UNITED STATES — As prices at the pump move ever skyward, Americans are re-evaluating their driving habits and making appropriate changes where possible. For some, that means staying home from the office – to work.Workplace analyst John Challenger believes that the quiet increase in full-time and part-time telecommuters is the head of a movement that could ultimately turn the United States into a “telecommuter nation.”
According to Challenger, who provides outplacement services to employers via his agency, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. companies are increasingly seeing absences due to high commute costs. “It’s still under the radar,” he explains, “but as gas prices hit $3 a gallon, it’s beginning to make a real impact on people’s decisions with their employer.”
Given that many workers not only must face ugly financial realities at the gas pump, but also pay road and bridge tolls in addition to automobile maintenance fees and insurance, it’s hardly a surprise that some may opt for a day home in an ironic bid to make ends meet. Given the fact that the International Telework Association and Council reports that 26 million Americans actually work from their homes at least once day a month and 22 million do so at least once a month, the idea of keeping workers productive while helping them avoid freeway congestion and inflated transportation prices by allowing them to work out of their home doesn’t seem as far fetched as it once might have.
Outrageous gasoline prices aren’t the only reason that workers in the near and far future might prefer to stay home and get their jobs done, though. In addition to transit strikes and freeway construction delays, the modern employee must also deal with the possibility of pandemic and terrorist attack.
Although some jobs clearly require that employees be on-site regardless of circumstances, more and more companies are realizing that workers with good self-discipline can often achieve equal or even superior results from home. Not all employers are open to the telecommuting option, however, including many tech oriented companies that one might be inclined to think would embrace the idea.
Paul Kole, a telecommunications consultant in Cambridge, MA explains that “Managers think there’s a loss of control; that workers are going to goof off. But often, they work harder.”
Challenger believes that some of the distrust of telecommuting comes from the fact that the country has “a century of workplace habits that involve going into the office and having a supervisor who sits over our shoulder and makes sure we work.” Today’s workplace, however, doesn’t require that kind of monitoring and, in fact, gets a better idea about the productivity of its employees by using what Challenger calls “metrics-based” performance standards, rewarded with performance-based pay.
Even when work can be done remotely, though, the very real possibility of employees developing a sense of isolation or loss of connection and community with others within the company need to be considered and addressed, by either employer or employee, if not both.
Ultimately, according to Challenger, “Companies should be addressing the issue now, before they lose people. People are concerned that it’s too expensive to come to work. Companies need to come up with alternative solutions to make life easier.”
