HOW WORKING FROM HOME CAN SAVE THE WORLD

In my previous two posts I outlined what I think is the main issue with our energy crisis -- that we simply consume too much.

What I propose here is one possible solution to curtail what I call "unnecessary consumption".

One of the ways is changing the way we work (at least those working office jobs) -- by spending most of our time working from home.

It certainly is a radical idea, but not far-fetched.

Think about it.

You spend 1 - 3 hours a day commuting to and from your office, either stuck in a car, or squished like a sardine on some train.

You get to your office or cubicle. You then proceed to spend most of your day in front of a computer, answering your phone, or listening in on some conference call. Colleagues or supervisors may pop their head in to say hello, chit-chat, or to discuss something work-related - but do so simply because they're in the office with you (i.e. how much less productive are you if your boss is out of town on business and checking in with you via phone/email, or physically popping in casually if (s)he happens to be in the office?).

In many organizations, they've managed to outsource so many functions overseas because it's cheaper. But what outsourcing has also shown is that you don't need to be physically in the same place to perform a lot of the duties in an organization, since so much "office work" is conducted via email, phone, instant messaging, and so forth.

For most office jobs from the admin assistant all the way up to the CEO's office -- you are spending most if not all of your time and effort using your computer or your phone to do your job. You are communicating with your colleagues for the most part via email (the dreaded cc: ) or phone anyhow, even if you're on the same floor! And a lot of the casual face-to-face could probably also be substituted for electronic communication (even if it's video teleconferencing).

It may not be realistic to have a completely virtual organization where no one ever shows up in the company's offices, but even if companies allowed its office staff to work 3 - 4 days out of the week from home -- the benefits to the employees, company and the environment could be tremendous.

Let's start with the environment.

So much of rush hour traffic is taken up by people going to and from work (duh!). Most would rather not be commuting.  So if a significant percentage of office staff were allowed to work from home the majority of the time, there would be less cars on the road during rush hour, which means less traffic and lower total energy consumption. Of course this doesn't account for every single person who has to get up and go to work everyday, but the office staff across various companies in any municipality make up a big enough percentage of the total workforce that their absence on the roads will have a positive impact on traffic and pollution.

By allowing its office staff to work mostly from home, companies reap two big benefits. First, there is less need for so much office space and infrastructure to support employees on-site, ranging from actual square footage to utilities (yet another environmental benefit) - some rather mundane but important cost items that can add up to significant savings. More importantly though, since there is less need for employees to be physically present on the premises to do their job, companies aren't limited to hiring employees locally. Much like outsourcing has shown that certain job functions could be handled virtually, the company's market for employees expands from mostly local to mostly global (or at the minimum, mostly regional). This expands the pool of talented employees that a company can hire and retain (without requiring the employee to relocate).

From an employee perspective, working mostly (if not exclusively) from home on a permanent basis can be a godsend. While a company's pool for talent has expanded because of telecommuting, so would an employee's job prospects. An accounting professional may not need to relocate from one city to another simply to take on another job. Moreover, by taking out the commute, one's morale and productivity will likely be higher - which is mutually beneficial for the employee as well as the employer. Put it this way -- a lot of us are plain cranky from having to commute, and while it may be hard to measure the effect of long commutes on worker productivity, anyone who has had to sit in horrendous traffic is probably not as productive as (s)he could be by the time (s)he arrives in the office, nor are they particularly enthusiastic about doing anything once (s)he gets home after work.

Moreover, the time spent commuting is mostly "dead time" - time where you're not really doing anything other than being in transition from one place to another. That is, unless you are on a conference call, texting your kids, and eating your breakfast burrito simultaneously as you sit in traffic. And this dead time adds up to anywhere from 1.5 - 3 hours a day.

By creating a more virtual workplace, salaried employees can also better manage their time. There is no more "face time" at work - you simply do whatever it is you need to do, and can schedule your day more effectively and efficiently. For workers who have children to raise, this can also help make the tradeoffs between raising kids and having a career less steep and more manageable. For example, you may have a conference call at 8am, but can leave the work of marking up a draft presentation until 10pm when the kids are in bed, so your subordinate gets your markups first thing in the morning. Rather than being forced to do most of your work in the 8-10 hour block that you're in the office, you can break up your workload into different chunks across the entire day (and how many office workers particularly senior managers are already doing some of their most productive work after they get home from work anyhow?).

While there is no substitute for human contact, the reality is, interpersonal contact in the office is becoming more impersonal, with face-to-face communication increasingly being replaced with email and conference calls. If workplace communication is going that route and there isn't a way to stop it, then there is less of a reason to be physically all in one cubicle farm in the first place.