In the Areas of Conserving Energy, Protecting the Environment, Promoting Family Values, and Enhancing Worker Safety
Telecommuting (working from home or a "remote workstation") has shown increasing attention across the United States in the last several years, as well as growing acceptance [1-38]. People commute in cars, buses, planes and trains to work and to other activities on a regular basis; commuting is part of our lives. However the actual necessity to physically change location in order to accomplish such tasks has recently been challenged on the basis of concerns for energy conservation, the impact on our environment, a refocusing on family values, and other issues. Ten advantages future workers and our society in general might see are presented and discussed.
1. Conserving Energy
Although energy utilization will continue to grow as we expand our industry and improve our standard of living, efficient use of energy will always be of prime importance. By telecommuting to work instead of using more conventional methods, there is a great potential to save energy. The three major areas where energy can be conserved are:
Vehicle-related materials and resources;
Highway-related materials and resources; and
Office-related materials and resources.
A tremendous amount of energy is required to produce transportation equipment such as automobiles, buses, trains and jet aircraft. If telecommuting is promoted, there will be less use of this equipment and less energy will be required for production, maintenance and repair of this equipment. Fuel resources needed to operate this equipment will be reduced, as well The building and repair of highways and maintenance requires a large consumption of energy, not only in the operation of the highway construction and repair equipment, but also in the manufacture and transportation of the required materials. An increase in the percentage of people telecommuting to work will decrease the need for expanded highways and associated road maintenance. The first two areas related to getting to work. Once a person arrives at work in a central office location, he or she represents another energy consumer, often times magnified many times over what would be required at home. The office building has heating, cooling and lighting needs, and the materials to build it and maintain it require energy in their production and transportation. Working from home requires only modest incremental demands on energy for heating, cooling and lighting needs, and makes effective use of existing building space and facilities.
2. Preserves Our Environment by reducing land use requirements for highway expansion and by reducing slow-moving automobile emissions. Highways and parking lots are continuing to consume large quantities of our land surface area. If a larger percentage of people telecommuted to work, existing highways could be reduced in size and parking lots could be converted to parks. One of the largest sources of pollution is the automobile. This is especially true of slow-moving automobiles that often exist in heavy, congested rush hour traffic. Of course, one solution to this problem is increasing the size and number of our roads, but an even better solution is to encourage those who can to telecommute, so we will not need additional highways, parking lots, and airports in the future. And, when we do choose to drive our cars, it will be in fresh air, on less crowded streets, when we are not in a hurry to get somewhere.
3. Promotes Safety by reducing highway use by people rushing to get to work. There are thousands of traffic-related deaths every year and thousands more people severely injured trying to get to work. In addition there is substantial property loss associated with traffic accidents that occur as people take chances in order to make the mad dash from home to the office. Often times people have made the trip so often that they are not really alert, often fall asleep and frequently become impatient by traffic jambs and slower travelers. More and more people are becoming frustrated by the insistence that they come into the office every day, when, in fact most, if not all of their work could be accomplished from their home or sites much closer to their home.
4. Improves Health by reducing stress related to compromises made between Family and Work. The stress associated with commuting back and forth to work away from the home is real, and telecommuting offers a renewed opportunity for workers to rediscover the joys of working from their homes. This is a rediscovery, because centuries ago it was commonplace for "cottage industries" to exist where work was produced in ones home, often times incorporating the talents of the entire family in producing a product. With advanced telecommunications technology a large segment of our workers can return to this mode of "work-at-home" productivity not compromising either their Family living or their Job productivity.
5. Allows closer proximity to and involvement with family. Working in the home offers people a greater opportunity to share quality time with family members, to promote family values and develop stronger family ties and unity. Also, time saved through telecommuting could be spent with family members constructively in ways that promote and foster resolution of family problems. The strength of a society derives from the strength of its individuals and the strength of its individuals often times derives from the strength of their families.
6. Allows proximity to extended family (location where employee has "roots"). There are a wide range of scenarios that constitute what is best for any given individual or any given family. However, often times people are forced to leave a community where they grew up and have a large extended family of parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and all sorts of family relations. Many people long for the opportunity to return "home" where they can spend their lives with old friends and family. While this is not true for some people, there are a large number of people who stand to enhance the quality of life through the flexibility that telecommuting offers. Through telecommuting, a person can work for a company in one part of the world, while living in another.
7. Allows selection of a remote worksite that is mutually acceptable to all family members and allows spouse an opportunity to pursue his/her career. How many times have you seen the situation where a husband or wife has a job opportunity in another town and must choose between the new opportunity and no opportunity, because their spouse does not want to or cannot change employment? If either person could telecommute, the decision is much easier, allowing for a more congenial relationship and reducing the potential stress and possible breakup of a relationship.
8. Allows employee freedom to choose an environment that is more suitable from a social and economic standpoint and to live in an area with people of common interests. For couples as well as singles, people who can telecommute do not have to quit their jobs and move, when they determine they are not compatible with the town they are living in. This occurs often, following a divorce or when a single person discovers an incompatibility with the area surrounding his or her employers business. Telecommuting affords an employee the freedom to look for another place to live, where he or she can feel comfortable both from a social, as well as an economic standpoint and live near people that have common interests. All this, while remaining loyal and productive for their employer.
9. Improves Productivity: Time saved can be used to improve productivity. Much time is spent on unnecessary activities by people who commute back and forth to work in the conventional manner. Time is wasted from the minute one gets up to go to work until the minute one goes to bed after returning from work. With telecommuting, one no longer needs to be always preparing for the commute and for being "presentable". One can go to work simply by tossing on a robe and slippers, grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down to the terminal. You no longer worry if the car will start, if your clothes are neat, or if you're perfectly groomed. That may still be important to you, but it no longer has to be. And you no longer are interrupted by all the idle chatter that inevitably takes place at the central work place - some of it useful for your work, but a lot of it just a waste of time and a perpetual interruption. (Now you can stay up on latest rumors at your convenience using electronic mail.) For persons with health problems or handicapped persons, working from home may offer some comforting and productive opportunities, as well.
10. Reduces number of people "job hopping"; decreasing training requirements. Many people job hop each year, and much of this "job hopping" is because people want to move to a new location. They enjoy their work, and they would keep working for their present employer, but they do not like their present location. If people could move without losing their jobs, because they could telecommute, the amount of retraining would be reduced substantially. This would increase overall employee productivity while keeping loyal and productive employees on board.
The ten major advantages to telecommuting have been presented. As one specific example of how telecommuting relates to some of the Energy, Environmental, Safety and Health issues we have just presented, consider a recent and growing concern regarding the expansion of our highway system to accommodate increased usage, particularly near population centers. To address this concern it would be prudent to carefully consider "telecommuting" as a viable element of any future plan to preserve and protect our environment from the encroachment and pollution caused by highway expansions.
Some people propose that a "Paving Moratorium" be invoked to limit the expansion and extension of highways throughout the country. If a paving moratorium was limited to stopping the expansion of existing roadways, that would make sense. If it interpreted as stopping the creation of new highways that would allow people to access a new home in the country or explore remote parts of this wonderful world, that would be unreasonable. The real problem with highway use lies in the fact that a large number of people are traveling back and forth to work unnecessarily. As stated before, energy is wasted by the unnecessary use of materials for construction of unneeded automobiles and highway expansion.
Environmental damage is inflicted by auto emissions and the consumption of land by enlarged highways and an increasing area for parking. There is unfortunately a huge waste of time, money and human lives in the process. This is an area of great importance to our energy, environment, safety and health, and solutions to commuter transportation should be carefully examined. Can you really believe that you can stop people from enlarging or paving highways and thereby make a significant positive impact on the environment? One needs to examine the root causes for massive expansion of highway systems and widening of freeways. One of the reasons often given for highway expansion is that people need to commute to work. But do they?
Perhaps we should examine the contention that people need to commute to work. What percentage of people could actually stay home and use telecommuting to effectively accomplish their work? Commuting to work seems to be a major element of the transportation needs and a root cause for the push to expand highways. Perhaps efforts should be expended to encourage more people to telecommute using computers and modems rather than cars, petroleum and highway space. That effort would improve our environment and simultaneously help a lot of people who suffer the pain and sometimes death of rush hour traffic. In the past transportation has not been considered an environmental issue. The focus of most environmentalists was spotted owls, wetlands, old growth forests, etc. The automobile and all the systems required to support it have been taken for granted by environmentalists. In fact, many environmentalists rely heavily on their cars to get them back and forth to work.
Cars should be used primarily for activities that cannot be undertaken easily by "telecommuting", for example driving to the mountains for backpacking with family and friends, traveling to a river or lake for fishing and swimming, taking a family sightseeing tour, or going out for some family fun and entertainment. Cars, buses or trains may not be necessary in the future move weary workers back and forth to an office where one routinely sits down in front of a computer and performs simulations, word processing, data entry, reporting and numerous other such tasks.
Granted, not everyone could telecommute, nor would everyone want to, but many, many people could and would, right now, if the incentives were there. And many more can and will, in the future, when telecommuting is promoted and facilitated to the degree that highway expansion is. We should raise our sights further and ask ourselves what is really causing us to use cars so much and what can be done to reduce any excess and unnecessary use. Artificially imposing a ban on highway construction will not solve the problem, it would just frustrate many people who want to travel. Instead, it may be better to promote telecommuting, by encouraging employers to offer incentives for telecommuters and by bringing this to the attention of local and national governments. All employers should be encouraged to support "telecommuting", which is very good for our environment.
We do not necessarily need extensive involvement by the government. However, attention of local and national governments may be needed in order to alert them to the fact that we may not really require larger highway systems, and that tax dollars spent in that fashion may be wasteful. The environment is becoming part of the "business sense" of *all* organizations, public and private. The conservation of resources that could be derived from telecommuting are significant enough to capture the attention of management, now. But the environmental benefits of telecommuting are just part of the equation. Energy conservation, enhancing family values and other components are also involved. These components, coupled with environmental concerns will eventually outweigh the concerns that some employers have regarding remote workstations and telecommuting.
We are on the verge of a new era of telecommunications that will impact our lives and how we work and how we become productive in the 21st century. Telecommuting may prove to be an effective means to enhance our lives and improve our productivity on this new frontier and our strategy should be to find ways as a National Laboratory to enhance the capabilities for future telecommuters.
