Posts Tagged ‘Benefits Of Telecommuting’

Regular readers will know that when it comes to environmentally friendly changes I’m an advocate of “picking the low hanging fruit”. That is, let’s start with the changes that are easy and inexpensive to implement. The changes I like best are the ones that not only help the environment, but also save us money. That kind of change is easily sustainable.

In the past I have written about the benefits of telecommuting. I have been planning on discussing how we need to also consider carpooling. After all, it doesn’t make much sense having cars heading down the road in the same direction with three empty seats.

I have always geared my thoughts towards commuting to work. What I had not spent much time thinking about was family activities.

I just read an article at RaisingAFamily.Net where Amy describes DivideTheRide.Org.

Here’s an excerpt of what she says…

What a great idea. Let’s start passing the word on about this site. I’ll be adding it to my resources section.

Here I’ve been writing a series of articles about the benefits of telecommuting and I stumble across this article. The benefits of not having employees travel to work are tremendous. As this article points out, not only is traffic harmful to those commuting, but it is also polluting the air with dangerous particles.

And just in case there’s any question… employees who are less stress and healthier are employees who are more productive (in general).

Many benefits to Telecommuting

We’ve talked about benefits of telecommuting and some employment positions (such as call center staff) that might make a good fit.

From previous discussions, we know that the organization, the employees and the environment all benefit from telecommuting – so what’s holding us back from using it more?

One possible factor is the need for keeping employees and teams up to date with meetings. After all, there is a time when face to face meetings convey a message much more clearly than a conference call or an email.

That makes sense, but it doesn’t mean that an employee has to be available for one hundred percent of the work week.

Let’s look at our call center again as an example. An organization could divide its call center staff into five teams. Each team would physically commute to the office one day per week. The other four days each week they would telecommute.

The company would then only have to maintain facilities to accommodate 1/5 of its call center staff. They could schedule their various meetings for this one day.

Scheduling Meetings Still Works

The result; the employees would have to deal with 1/5th of the stress and expense of commuting. The organization would have its facilities expenses reduced. Most importantly, the environment would have 1/5th of the impact on it from commuters.

Of course this is just one possible scenario. It might make sense to have an employee on site 2 days per week, or only once every two weeks. Organizations and employees would have to plan out what mix of on and off site time would work best for them. It might even take some experimentation to find the right mix.

The key to remember is that there is less need than ever for employees to be physically located at a central site. With a few small changes in how we manage our businesses, we can start seeing significant benefits, especially the environment.

As usual, I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Please leave a comment.