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Telecommuting: A Realistic Option?
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Business New Haven
2/4/2002
By:
Linda Mele
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When asked this question, Pitney Bowes spokesman Ed Houghton says: “It's more true today than ever before. There are some jobs or elements of jobs that lend themselves to telecommuting whether from home or other remote location. We look at it on a case-by-case basis, and where it works we will use it.”
Pitney Bowes has about 32,000 employees worldwide, more than 26,000 of whom work in the U.S. Company officials recognize that telecommuting has become an integral part of how Pitney Bowes functions.
To help companies achieve a balance and flexibility for workers, Telecommute CT! promotes the viability of telecommuting as a flexible work option. It can reduce the number of employee work trips and therefore decrease traffic congestion, energy consumption and air pollution.
The state offers this service as a free and comprehensive resource for Connecticut employers with a goal of helping them design and implement telecommuting programs that successfully meet the needs of businesses while helping employees balance work and home lives and become more productive at the same time.
IBM has some 80,000 telecommuters wordwide and views it as necessary to attract scarce IT resources. Merrill Lynch's telecommute programs number about 3,500 telecommuters.
With 2,000 people telecommuting, Aetna has the largest telecommuting force in the state, according to state Department of Administrative Services commissioner Barbara Waters.
“It's a voluntary employee alternative that avoids the normal work commute and offers the choice of working at home or at an alternative work station closer to home, primarily on a part-time basis,” Waters says.
Nortel's 13,000 telecommuters (about 17 percent of its 75,000 workers) help reduce yearly travel by 50 million miles and save the company nearly $20 million a year on real-estate costs. The telecommuters are happier, healthier and less stressed, Nortel officials say. The company's goal is to wire every one of its knowledge workers' homes with high-speed access for telecommuting by year's end, according to Telecommute CT! “Telecommuting is here to stay,”
Houghton says.
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