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July 12, 2005

Formal Telework Programs Are the Way to Go

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Posted by Dave Desforges

After being on vacation for the July 4th week, I'm still catching up on my inbox. In between deleting spam and responding to folks, I read this Network World article about why every business should have a formal telework program, rather than an informal one, and must say I am in violent agreement. Of course, I may be a bit biased on this topic, as we have a formal program at Sun that does all these same things.

One thing briefly mentioned in the article as a business opportunity of a formal program, that I think deserves much more attention: the ability for companies to reduce the amount of office space they lease. How do you do that? Collect data on the work habits of the folks that occupy the space. If it's a normal office environment (meaning that the building has a good mix of several different job functions represented), I'd bet the people already aren't there 25-33% of the time. So if the individual spaces are empty at least 25% of the time, why not get rid of 20% of the floor space and furniture? And what do you do with the savings? Well, you fund the formal program, so it can, among other things:
- Implement the technology enablers for the remote workers, including an office reservation tool for when people are in the office
- Redo the remaining floor space to create more informal group spaces
- Develop remote management training for both managers and employees
- Make sure HR systems are measuring what people do, not where they do it

In essence, the real estate savings are the primary basis for the program ROI. Some of the savings fund the program office and the technology - the rest go right to the company bottom line. And this doesn't even take into account the productivity gains that will come from allowing and equiping people to work the way they want to work anyway.

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