Telecommuting is good for you and employers:

Do you get up hours before your actual work day begin to shower, get all dressed up, then drive to an office somewhere? How much do you spend on gasoline, dry cleaning that outfit you're wearing and eating lunch out?

How'd you like to change that? You can still have your job, but also have more time for the rest of your life. And you can save on expenses. It can be yours if instead of taking yourself to your work, you bring your work to your virtual office.
A virtual office is a work site outside of the traditional office where you do the same thing you did in a traditional office.

You might be a telecommuter--someone who works for an employer in or near their home all or part of the week. Or you can work for yourself. It's virtual because you equip it with technology that lets you create whatever you need for the traditional office.

Telecommuting is growing rapidly:

• 23.5 million employed teleworkers; 23.4 self-employed teleworkers according to the 2003 American Interactive Consumer Survey.
  
  
• The number of U.S. telecommuters grew from roughly 19 million in 2000 to 32 million in 2001, according to a survey released by Cahners In-Stat Group.
  What are the benefits of telecommuting?
  
  
• Increasingly, private and public organizations are adopting telecommuting as a business strategy. There are a variety of reasons: global competition, the need for 24-hour customer support, technological improvements, workers' desire for increased flexibility, and the need to reduce overhead.

What are the benefits to companies?

Recruitment tool
Many companies use telecommuting as a perk to attract and retain top talent. The Dallas Museum of Art searched far and wide for the best expert on European art when it hired Dorothy Kosinski as curator, even though she continues to live in Basel, Switzerland. Long-distance relationships also avoid the costs of relocation, estimated at around $80,000 per employee.

Expanded labor pool
Home-based work also gives organizations the ability to attract a wider range of workers including the physically challenged, parents with young children, people with eldercare responsibilities, and members of dual-career families.

Staffing flexibility
America West Vacations, located in Phoenix, moved a group of agents home. Operations manager Bill Reed reports improved customer service, loyalty and job ownership, and says that his employees regard telecommuting as "an indirect raise."

Reduced sick leave
Home-based telecommuters continue to work at home with a cold or other minor ailment that may have kept them out of the office. In fact, telecommuters work longer hours and more workdays than the average employee.

Increased productivity
Teleworkers and their managers report that workers get more done when out of the office. In an AT&T-sponsored survey in October, 1995 of Fortune 1000 managers, 58% reported increased worker productivity. The State of California's Telecommuting Pilot Program experienced productivity increases of 10 to 30%.

Reduced stress
Time is a scarce commodity in today's stressed-out society. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration ranks stress among the top 10 reasons for missing work. It's estimated that the American worker spends an average of an hour a day commuting to and from work. Translated into yearly figures, that's the equivalent of almost six work-weeks.

Disaster preparedness
Companies with teleworkers can keep going when disaster strikes -- weather related or otherwise. Thousands of displaced workers in the Washington, DC and New York metropolitan areas are teleworking in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11.

Environmental benefits
"If 10% of the nation's workforce telecommuted one day a week, we would avoid the frustration of driving 24.4 million miles, we'd breathe air with 12,963 tons less air pollution and we'd conserve more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel each week." -- Carol Browner, former administrator of the EPA

Facility cost savings
If workers share offices-on alternate days for example-the amount of floor space is significantly reduced. When IBM consolidated 400,000 square feet of office space into a 100,000 square-foot facility at Cranford, New Jersey, they set it up on the hotel principle. Workers check in with a computerized receptionist that assigns them a cubicle and switches their calls to the appropriate cubby.

Pacific Bell installed a "hotel" at its headquarters in San Ramon, California. The building housed 7,200 employees and was bursting at the seams. By instituting hoteling, the company avoided having to lease another building at a cost savings of $9 million in the first year and $3.1 million in years two through five.

In 1995, Hewlett-Packard implemented telecommuting and virtual office programs for its sales department. Employees could decide whether they wished to stay in the office, telecommute a few days a week, or move out of the office entirely. Management reports that sales have gone up, productivity increased, and more time is spent with the customer since telecommuting began.

Remember this about telecommuting:
- it's smart
- it works
- it saves
- it pays

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