Aardvark Daily

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Save the planet and money - telework

29 October 2008

I can't remember the last time I did any writing ICT work outside my own office or workshop.

Even when cutting code on contract, I would almost always do so on my own computer in my own (home) office -- it just made sense to do things that way.

And never has their been a better time for the whole concept of teleworking to be pushed, and pushed hard, both by workers and employers.

Right now we face a myriad of problems that can be very nicely addressed by the concept of teleworking.

The planet is under attack from vehicle (and other) emissions yet, every day, huge numbers of office and ICT workers board busses and trains or even drive their own cars to and from an building in the city.

Once they get there, they sit at a desk, shuffle paper, engage in phone conversations, send/receive emails, process orders, cut code, test software, and engage in many other tasks that could just as easily be performed in their own homes.

And not only are we eroding the planet's biosphere as we commute to and from work - we're also wasting a huge amount of our day just being a lump of meat that gets hauled from point A to point B and back again.

With many people commuting over an hour a day, just think of the hike to the nation's productivity if we eliminated those journeys.

That'd be an immediate productivity increase (assuming an 8-hour day) of at least 10%.

Then there's the savings in electricity...

Most offices and commercial premises tend to be designed such that they need internal lighting -- certainly most hi-rise offices will need a degree of supplemental internal lighting. Odds are that many offices also provide air-conditioning during summer, simply because having so many bodies and machines in the same area creates massive amounts of heat.

In a home-office you just draw back the curtains to get all the light you want.

And, if it gets hot, you open a window so as to allow the wind to blow through.

So the Greens and other environmental groups ought to be pushing very hard for widespread adoption of teleworking as a method of helping save the planet.

All political parties ought to be also pushing teleworking as a way of improving the nation's productivity at a time when we're going to need to be as productive as we possibly can be.

But is it going to happen?

Are employers becoming more accepting of workers that might only visit the office one or two days a week?

I know that when I was in the contract programming game, most employers were too worried that their workers might be just watching TV or snoozing on the sofa rather than actually working -- if allowed to telework. Has that changed?

One thing's for sure, some people are better suited to teleworking than others.

I've never had a problem. Getting up early is easy for me and neither TV nor afternoon snoozes hold any attraction. In the biggest problem I have with teleworking is knowing when to turn the computer off and go to bed.

However, I do know others who have tried the teleworking route and found it impossible to gain or sustain the motivation and self-discipline needed to get anything done.

Even these people however, may find that now we have broadband and very effective virtualisation tools, working from home can still be a very social and interactive experience. Webcams, instant messaging, fast file-transfers and VOIP make it easy to become part of a virtual-office. Your co-workers could just as easily be in the room next door as half a world away. Will this make it easier to telework?

If you're in a role that would lend itself to teleworking, would you prefer to work from home?

Have you tried teleworking? Did it work for you?

Should we give employers carbon credits for reducing the number of workers they force to commute into the city and sit in air-conditioned, artificially illuminated offices for 8-hours a day?

Is the time now right for mass teleworking?

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