Telework can contribute to Washington's Competiveness
Telework is the use of digital technologies to allow people to work from a location other than the central office (i.e. to bring work to people rather than people to work). We use telework in the broadest sense for various forms of work from telecommuting (often working from home to avoid the commute) to distributed work. For years there has been debate about the best word to use to describe what we refer to as work occurring literally anywhere. Others refer to it as virtual work, e-work, mobile work, e-commuting, distributed work, remote office, flexiwork, flexiplace, network(er), and cloud work. Whatever you call it, it's how most of us work in today's economy.
A strong argument can be made that leadership in telework is important to Washington's competitiveness. This is evident by a combination of economic, environmental, demographic and workforce trends that support the potential for telework as an integral part of positioning for the New Economy.
- Growth in digital technologies availability and use make it easier
- High gasoline prices
- Climate change interest and initiatives
- Transportation challenges
- Demands for workplace flexibility (from working parents to retirement-eligible staff to X/Y generations)
- Other states have implemented policies supporting the practice
Telework Benefits
Telework provides advantages for individuals such as saving time, reducing expenses and balancing work/life but it also offers benefits to employers and society which strengthen our position in the New Economy.
Employer/Business
- Expands talent pool
- Provides competitive workforce attraction and retention strategies (i.e., hard to fill skill sets, X/Y generations, critical retirement-eligible employees)
- Eliminates geographic boundaries (i.e., rural residents, global citizens)
- Increases ability to hire disabled workers, seniors and caregivers challenged by commuting
- Increases productivity – improves work processes
- Gains in work output
- Improves performance measurement systems
- Increases entrepreneurial skills (i.e., autonomy, focus, innovation)
- Expands workplace flexibility/agility (i.e., peak demands, project work, cross-training)
- Reduces meeting time
- Decreases absenteeism (i.e., inclement weather, reduces sick time, road/bridge closures)
- Increases employee satisfaction, morale and loyalty
- Boosts technology skills and use
- Communication tools (i.e., email, list serves, IM, audio/videoconferencing/telepresence)
- Collaboration tools (i.e., blogs, wikis, online forums - group publishing, presentations and training)
- Reduces facility expenses (i.e., office space, utilities, parking)
- Decreases human capital expenses (i.e., lower turnover, reduces new hire costs)
- Insures business continuity
- Provides compliance for clean air regulations
- Demonstrates good corporate citizenship (i.e., transportation demand management, green initiatives)
- Expands business offerings and innovation opportunities to support remote workers (i.e., broadband, software, hardware, e-commerce, e-learning, “smart” building design, manufacturing)
Community/Society
- Reduces traffic congestion through transportation demand management
- Lessens dependency on foreign oil
- Supports environmental requirements and initiatives
- Redistributes wealth (i.e., employment opportunities for rural residents, seniors, disabled)
- Increases demand and use of broadband as well as other digital technologies
Telework Challenges
The economic benefits of telework have long been understood but there are barriers to its growth. These include security concerns, potential need for changes to IT infrastructure and human resource management challenges (i.e., teleworker selection, interactions with co-workers). By far the greatest barrier to telework is management distrust when staff can not be seen. Each of these downsides can be addressed through development of policies, procedures and training. If you are interested in us working with you and your organization to overcome these challenges, please contact us.
For more information contact:
Monica Babine
Washington State University Extension
babinem@wsu.edu
425.827.8015