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TelecommutinG

Telecommuting or telework is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours. In other words, the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Many work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or other locations.

 Telework is a broader term, referring to substituting telecommunications for any form of work-related travel, thereby eliminating the distance restrictions of telecommuting. A person who telecommutes is known as a "telecommuter". A frequently repeated motto is that "work is something you do, not something you travel to".A successful telecommuting program requires a management style which is based on results and not on close scrutiny of individual employees.

Telecommuting statistics

Estimates suggest that over fifty million U.S. workers (about 40% of the working population) could work from home at least part of the time, yet in 2008, only 2.5 million employees (not including the self-employed) considered their home their primary place of business.  

Occasional telecommuters— those who work remotely (though not necessarily at home) —totaled 17.2 million in 2008.

Very few companies employ large numbers of home-based full-time staff. The call center industry is one notable exception to this; several U.S.-based call centers employ thousands of home-based workers. For most employees, the option to work from home is granted as an employee benefit; most do so only part of the time.

In 2009 the Office of Personnel Management reported that approximately 102,000 Federal employees telework. In the next three years, public and private sector IT decision makers expect telework to increase by 65% and 33%, respectively.

Technology

The roots of telecommuting lay in early 1970s technology, linking satellite offices to downtown mainframes by dumb terminals using telephone lines as a network bridge. The massive ongoing decrease in cost and increase in performance and usability of personal computers forged the way to decentralize even further, moving the office to the home. By the early 1980s, these branch offices and home workers were able to connect to the company mainframe using personal computers and terminal emulation.

Long distance telework is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference calling, videoconferencing, and Voice over IP (VOIP). It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows staff and workers to communicate over a large distance, saving significant amounts of travel time and cost. As broadband Internet connections become more commonplace, more and more workers have enough bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home office to their corporate intranet and internal phone networks.

The adoption of local area networks promoted sharing of resources, and client–server computing allowed for even greater decentralization. Today, telecommuters can carry laptop PCs around which they can use both at the office and at home (and almost anywhere else). The rise of cloud computing technology and Wi-Fi availability has enabled access to remote servers via a combination of portable hardware and software.^[10]

Potential Benefits

Telecommuting offers benefits to communities, employers, and employees.

For communities, telecommuting can offer fuller employment (by increasing the employ-ability of proximal or circumstantially marginalized groups, such as Work at home parents and caregivers, the disabled, retirees, and people living in remote areas), reduces traffic congestion and traffic accidents, relieves the strain on transportation infrastructures, reduces greenhouse gases, saves fuel, reduces energy use, improves disaster preparedness, and reduces terrorism targets.

For companies, telecommuting expands the talent pool, reduces the spread of illness, reduces costs, increases productivity, reduces their carbon footprint and energy usage, offers an inexpensive method of complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), reduces turnover and absenteeism, improves employee morale, offers a continuity of operations strategy, improves their ability to handle business across multiple timezones, and hastens their cultural adaptability. Full-time telework can save companies approximately $20,000 per employee.

For individuals, telecommuting, or more specifically, work from home arrangements, improves work-life balance, reduces their carbon footprint and fuel usage, frees up the equivalent of 15 to 25 workdays a year—time they would have otherwise spent commuting, and saves between $4,000 and $21,000 per year in travel and work-related costs (not including daycare). Half-time telecommuting by those with compatible jobs (40%) and a desire to do so (79%) would save companies, communities, and employees over $650 billion a year—the result of increased productivity, reduced office expense, lower absenteeism and turnover, reduced travel, less road repairs, less gas consumption, and other savings.

Environmental Benefits

Telecommuting gained more ground in the United States in 1996 after "the Clean Air Act amendments were adopted with the expectation of reducing carbon dioxide and ground-level ozone levels by 25 percent." The act required companies with over 100 employees to encourage car pools, public transportation, shortened workweeks, and telecommuting. In 2004, an appropriations bill was enacted by Congress to encourage telecommuting for certain Federal agencies. The bill threatened to withhold money from agencies that failed to provide telecommuting options to all eligible employees.

If the 40% of the U.S. population that holds telework-compatible jobs and wants to work from home did so half of the time,

• The nation would save 280,000,000 barrels (45,000,000 m³) of oil (37% of Gulf oil imports)
• The environment would be saved the equivalent of taking 9 million cars permanently off the road.
• The energy potential from the gas savings would total more than twice what the U.S. currently produces from all renewable energy sources combined.

Employee Satisfaction

Telework flexibility is a desirable perquisite for employees. A 2008 Robert Half International Financial Hiring Index, a survey of 1,400 CFOs by recruitment firm Robert Half International, indicated that 13% consider telework the best recruiting incentive today for accounting professionals. In earlier surveys, 33% considered telework the best recruiting incentive, and half considered it second best.

Telecommuting and Work-at-Home Scams

Main article: Work at home scheme

Work-at-home and telecommuting scams are very common and are wide spread. Some of these job offers are scams appealing to a "get rich quick" audience but in fact require an investment up front with no pay off at the end.^[46] The problem is so pervasive that in 2006 the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established Project False Hopes, a federal and state law enforcement sweep that targets bogus business opportunity and work at home scams. The crackdown involved more than 100 law enforcement actions by the FTC, the Department of Justice, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and law enforcement agencies in 11 states. In four of the new FTC cases alone, consumers lost more than $30 million. "Bogus business opportunities trample on Americans’ dreams of financial independence," said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. "If a business opportunity promises no risk, little effort, and big profits, it almost certainly is a scam. These scams offer only a money pit, where no matter how much time and money is invested, consumers never achieve the riches and financial freedom promised." The FBI warned of such scams on February 2009, as well.

Of the more than 3 million web entries that surface from a search on the terms "work at home," more than 95% of the results are scams, links to scams, or other dead ends. Work at home scams earn more than $500 million per year. Home business scams account for another $250 million per year. Even the sites that claim to be scam-free often feature ads that link to scams.