Why Everyone Should Telecommute

People in the Bay Area are having trouble commuting to and from work today because of a BART strike but the companies that will survive have solid teleworking programs in place.

Today in San Francisco BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) workers went on strike, resulting in one giant mess. They're complaining that their retirement benefits are unreasonable and their pay is miserable while every year the top execs give themselves pay raises and perks. So if you live in the area, good luck commuting today.

To make matters worse, the bus services employees expect to go on strike, making it impossible to go anywhere. BART generally moves 400,000 people a day and adding half that many cars to the roads means gridlock.

The corporations that will get through this fine are the ones that have a well-managed work-from-home program in place. The term for this used to be "telecommute" but about 20 years ago it was changed to "telework" since the process involves working remotely, not commuting remotely. We have yet to witness the once-expected revolution in remote work. In fact, a poorly managed program, such as the one supposedly employed at Yahoo, often results in discontinuance of the program.

Why go to work at all when you can stay at home and get just as much or more done over a VPN connection to the corporate servers? Add a phone and you may as well be at work.

It is well-documented that many people will get more done in a telework environment than they will at an office. Let's look at some of the telework stats from TelCoa, the Telework Coalition:

• In Finland, 17 percent of all workers telework.
• In 2003, Gartner Group documented 137 million teleworkers worldwide.
• During the early telework era in 1999 the Chicago Sun Times reported that AT&T teleworkers work an average of five more hours per week than AT&T office workers and that the JD Edwards teleworkers are from 20 to 25 percent more productive than their office coworkers.
• The Colorado Telework Coalition reported that American Express teleworkers produce 43 percent more business than their office workers.

But it is not just productivity that makes a difference. If you do the math, a 40-minute commute equals eight weeks a year lost.

Are you looking for another rationale? How about the fact that it costs about $10,000 per year to maintain an employee in an office given the costs of rent, utilities, and furnishings. In fact, a well-designed telework system can cut real estate costs by 25 to 50 percent.

I've teleworked for decades in one form or another and have watched its popularity come and go. In general, an American company has a hard time dealing with telework despite all the benefits.

Because of the recent strikes in the Bay Area, many companies are going to have to implement a real telework plan soon. It's a much better way to manage and a practical way to do business while saving money.

Now email this article to your boss.