In recent months I’ve become a fan of Alexander Kjerulf’s blog Chief Happiness Officer, which focuses on how to make the work place a more enjoyable venue to spend half your waking hours.
He recently blogged about the Top 5 Reasons to Let Employees Telecommute, and I’m a bit disappointed that he neglected to discuss the environmental and bottom line impacts of telecommuting as well. Kjerulf focused on the feel good aspects of telecommuting — better home and work relationships all around, productivity, freedom and responsibility.
Business being business, it’s important to highlight the economic benefits of telecommuting. Last summer, Ted Samson published a great article at Infoworld entitled, “Giving telecommuting the green light,” which covered some great cost savings of telecommuting.
For instance, there is increasing media coverage of the American dependence on fossil fuels. Samson reports that
According to the 2005/2006 National Technology Readiness Survey (NTRS), we could save about 1.35 billion gallons of fuel if everyone who was able to telecommute did so just 1.6 days per week. That calculation is based on a driving average of 20 miles per day, getting 21 miles per gallon.
On an average week, I can sit in traffic for 30 minutes to and from work. So for every day I telecommute that’s an hour of my life I get back, and over the course of a year hundreds of dollars at the gas pump that I’m saved.
At the end of the day most companies care about the bottom line. Thus Samson points out that
“Your organization could save one office for every three teleworkers (that’s about $2,000 per teleworker per year, or $200,000 per 100 teleworkers),” according to the Canadian Telework Assocation(CTA). . .
AT&T reports savings of $3,000 per office, for approximately $550 million, by eliminating or consolidating office space; about 25 percent of IBM’s 320,000 workers worldwide telecommute, saving Big Blue some $700 million in real estate costs, according to the CTA.
Even with the expense of setting up telecommuting situations, companies still come out on top because of their use of less physical space, which in turn means less technology plugged into a wall socket and lower utility bills. Note: this money saving is also good for the environment; regardless of how plugged in you are at home,you would be unlikely to use as much energy in a residential space as you would in a like sized business one.
Telecommuting, kind to the environment and a tool to keep your sanity.
January 18, 2008 at 10:03 pm |
I think this is far more of a cultural thing than an ecomonic case. We are still moving out of the industrial age where people needed to be a in a centralized location to get the work done. This is particularly important in a manufacturing based economy.
Think about all the schools that require kids to come to a centralized place. It’s just an extension of the one room school house.
As we globalize, not only isn’t centralization possible it isn’t necessary.
The tools are finally available to make telecommuting for business or education or even shopping not necessary and often less productive. Not too long ago people thought noone would shop online.
As it becomes less and less necessary to work in an office setting it becomes more important to move k-12 out of the classroom into a virtual setting.
By the way, I worked with a company in India for two years and never left the house.
January 19, 2008 at 1:12 am |
Thanks for the kind words about my blog – I’m blushing here
)
I’m glad you liked the piece on telecommuting, and I agree completely that it makes great environmental sense to let people work from home.
I’ll take this up in a later post!
January 19, 2008 at 11:27 am |
Thanks for pointing that out! I have been telecommuting for 2 years and can’t imagine working any other way, at least not every day of the week. I just wrote a brief post pointing out the new legislation being passed by Congress to push the Small Business Administration to encourage telecommuting! Very interesting, because this is by and large about reducing the nation’s energy consumption, and congress is willing to pay big bucks over the next 4 years to educate small business’ about the energy saving effects of telecommuting.
http://vivianwrites.com/telecommuting/congress-pushes-sba-to-encourage-telecommuting/
Thanks for being another voice for telecommutings pro’s!
January 19, 2008 at 12:10 pm |
I think it’s really a much bigger issue than just energy consumption. It’s about a fundamental change in the social structure. If done right, it’s going to be really something. Again, it’s being pushed by entrepreneurs and the government is 10 years behind.
Here’s my quote of the day, “If you can outsource work half way around the world, you certainly can move it to someones living room.”
June 2, 2008 at 10:49 pm |
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