecommuting to be the best way to hook new
employees, after salary. A significant number even put
telecommuting ahead of salary as the deciding factor for many
employees. The ability for an employee to telecommute may be the
secret weapon you've been missing to get the best person for that
vacancy you've got.
The University of Maryland did a study on
the very subject of how green telecommuting is. If everyone who
COULD telecommute did so 1.6 days a week over the course of a year,
1.35 billion gallons of fuel would be saved. At current fuel
prices that comes out to roughly $4.5 billion. You're the best
person to figure out how much you'd save if you telecommuted two days a
week (we're not squeamish so we'll round the 1.6 days to two
days). But, to give you a general idea of where American
commuters as a whole stand, the same study showed that a little over
50% of commuters travel less than 20 miles to get to work and back
home; 25% travel up to 40 miles; and over 20% travel more than 40 miles.
Naturally
employers can save, as well. One of the best examples of this is
IBM. IBM has always had a reputation for being forward thinking,
and this has stood them in good stead with telecommuting. They
have encouraged many of their 300,000 employees worldwide to do this
for decades, so on any given day as many as 120,000 of them
telecommute. This arrangement allows IBM to save well over $50
million a year in office space costs.
Telecommuting - or
telework, if you prefer - is serious business and deserves serious
thought. And while you think about it, also give some serious
thought to whether your office is equipped to allow you or your
employees to telecommute.
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