Many of these Facts & Stats came from our old site.

We think they are interesting and show both how things have changed and yet remain the same.

More to come!

British Telecom, which has 80,000 employees, found productivity rose 31 per cent among its 9,000 teleworkers, due to lack of disruptions, stress and commuting time.

Telecommuting can also save recruitment and training costs because it builds loyalty. The “old” AT&T found two-thirds of workers offered jobs by competitors remained with the company, citing telework as a major factor in their decision.

The number of employed Americans who performed any kind of work from home, with a frequency range from as little as 1 day a year to full time, grew from 41.3 million in 2003 to 44.4 million in 2004, a 7.5% growth rate.

2004 American Interactive Consumer Survey conducted by The Dieringer Research Group

Teleworkers who worked at home during business hours at least one day per month increased in the past year from 23.5 million to 24.1 million, a 2.6% increase.  Of that 24.1 million, 16.5 million are self employed, a 4.4% increase over 2003. This 24.1 million represents 18.3 percent of employed adult Americans, nearly one-fifth of the workforce.

2004 American Interactive Consumer Survey conducted by The Dieringer Research Group

In 2003 there were 4.4 million teleworkers working at home with broadband. By 2004 the number soared to 8.1 million, an 84% increase.

2004 American Interactive Consumer Survey conducted by The Dieringer Research Group

According to a compensation survey of 1,400 CFOs conducted by Robert Half International, 46% said telecommuting is second only to salary as the best way to attract top talent. However, 33% said telecommuting was the top draw. CFOs were asked, “In your opinion, which one of the following incentives is most effective in attracting top accounting candidates?” Their responses:

* Offering higher starting salaries than competitors – 46%

* Allowing telecommuting and/or flexible work schedules – 33%

* Offering signing bonuses – 5%

* Offering extra vacation days – 3%

* Benefits/benefit package/insurance – 2%

* Other – 3%

* Don’t know/no answer – 8%

According to NORTEL, the cost to relocate an employee to another city can run as high as $100,000.  It can cost $2,500 just to move an employee from one cube to another.

More from NORTEL, the entire cost to outfit and equip an employee to telework is made up in the first year if only 3.5 days away from work can be saved, i.e. time lost due to a doctor’s appointment, ill child, employee illness, other personal situation that requires time away from an office. That number drops to 1.5 days in subsequent years.

The more than 100 MDOT (Maryland Department of Transportation) employees who telework represent a 27% increase in productivity in teleworking employees.

The bottom line, thanks to teleworking, according to Dow Chemical: Administrative costs have dropped 50% annually (15% of which was attributed to commercial real estate costs.) Productivity increased by 32.5% (10% through decreased absenteeism, 16% by working at home and 6.5% by avoiding the commute.)

CCH Inc., an Illinois-based human resource consultant, estimates that businesses lose $789 in payroll per employee per year because of emergency time off. That means employers with as few as 20 employees lose nearly $16,000 per year, while large employers with more than 2,000 workers suffer losses in excess of $1.5 million. And those figures don’t take into account the cost of lost productivity or the overtime pay needed to pay others to pick up the slack.

There were 4 million teleworkers in the US in 1995.

FIND/SVP

The number of teleworkers in the US increased from 19.6 MM in 1999 to 23.6MM in 2000 to 28.8 in 2001.

Source, ITAC

39% of US workers would like to telework, but only 31% feel their employers will let them.

U. of Connecticut Study

17% or the workers in Finland telework.

Eustats

JD Edwards teleworkers are from 20 to 25% more productive than their office workers.

Chicago Sun Times, 10/99

A 40 minute commute equates to 8 working weeks per year.

Colorado Telework Coalition

20% of teleworkers are supervised from out of state.

ITAC, 2000

Office space for the average worker costs $10,000 per year.

Telework can cut corporate real estate costs from 25 to 90%.

PC World

The manager/staff ratio in a virtual organization is 1:40.  It’s 1:4 in a traditional office.

Ft. Lauderdale Sentinel

American Express teleworkers produce 43% more business than their office workers.

Colorado Telework Coalition

63% of absentee related costs can be saved per teleworker.

American Management Association

Compaq teleworkers are from 15-45% more productive.

Colorado Telework Coalition

IBM reduced real estate costs in the US by from 40-60%.

Telecommuting Review

More than 65 % of teleworkers are employed by companies with fewer than 100 employees.

IDC/LINKFLASH

Approximately 22% of teleworkers are employed by companies with more than 1000 employees.

IDC/LINKFLASH

53% of teleworkers say the ability to work at home is important to their employment choice.

ITAC, 1999

65% of home teleworkers are males vs. 44% of non-teleworkers.

ITAC, 2000

The average commute of a teleworker when not teleworking is 18 miles.

ITAC, 1999

Teleworkers save an average 53 minutes of commuting each day they don’t drive to work.

ITAC, 1999

Employers can save 63% of absenteeism costs per teleworker per year.

ITAC, 1999

Teleworkers typically work 1-2 days per week (5.5days/month) from home.

ITAC 1999

The potential US employer annual savings through telework from reduced absenteeism, recruiting costs, and from increased productivity could be as high as $441 billion.

ITAC, 1999

67% of teleworkers are married or from couple households.

ITAC, 1999

40% of teleworkers can schedule multiple personal tasks and errands on the same day that they work from home.

ITAC, 1999

26% of teleworkers work before or after hours so they can meet personal tasks and errands.

ITAC, 1999

Commuters, when adding errands to the commute, drive 7.9 additional miles.

ITAC, 1999

US Regions w/highest per capita densities of teleworkers are  New England,  Mountain & Pacific.

ITAC, 2000

33% of Canadians would prefer to telework over a 10% wage increase.

Ekos Research

Fewer than 1% of telecommuters want to stop once they have started to telecommute.

Nortel Networks

Industry Canada reports productivity gains of up to 50% by teleworkers.

Trade-Marks Branch

Unisys Outsourcing, with 100% of employees teleworking, reduced office space by 90%, saving $1 million annually.

MWCOG, 1999

Teleworkers work 39% from a spare bedroom, followed by 10.5% from the dining room.

ITAC, 2000

Of home-based teleworkers, 38% desired more home teleworking.

ITAC, 2000

43% of Canadians would change jobs to an employer allowing telework.

Ekos Research

State Encourages Flexibility for Baltimore-Washington Commuters

 
A recent report found that area commuters spend between 50 and 70 hours a year stuck in rush hour traffic. For more than a decade, state government has allowed its employees to craft more flexible schedules and is urging others to follow suit.

February 20, 2011 By Alexander Pyles | CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE

Zina Brown doesn’t worry about her commute to work each day from suburban White Marsh to the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus.
She takes her time, leaving her home sometime before 9 a.m., then driving an easy 15 or 20 minutes, well after commuters from the morning rush are parked and at work. She stays at work until 7 p.m., again missing rush hour.

“It definitely helps, as far as being able to cut down on the traffic and driving and helping me to save on gas,” said Brown, 47, of her 10-hour-a-day, Monday through Thursday schedule. “I’m grateful to be able to work the flex schedule.”

Brown has benefited from state government’s position toward work schedules, which since 1999 has allowed employees more flexible schedules and telecommuting hours, said Colleen Denston, government affairs director for the Maryland Society of Human Resource Management State Council. The state has encouraged private businesses to follow suit, and some organizations, like Johns Hopkins, are doing so.

But overall, formal telework and flex programs at Maryland businesses are hit-and-miss, said Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the Telework Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “Some companies totally embrace it, and some totally ignore it,” Wilsker said. “And the traffic here is ridiculous.”

Wilsker’s comments echo some of the key findings of a report released last month by the Texas Transportation Institute, which underscored the extent of the traffic problem in Baltimore and Washington and urged workers and their bosses to be more flexible with schedules to reduce rush-hour congestion.

Urban roadways around Baltimore and Washington, D.C., are among the most congested in the nation, said the institute’s Urban Mobility Report, which measured traffic on freeways and major streets in 101 cities.

Washington and Chicago tied for the most time commuters spend sitting in traffic, with each being delayed about 70 hours a year, the report said. Baltimore ranked fifth, with about 50 wasted commuter hours per person a year.

Tim Lomax, a research engineer and co-author of the report, said fixing the problem isn’t as simple as improving infrastructure. “If you just put this off on the (government) agencies to solve, you’re missing out on the possible solutions,” he said.

Wilsker agreed with Lomax’s assessment, saying widening highways or adding roads is expensive and unnecessary. “We have enough road, but we have too many cars,” Wilsker said. “We don’t need (Interstate) 95 to be widened any more. We need to take some of the cars off.”

About 27 million Americans work flexible schedules in their full-time jobs, or 27.5 percent of full-time wage and salary workers, according to a 2004 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is down from 28.6 percent in 2001. No study has been conducted since 2004.

While statistics are not kept on employees working alternate schedules in Maryland, Denston said telecommuting has become a large movement in state government. Since creation of a pilot program in 1999, the state has been “encouraging employers to follow in their footsteps,” she said. Denston did not have specific examples of agencies or businesses doing it well.

Wilsker said state government could do more. “They could be aware of it, they could promote it,” he said. He added many employers have concerns that prevent them from adopting formal programs. He said businesses always have the same question: “How do I know they’re working?” This concern, he said, is his favorite, “because how do you know they’re working in the office?”

The Maryland Department of Budget and Management asks state agencies to allow at least 10 percent of employees to telework up to four times a month per person, but agencies are not forced to reach that number, said Sheryl Hagood, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Services and Benefits.

Lomax said if employers at all levels could offer more flexible work schedules, telecommuting or promote ride-share programs, the time spent sitting in traffic each year around Baltimore and Washington could be reduced.

“Some days, traffic’s just really horrible,” Lomax said. “[Employees should say] ‘It may be more productive for me to work at home three hours in the morning to get on the road, on the train and get to work.'”

In Washington, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employees are among those who can work flexible schedules, as can most federal employees, according to policies described by the Office of Personnel Management.

“You have to work 80 hours within a two-week period,” said Stacey Standish, a BLS spokeswoman. “But you can kind of split that up how you want, working a certain amount between 9:30 (a.m.) and 3 (p.m.).”

The Social Security Administration headquarters in Baltimore, a large Maryland employer not far from the heavily traveled I-695 Beltway, gives all of its employees flexible scheduling options. “All headquarters employees are on flexible schedules, and everyone is eligible to be on alternate work schedules,” said spokeswoman Kia Green. “Also, there are employees who are authorized to participate in a telework program, and there are employees who carpool/rideshare, etc.”

Johns Hopkins Medicine, one of the state’s 10 largest private employers according to the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, has made it a point to be flexible with its approximately 32,000 employees, said Peter Tollini, director of human resources consulting and labor relations at Hopkins.

Some who work at Hopkins, like Brown, are allowed to work four 10-hour days and have a three-day weekend. Others can work three 12-hour days. Employees can also establish flexible hours within each day, with the permission of supervisors, so long as eight hours are worked between “core hours” of 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., Tollini said.

Hopkins encourages employees to use rideshare programs. Several private companies help coordinate ridesharing to Hopkins, and so does the Maryland Transit Administration’s rideshare program. “We adopted a formal program to encourage this type of flexibility about two years ago,” Tollini said. “One, to make it more attractive to employees. The other…gas prices were spiking at the time [and] we were looking at ways to stretch people’s paychecks. We try to leave it as flexible as possible.”

Though many employees at Hopkins are doctors and nurses who are allowed some flex but must be scheduled to provide 24/7 coverage, nonmedical personnel are often allowed a number of telecommuting hours each week, Tollini said.
For management types like Tollini, flex hours are built into the job. He said he works flex hours every day. “I get here as early as I can, and try to get out before it’s too late,” Tollini said. “The good part is, you get to miss rush hour.”

Telework Could Save America $750 Million a Day

February 9, 2011 – According to the Telework Research Network, if the 41 million Americans with telework-compatible jobs worked from home just one day a week the U.S. savings would total $772 million including:

• $494 million in commuter costs
• $185 million from 2.3 million barrels of oil saved
• $  93 million from 775 fewer traffic accidents

Plus the environment would be spared 423,000 tons of greenhouse gas-the equivalent of taking 77,000 cars off the road for a year.

Inspired by then Virginia Governor Tim Kaine in 2009, advocacy organizations throughout the country have joined the effort to raise awareness of the environmental, economic, and societal benefits of telework. Over 14,000 have already   pledged to participate.

“The savings above are just the tip of the iceberg,” says Kate Lister, principal researcher of the Telework Research Network an organization that specializes in evaluating the financial impact of workplace flexibility. “If you add the many employer, employee and community benefits, once-weekly telework could save the nation $350 billion a year and potentially eliminate our oil imports from both Libya and Kuwait.”

For companies, those benefits include increased productivity, reduced office space, and lower turnover and absenteeism. The Telework Research Network’s web-based Telework Savings Calculator, shows that companies could save over $6,500 per once-a-week teleworker. “We’ve built a conservative model,” says Tom Harnish, senior scientist at the Telework Research Network. “The assumptions are based on a synthesis of hundreds of studies and real life examples. They recognize that not everyone wants to or can work from home, that not all driving is eliminated, that home offices use energy too, and that occasional telework offers only minimal office space savings.”

Editor Notes: Regional impacts by city, county, or state are available on request. See: www.Undress4Success.com

Contact:
Kate Lister
TeleworkResearchNetwork.com
Kate@TeleworkResearchNetwork.com
Telephone: 760-703-0377 or 760-473-2574 (Pacific)Relevant White Papers:
Workshifting Benefits: The Bottom Line (download 2.3 MB)
– This 23 page paper examines the bottom line benefits of telework for individuals, communities, companies of various sizes, and the U.S. as a whole.

Broadband and Telecommuting: Helping the U.S. Environment and the Economy

December 2010

Joseph P. Fuhr,
Economics Widener University Chester, PA, USA, and The American Consumer Institute, Washington, D.C., USA.

Stephen Pociask,
The American Consumer Institute, Washington, D.C., USA.

ABSTRACT
This study examines how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. through the widespread delivery of broadband services and the expansion of telecommuting. Telecommuting can reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next 10 years by approximately 588.2 tons of which 247.7 million tons is due to less driving, 28.1 million tons is due to reduced office construction, and 312.4 million tons because of less energy usage by businesses. This paper explores these broadband services and their effects on the environment, specifically as a means to achieve better and cleaner energy use, while enhancing economic output, worker productivity and the standard of living of American consumers.

Click here to read the entire report: Broadband and Telecommuting _ Helping the U.S. Environment and the Economy

Telecommuting and its Environmental Impact – Fact Sheet

Reduced commuter traffic helps our environment in three ways:
•  It reduces toxic gases and dust particles spewed into our atmosphere,
•  It reduces chemicals washed into our waterways, wells, rivers & estuaries,
•  It reduces the need to have to find new sources of oil.

Every week 32,000,000 Americans could be telecommuting at least one day. They would not drive 1,260,800,000 miles (equal to 51,000 times round the Earth); would save 74,164,700 gallons of gas, worth $111,247,050.
POLLUTION SAVINGS would be 1,081,955,230 lbs, or 540,978 tons. The pollutants saved would be Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxide, Particulate Matter and Hydrocarbons.

Additionally, by not wasting time in traffic, telecommuters could be MORE PRODUCTIVE for the equivalent of 4,000,000 extra workdays every week. Productivity increases, typical for telecommuters, would provide a bottom line benefit to the economy of $311 billion yearly.

In the D.C. Metro Region alone, 850,000 employees say their job activities could be telecommuted, and that they would telecommute if allowed to. However, only 380,000 do telecommute currently. The unsatisfied demand is thus equal to 14,570,000 commute vehicle miles that have the potential to be avoided every week (586 times round Earth) – 857,058 gallons of gasoline saved, and 368 metric tons of pollutants.

On average, at the personal level, a 30 miles round trip commute = 1.5 gallons saved = $6.00 saved in gas costs alone, or ~ $20.00 in terms of reduced total cost of vehicle ownership (repairs, Insurance, depreciation, gas etc) Also, 25.7 Lbs. of pollutants will not be emitted into the air that we all breathe. Multiply all #s by 48 to get yearly savings (52 weeks less holidays etc. Assumes 1 day/wk telecommuted).