A Telecommuting Progress Report

I've written several blogs about flexible work arrangements and telecommuting. As an early adopter of the technologies and policies which support remote workers, here's an update on our progress over the past year.

Some staff members are working from home on a full-time basis and others are doing so only one or two days a week. We have about 10-15% of the IT workforce (35 of our 350 staff) who work at home on any given day.

What is the impact? 35 people x 260 workdays = 9,100 days per year saved in commuting. That's 9,100 car-days off the road. This reduces the demand for parking, office space, and most importantly the employee stress/strain of fighting traffic.

From a management perspective, the past year has been very successful. Employee turnover is at 2%, employee satisfaction is high, and productivity has improved. Employees spend 2-3 hours a day working instead of preparing for their workday, commuting, and returning home.

Costs of the technology to empower home workers has been low - a partial subsidy of home internet connections, a fixed amount of prepaid cell phone time added to employee paychecks, and the use of the Juniper SSLVPN for secure remote access/desktop sharing.

Personally, I have reduced travel, but not quite as much as I would like. Cisco has agreed to work with me on a Telepresence pilot in my home. I'll be using a CTS 500 Telepresence unit over my Verizon FIOS connection to have virtual meetings with collaborators in Washington, Japan, and throughout the Harvard empire. Harvard is currently installing 5 Telepresence units at its various schools and I will have seamless access to all these locations from my home network. Ideally, I will use this device to improvement my carbon footprint, reduce the burden of airline travel in today's challenging security environment, and most importantly recover the time it takes just to get to my meeting destinations.

Overall, I could not be happier. The policies and technologies of flexible work arrangements work well and we have yet to discover a downside.