Telecommuting a Quiet Environmental Success Story

One of the most effective and certainly one of the easiest steps that can be taken to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and cut US dependence on foreign oil – and the balance of trade, national security, economic and other problems directly associated with that dependence – would be the widespread use of telecommuting or telework by US businesses.

The term “telecommuting” and the associated term “telework” were coined in 1973 by Jack Nilles. As Wikipedia puts it, telecommuting involves a management style based on objectives (MBO) as opposed to a style based on direct observation. The term was first used in Peter Drucker’s 1954 book, The Practice of Management, and is based on a consensus arrived at by both management and employees concerning both the objectives of the organization and the employee’s role in implementing those objectives.

Prior to the industrial revolution most of the workforce was headquartered at their homes, which were usually family farms. The new technologies of that revolution – the steam engine, turbines, industrial furnaces, assembly lines, etc. – moved most workplaces to centralized locations within large metropolitan areas. This caused secondary problems such as pollution, urban congestion, crime and social breakdown that we are still dealing with today.

Fortunately, another technological revolution swept the world in the latter part of the 20th century: the information revolution. Fueled by the twin developments of small yet powerful computers and sophisticated telecommunications technology, this revolution stands to allow many, if not most, workers to once again choose their home as their place of employment.

According to Wikipedia and other sources the technologies that make this revolution possible include but are not limited to: voice over internet protocol (VOIP), virtual private networks, conference and video-conference calling, WAV files, software that allows participants to see the contents of each other’s computer over the internet such as PC Anywhere, company networks or intranets and others. New and emerging technologies ranging from WiFi to cloud computing advance the support for telecommuting.

Unfortunately telecommuting was not embraced as quickly as might have been hoped. The California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) in a survey conducted in 1991 found that only 1.4% of workers statewide telecommuted on any given day and that a mere 5.8% of all workers ever telecommuted.

1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA) , initially set to take effect in 1996 required companies with over 100 employees to encourage telecommuting in addition to car-pooling, the use of public transportation and other measures aimed at decreasing single occupant commuting. However, progress in increasing the percentage of the workforce engaged in telecommuting as a result of CAA has been painstakingly slow.

According to Susan Mayer in the 1995 CRS Report to Congress on implementation of the Clean Air Act amendments, at least part of the blame for those delays have been attributed to the EPA, both for rulemaking delays and the granting of too wide a latitude to the States.

The telecommuting option was supposed to be part of an “Employer Trip Reduction Program,” that included subsidizing and preferential parking for vanpools and carpools, compressed workweek, a guaranteed ride home program, transit passes and “encouraging walking or biking to work.” Nearly 30,000 employers and 12 million employees were supposed to have been directly affected by the program, whose aim was to reduce automobile commuting by 25%. The program was structured so that employers had two years from the time that their State submitted a “State Implementation Plan” (SIP) to the EPA. At the time of the Report to Congress many states were late in submitting SIPs and no State had ever been sanctioned by EPA. Additionally, the EPA had already announced that no employer, who had introduced a plan for reducing single occupancy driving would be penalized if that plan did not succeed.

As a result the CAA was virtually a non-factor in increasing telecommuting. 1998 estimates of telecommuters in the workforce ranged from 6% (virtually unchanged from the CalTrans 1991 survey) to 10%.

Advantages of Telecommuting

That statistic was even more puzzling when it was realized that for most businesses (92% of Fortune 1000 companies according to one survey) telecommuting, when properly instituted, results in cost reduction, increased productivity and improved employee morale.

It has been found that telecommuting improves productivity for numerous reasons, including reductions in time wasted by physically commuting to the work site, reduction in working-parent stress, reduction in job stress, reduced absenteeism and reduction in costs associated with office operation such as space requirements, rent and construction, maintenance and oftentimes, equipment and supplies. Also, overhead to the employer can be greatly reduced by cutting or eliminating costs and expenses associated with required deductions, benefits and perks, which employers or contractors of off-site employees often forego in order to enjoy the benefits of telcommuting.

Telecommuting also widens the labor pool to include mothers and/or fathers with small children, the disabled and individuals who live a great distance from or are otherwise greatly inconvenienced by commuting to a company office.

Although data is often difficult to obtain due to the fact that companies who have employed telecommuting often do not release data for competitive reasons, a frequently cited statistic is a 15-16% increase in productivity.

A 2008 Robert Half International Financial Hiring Index survey found that 13% of 1400 CFOs interviewed considered the telecommuting option the best hiring incentive available. Earlier surveys indicated that a third considered it the best incentive, while one half considered it the second best incentive.

An MSNBC report entitled The Quiet Revolution: Telecommuting reported that as of 2007 56% of Sun Microsystems employees were telecommuting, resulting in a savings to the company estimated to be almost $390 million annually. As other companies become aware of figures such as those, telecommuting may finally begin to achieve the potential many have long held to be the case.

Barriers to Telecommuting

Matt Rosenberg’s 2007 article Slow but Steady “Telework Revolution” Eyed spelled out some of the key barriers to telecommuting.

The most often cited and no doubt most important employer objection to telecommuting, is employer mistrust of employees. Mistrust, that is, that minus direct supervision employees will work as hard, or that company security might be compromised.

Other barriers included employees need for social interaction with their co-workers, employee fears that without social interaction at the workplace their chances for advancement might be hindered, and the fact that there are times when being on-site at a company office is absolutely essential, such as while training for a new procedure.

Of course these latter objections can be at least partly addressed by initially introducing telecommuting as a part-time affair. Indeed, surveys suggest that many, if not most, employees who telecommute do so on a part-time basis.

Unfortunately for a few, the greater flexibility that telecommuting makes possible works to their detriment, especially when companies outsource. Indeed that was the case for the small medical transcription business run by my ex-wife and myself during the 1980s and early 1990s.

While medical transcription (along with medical billing) had traditionally been a business in which a majority of workers and small businesses telecommuted, it was not until the early 1990s when WAV files became increasingly popular that clinics, hospitals, medical transcription companies and other medical transcription clients began to use transcriptionists based overseas, especially in India where English is widely spoken.

Because the Indian-based transcriptionists could work for considerably less than American-based transcriptionists, clients began to demand that American transcriptionists reduce their charges commensurately. That drove many, including our little business out of the market. Despite this experience I continue to believe that the many general benefits of telecommuting for all concerned outweigh some inevitable economic dislocation.

A bright future, with or without legislation

While, telecommuting and environmental activists and telecommuting consultants have long lobbied for legislation that would substantially encourage telecommuting, the results have been mixed.

In addition to the previously mentioned amendments to the Clean Air Act that have had little impact on telecommuting, in 2004 a Federal appropriations bill was enacted to encourage telecommuting by certain Federal agencies. The bill threatened to withhold $5 million dollars in funds from agencies that did not provide telecommuting options for all eligible employees.

Two of the reasons that the Bush Administration gave for supporting telecommuting were greatly enhanced by the tragic events of September 11th; the need to decentralize American infrastructure to make it less vulnerable to terrorist attack, and the oft-cited need to wean ourselves off of our dependence on foreign oil. Unfortunately, however, because the term “eligible employee” was not clearly spelled out in the legislation its implementation has been virtually non-existent.

A union that represents federal workers stated that the program has been hampered by a lack of managerial commitment to the concept on the part of several agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission. The union did, however, laud the efforts of some agencies such as the Copyright and Patent Office.

Locally, Environment Colorado proposed adding the encouragement of telecommuting as part of its overall legislative environmental agenda. In addition to the obvious benefits, the organization saw expanding their agenda to include telecommuting as a means of forging new alliances with religious conservatives and others. Indeed, Republican State Senator Steve Swalm of Centennial has stated that he would take a positive look at measures that encouraged telecommuting in Colorado.

Fortunately, it may well be that legislative assistance or not, the future of telecommuting is bright. A 2005 national survey of employers conducted by the Midwest Institute for Telecommuting Education in St. Paul, Minnesota, projected that by 2010 some 40% of workers would telecommute at least part of the time.

Additionally, a 2007 study by Tiax LLC of Cambridge, Massachussetts estimated that as of 2001 telecommuting saved an annual 840 million gallons of gas and 14 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

Finally, a Gartner Dataquest survey estimates that by 2009 27.5% of American workers will be telecommuting. Despite progress that might seem frustratingly slow to environmentalists and others, that number suggests that the United States has clearly taken the lead in the area. While that number suggests a near quadrupling of telecommuters since the CALTRANS 1991 survey, according to Gartner, the percentage of the worldwide workforce that will telecommute in 2009 will be an anemic 4%, accentuating the need for telecommuting consulting professionals to think in worldwide as well as domestic terms.