The Environmental Benefits of Telecommuting

Nowadays, more and more companies are supporting what I like to call the "work-from-home" movement. Major corporations are flirting with the idea that working from home not only boosts productivity of their employees, but also has a huge impact on the environment. Working from home can dramatically decrease your carbon footprint, as well as give you extra time to spend on personal matters or fitting a bitmore work in.

Companies such as Sun Microsystems were one of the pioneers of this movement, having supported what it likes to call "Open Work" services for their employees for about 17 years now. Nowadays, over 11,000 of Sun's 19,000 employees are taking advantage of this program.

Some quick facts

Each employee saves approximately $1,500 per year on gas from commuting alone, all the while saving nearly 3 weeks of time wasted on commutingEach employee also reduces their energy consumption by 5,400 kW hours per yearThis program only took 24 months to implement, an impressive feat for a company of Sun's size

In the past few years, more and more companies have been adopting a similar work-from-home policy. Another good example being Cisco systems, who found similar benefits to their employee's productivity and work/life balance. An in-depth study conducted by Cisco with a group of 1,992 employees in the summer of 2009 found that the average employee telecommutes on average 2 days per week. 60% of the time saved on commuting is spent working, and the remaining 40% is spent on personal time. As a result, that year Cisco estimated it saved $227 million in productivity, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions being released into the environment as a result of commuting by 47,320 metric tons.

Working form home is made much easier due to services like GoToMeeting and Polycom, the "in-person meeting" is becoming a thing of the past. You can be anywhere, so long as you have internet access, a microphone and / or a video camera, and be able to conduct a meeting. As a freelance web developer, I find I just as affective to conduct meetings over these types of software than it is meeting in person, given my client's (and my own) busy schedules.

Thought for the day

There's really no downside to telecommuting. Why not talk to your employer about the possibility of telecommuting a few days of the week?

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