Telecommuting for the Environment

In these days of increasing environmental awareness and rising oil prices, telecommuting is gaining mind share. Yet employers are still reluctant. According to CIO Insight Research’s Mobility Survey: “51 percent of CIOs and other senior IT leaders surveyed said their companies discourage full time telecommuting. An equal number of the 237 respondents—24 percent each—said their firms encourage full time telecommuting or remain neutral.”

But there is hope, since when asked how their company’s policy has changed over the past 3 years, 34% said that it’s more positive against 8% replying it was more negative for full-time telecommuting, and for part-time telecommuting, the figures are 46% vs. 5%.

On the employee side, things are different, especially in the IT sector (where telecommuting makes the most sense, obviously).

“In a poll of 1,500 technology workers, 37 percent said they would accept a salary cut [of up to 10%] if they could work from home, according to Dice Holdings.”

What We Gain

Telecommuting Could Save Billions of Gallons of Gasoline
According to Tele work Exchange, “f white-collar employees who feel they could do their jobs from home began to tele work twice a week, the United States could conserve 9.7 billion gallons of gasoline and save $38.2 billion a year.” These calculations are based on 50 miles round trips in vehicles getting 24 miles per gallon, with gasoline at $3.94/gallon.

Why not?

The importance of face-to-face meetings is often cited among employees as one reason for choosing to work in the office rather than from home. While videoconferencing can help overcome that obstacle, traditional videoconferencing systems often reside in conference rooms or at the desktop, while PC video is as mobile as a laptop computer. By providing visual collaboration from anywhere, this technology offers the potential to ease the road to mass adoption of teleworking.