The quiet revolution: telecommuting

All this has led to the realization that telecommuting is going to be a fact of life for almost all businesses. There’s even a new name to describe the movement – telework.

“Teleworking is becoming the word of choice because it focuses on the work, where as telecommuting focuses on getting from here to there instead of getting work done,” says Rita Walston, executive director of the Telework Consortium, a group that helps public and private organizations implement telework programs.

Walston sees companies increasingly paring down their offices and office buildings to save money and accommodate teleworkers. “If you have 1,500 employees instead of having to provide workspace for each one you provide 300 people with a workspace on any given day while four fifths of the organization is working elsewhere,” she explains.

At Sun, Over 56% of employees work without an assigned office, which means they either work from home or use flexible office space.

Employees work in three categories under the so-called Open Work program: Sun assigned: you have an assigned office on one of Sun’s campuses; flexible: you work out of flexible offices, drop-in centers, from home whenever you choose to; and home assigned: you work from home.

The program has lead to $387 million in IT and real estate savings, and a 28K reduction in CO2 annually.

While the number of offices at Sun will continue to decline in the next decade, there will always be a need for a place for workers and managers to congregate, says Ann Bamesburger, VP of Sun’s Open Work strategy. “Because of the nature of work, everybody, even sales people, need a place to go and identify with. We will always have a place for that.”

By 2008, Aflac will have about 200 of its 4,500 workers teleworking, says Sharon Douglas, the insurer’s chief people officer. The company started piloting a program this year in its claims department, mainly because the firm was running out of space.

“We were looking for productivity gains and seeing how well they can produce being self starters,” she says about the nearly 100 workers in the program now. “We don’t care if they work from midnight to 7 in the morning. The only thing we care about is they’re producing the right amount of claims and keeping up with our production standards.” Only one worker thus far couldn’t cut the new environment, she adds.

The company set up home workstations for its employees and provided the technology to tap into the internal claims system. That’s probably how it will work for most of the firms that adopt telework on a large scale, experts say. Companies will be providing their workers with the tools needed to connect to the company network.

A host of technologies already being used today will see a boon in the next five to ten years thanks to telework. Video conferencing and webcams are expected to pop up everywhere as companies try to recreate the face time they loose. And workers in remote locations will increasingly be brainstorming and working on documents at the same time via virtual whiteboards, explains the Telework Consortium’s Walston.

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