I've read many, many studies about telecommuting, but here are what I've found to be the most common advantages for the companies that establish work from home programs. The following pros and cons of work from home programs demonstrate how not only employers, but also their employees and their communities can all benefit from telecommuting.
• Improves employee satisfaction
People are sick of the rat race, eager to take control of their lives, and desperate to find a balance between work and life.
Two thirds of people want to work from home.
36% would choose it over a pay raise.
A poll of 1,500 technology professionals revealed that 37% would take a pay cut of 10% if they could work from home.
Gen Y'ers are more difficult to recruit (as reported by 56% of hiring managers) and to retain (as reported by 64% of hiring managers) but they are particularly attracted by flexible work arrangements (rating among benefits as an 8 on a 1 to 10 scale) as their impact on overall job satisfaction.
80% of employees consider telework a job perk.
• Reduces attrition
Losing a valued employee can cost an employer $10,000 to $30,000.
Recruiting and training a new hire costs thousands.
14% of Americans have changed jobs to shorten the commute.
46% of companies that allow telework say it has reduced attrition.
95% of employers say telework has a high impact on employee retention.
Almost half of employees feel their commute is getting worse; 70% of them feel their employers should take the lead in helping them solve the problem.
92% of employees are concerned with the high cost of fuel and 80% of them specifically cite the cost of commuting to work. 73% feel their employers should take the lead in helping them reduce their commuting costs.
Two-thirds of employees would take another job to ease the commute.
• Reduces unscheduled absences
78% of employees who call in sick, really aren't. They do so because of family issues, personal needs, and stress.
Unscheduled absences cost employers $1,800/employee per year; that adds up to $300 billion/yr for U.S. companies.
American Management Association, organizations that implemented a telework program realized a 63% reduction in unscheduled absences.
Teleworkers typically continue to work when they're sick (without infecting others).
Teleworkers return to work more quickly following surgery or medical issues.
Flexible hours allow teleworkers to run errands or schedule appointments without losing a full day.
• Increases productivity
Best Buy, British Telecom, Dow Chemical and many others show that teleworkers are 35-40% more productive.
Businesses lose $600 billion a year in workplace distractions.
Over two-thirds of employers report increased productivity among their telecommuters.
Sun Microsystems' experience suggests that employees spend 60% of the commuting time they save performing work for the company.
AT&T workers work 5 more hours at home than their office workers
JDEdwards teleworkers are 20-25% more productive than their office-based colleagues
American Express workers produced 43% more than their office-based colleagues
Compaq increased productivity 15% - 45%
• Saves employers money
Nearly six out of ten employers identify cost savings as a significant benefit to telecommuting.
Alpine Access Remote Agents close 30% more sales than traditional agents the year before. Customer complaints decreased by 90%, and labour turnover decreased by 88%.
IBM slashed real estate costs by $50 million.
McKesson saves $2 million a year.
Nortel estimates that they save $100,000 per employee that they don't have to relocate.
Average real estate savings with full-time telework is $10,000 per employee per year.
Partial telework can offer real estate savings if an office "hoteling" (drop-in) program is put in place.
Dow Chemical and Nortel save over 30% on non-real estate costs.
Sun Microsystems saves $68 million a year in real estate costs.
Offers inexpensive compliance with ADA for workers with disabilities.
• Equalizes personalities and reduces potential for discrimination
Hiring sight unseen, as some all-virtual employers do, greatly reduces the potential for discrimination.
It ensures that people are judged by what they do versus what they look like.
Communications via e-mail, instant messaging, collaborative document sharing, www-casting and the like equalize personalities.
• Cuts down on wasted meetings
Asynchronous communications allow people to communicate more efficiently.
Web-based meetings are better planned and more apt to stay on message.
• Increases employee empowerment
Remote work forces people to be more independent and self-directed.
• Increases collaboration
Once telework technologies are in place, employees and contractors can work together without regard to logistics, and allows teams to take advantage of different time zones across the organization.
• Provides new employment opportunities for the un and under-employed, especially care givers, military spouses, those with disabilities and service-wounded Vets.
18 million Americans with some college education aren't working.
More than twelve percent of the working age population that's disabled (16 million). A full three quarters of unemployed workers with disabilities cite discrimination in the workplace and lack of transportation as major factors that prevent them from working.
24 million Americans work part time.
Only seventy-five percent of women, still the traditional primary caregivers, age twenty-five to fifty-four participate in the labor force (compared to ninety percent of men). Almost a quarter of women work part-time (16.5 million), compared to ten percent of men.
• Expands the talent pool
Over 40% of employers are feeling the labor pinch; that will worsen as Boomers retire.
Reduces geographic boundaries.
Provides access to disabled workers.
Offers alternative that would have otherwise kept parents and senior caregivers out of the workforce.
Offers geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity that would not otherwise be possible.
Over 70% of employees say that the ability to telecommute will be somewhat to extremely important in choosing their next job.
• Slows the brain drain due to retiring Boomers
75% of retirees want to continue to work—but they want the flexibility to enjoy their retirement.
36% of retirees say the ability to work part rather than full time, or to work from home would have encouraged them to keep working—even if it didn't provide health benefits or meant a temporarily reduced pension.
38% of surveyed retirees indicated that being able to work seasonally or on a independent contractor basis would have encouraged them to delay retirement.
71% of retired workers who later decided to go back to work, originally retired because of a desire for more flexibility than their job offered.
• Reduces staffing redundancies and offers quick scale-up and scale-down options
Having access to a flexible at-home workforce allows call centers, airlines, and seasonal industries to add and reduce staff quickly as needed.
The need to overstaff, just in case, is greatly reduced.
24/7 worldwide coverage is easier to staff with home-based workers.
• Environment Friendly Policies are Good For Companies
Sun Microsystems reported that its 24,000 U.S. employees participating in the Open Work Program avoided producing 32,000 metric tons of CO2 last year by driving less often to and from work.
Office equipment energy consumption rate is twice that of home office equipment energy consumption.
70% of employees report they would see their companies in a more favorable light if they helped them reduce their carbon emissions.
24% of employees say they'd take a pay cut of up to 10% to help the environment.
• Reduces traffic jams
If traffic continues to grow at the current pace, drivers in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma, and Washington, D.C. will be sitting in day-long traffic jams worse than the infamous traffic jams that plague Los Angeles for eight hours a day.
As a result, commutes will take almost twice as long, and you'll have to leave even earlier to allow for traffic jams if you have to arrive someplace at a specific time, producing a further reduction to our national productivity.
Traffic jams rob the U.S. economy of $78 billion/year in productivity
Traffic jams idle away almost 3 billion gallons of gas and accounts for 26 million extra tons of greenhouse gases
Every 1% reduction in the number of vehicles on the roads yields a three fold decrease in traffic congestion.
• Prevents traffic accidents
Teleworking 10 days/mth, for the portion of the population that holds telework-compatible jobs and wants to work from home, would save more than 1,600 lives, prevent almost 99,000 injuries, and save over $12 billion a year in direct and indirect costs associated with traffic accidents.
• Takes the pressure off our crumbling transportation infrastructure
Crumbling transportation infrastructure - new roads are being built to meet needs of 10-20 years ago. Less than 6% of our cites roads have kept pace with demand over the past decade.
By 2025 we'll need another 104 thousand additional lane miles - that will cost $530 billion.
• Insures Continuity of Operation Plans (COOP) work in the event of a disaster
Federal workers are required to telework to the maximum extent possible for these reasons: a Bird flu pandemic, terrorism, roadway problems, and weather-related disasters.
75% of teleworkers say they could continue to work in the event of a disaster compared with just 28% of non-teleworkers.
• Improves performance measurement systems
Drucker, Six Sigma, and management experts agree that goal setting and performance measurement is key to successful management.
For telework to work, employees must be measured by what they do, not where they do it.
• Offers access to grants and financial incentives
A number of states, including Virginia, Georgia, and Oregon offer financial incentives for businesses to adopt telework. Other states including Arizona, Vermont, Washington, and Connecticut offer free training to encourage companies to start telework programs.
The Pushbacks against Working From Home and Telecommuting Programs
• Management mistrust
75% of managers say they trust their employees, but a third say they'd like to be able to see them, "just to be sure".
Company culture must embrace the concept at all levels - the cube farm and typing pool mentality has to be abandoned.
From Peter Drucker's introduction of Management-By-Objectives in the mid-1950's, to Six Sigma which was popularized by General Electric's Jack Welch in the 1990's, setting and measuring goals has long been held as the key to good management; whether staff are visible or working remotely.
• It's not for everyone
For some, social needs must be addressed. Telephone, email, instant messaging are a solution for some. Innovative solutions such as virtual outings, online games, and even Second Life have proven successful as well. Occasional telework is also a solution.
Telecommuters must be self-directed.
Telecommuters should be comfortable with the required technology for working remotely and arrangements should be made for tech support.
They should have a defined home office work space
Home-based employees need to understand that telecommuting is not a suitable replacement for daycare unless they can schedule their work hours around their children's needs without decreasing the quantity & quality of their work.
• Career fears from "out of sight out of mind" mentality
Some employees cite career fears as a reason not to telecommute. Successful teleworking programs overcome the "out of sight, out of mind" issue with performance-based measurement systems, productivity versus presenteeism attitudes. Teleworkers who maintain regular communications (telephone, email, instant chat, even the occasional face-to-face meeting) with traditional co-workers and managers find career impact is not an issue.
• Co-worker jealousy
Employees need to understand why they were or were not chosen for telework.
Employees should see telework as a benefit that is earned, not a right.
Standards of selection must be uniform or charges of discrimination can arise.
• Security issues
Almost 93% of managers involved in an IRS pilot telework program believe there is no problem with data security.
Security issues are easy to solve, but must be addressed.
90% of those charged with security in large organizations feel that home-based workers are not a security concern. In fact, they are more concerned with the occasional work that is taken out of the office by office-based employees who lack the training, tools, and technologies that teleworkers receive.
Security training should be provided for all employees, whether they work in or away from the office.
• IT infrastructure changes may be necessary
Teleworkers need access to company systems, software, and data.
Infrastructure changes that support telework also improve efficiency for office, remote and traveling employees.
Companies need to address remote technical support issues. Off the shelf solutions exist.
• Collaboration Concerns
Some managers feel that distance inhibits collaboration. They need the "energy in the room" when a crisis deadline occurs.
• Double-taxation
Some cities, notably New York, impose taxes on home-based workers whether they work in the city or not. A Connecticut resident, who works at home for a New York company, owes taxes to both states.
• Employment Law and OSHA Concerns
A few recent accidents in the homes of teleworker has raised concerns about employer liability. The increased difficulty of monitoring remote employee overtime is also an issue, because unauthorized overtime compensation could be claimed after the fact
a potential Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA) infringement if not paid.
• Local Zoning Issues
Some communities and homeowner associations prohibit home offices.
