The benefits of business telecommunication

Business telecommunication is the key to working from home

Commuting is the act of physically going from one location to another in order to work with clients or colleagues. But concerns about conserving energy, protecting the environment and time spent away from family have all recently lead to a dramatic increase in business telecommunication.

Business telecommuting is the practice of working from home or another fixed location while still effectively connecting with others. The benefits are many including greater flexibility and lower overhead costs. Depending on the industry, people working from home can easily accomplish as much as they would in an office, sometimes even more by avoiding long commutes and chatty office mates.

The benefits business telecommunication:

Conserves Energy: Cars, busses, trains and planes use a tremendous amount of energy. Telecommuting to work saves vehicle-related resources from gas to equipment repairs to wear and tear on roads. Business telecommutication also eliminates office-related expenses such as heating, cooling and lighting as well as rental space.
Preserves The Environment: Parking lots alone monopolize much more land than people realize. If more people telecommuted to work this land could be used for parks, not parking lots. Also, one of the largest sources of harmful pollution is the automobile. Business telecommunication not only reduces the number of cars congested on the road, it also reduces the number of accidents and injuries caused by people rushing to get to the office.
Promotes Family Togetherness: Business telecommunication reduces the stress caused when a family member is away from home working too many hours in an office. Telecommuters can arrange their schedules around their families in order to enjoy quality time with them. Telecommuters can spend the time they would have been commuting with spouses and children. Also telecommuting offers workers the flexibility of living wherever they want instead of being forced to move if an employer requires it.
Improves Productivity: Much time is wasted by people who commute to work, not only during the drive itself but at the office. Business telecommunication means no strict dress code, no worries about the weather or traffic jams, and no distractions caused by co-workers. Also workers are free to move to other cities or states without worrying about losing their jobs.

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.