Posts Tagged ‘Conference Call’

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.