Environmental Benefits of Telecommuting

^{Telecommute (photo thanks to _e.t on Flickr)}

Telecommuting and outsourcing are really starting to take off as the worldwide economic crisis is forcing employers to find new ways to reduce costs and increase employee productivity.

At first, the thought of letting an employee work unsupervised at home may be a terrifying experience for managers. But if you trust your staff to be self-motivated in their work, the payoffs can be huge. The following is a short list of environmental benefits of telecommuting:

From an environmental perspective, this represents a huge fuel savings. And with rising gas prices & shrinking salaries, it can be a great benefit for attracting and retaining quality talent.

Given that it’s common for a worker to spend upwards of 3 hours driving to-and-from work every day, the option of working from home can also cut the length of their their work day by 30%. This means extra time to spend with family, taking courses or at the gym. In the end, you wind up with a healthier, happier, and more productive employee.

Telecommuting is also good for productivity since working from home eliminates distracting social contact that may occur in an office. Once interrupted, it can sometimes take up to 30 minutes for a worker to fully regain their train of thought.

Outsourcing is a great money-saving option for companies looking to reduce HR costs. The software industry understands this, and has been outsourcing to India for years. Now, the trend is starting to take off in other areas of business as well.

What’s most exciting about this trend is that it shows how environmental stewardship and the free market economy can work closely together in a frictionless partnership. These 2 ideologies don’t have to be in conflict with each other.

Of course, the system isn’t perfect. From an IT and disaster-planning perspective, this move can be particularly challenging.

Most companies today will manually back up their computer data to some sort of physical digital media on a nightly basis. Some examples include backup tapes, DVDs, external hard drives, etc...

This is fine for corporate servers and systems physically housed in the main office, but it can quickly become a logistical nightmare when it comes to managing remote systems such as laptops. In fact, the Ponemon institute recently released a study that showed 42% of business travelers do not back up their data.

For this, and many other reasons, companies are turning to “cloud-based” or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) systems for their data protection. SaaS data protections services, such as online backup, allow companies to effortlessly manage multiple remote locations without having to invest in additional equipment, staffing, or licensing.

SaaS backup systems are 100% digital, and send data over the internet using a secure connection. This means no more lost, stolen, or broken backup tapes. Also, because these systems are fully-automated, your IT staff can devote their time to more productive activities within the organization.

Of course, as your company grows, the task of managing these remote systems will eventually get much more complicated. That’s why it’s important to choose a provider that offers a centralized management portal. This way, you can manage accounts in bulk and group users into functional categories. This will ensure more efficient administration and fewer potential configuration errors.

For more information on telecommuting, I’d strongly recommend checking out COI.com’s excellent guide, filled with up-to-date content and resources. And if your company is planning to take advantage of the telecommuting trend, make sure to first implement a disaster recovery plan that’s able to handle it.

About The Author:

Storagepipe Solutions provides email archiving, online backup and server backup solutions that help companies manage the complexities of telecommuting and operating through many geographically-dispersed remote locations. Storagepipe also writes periodic IT management articles for CIO.com.

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