JALA Thoughts

Two interesting articles have come to my attention, both pointing to the growing importance of telecommuting. The first, on-line from National Public Radio, analyzes the locational distribution of homes suffering from the sub-prime housing crisis. Titled: Home Prices Drop Most in Areas with Long Commute, the article notes that much of the drop in real estate prices comes from those who face large bills for fuel. Specifically:

Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.

The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl.

The second article, also on-line but a blog from Tech Republic, discusses the four main trends observed at Interop (a large high tech trade show) by Executive Editor Jason Hiner. Trend 3 of the 4 is Supporting a decentralized workforce. Here’s a key quote:

At Interop, one vendor told me that 70% of all employees now work outside of the corporate headquarters. Another vendor told me that number is actually up to 80%. One representative of a very large IT company said that it recently moved into a new headquarters and that the employee-to-workstation ratio is now 4-to-1 (up from 1.5-to-1). That’s because they now have a lot more mobile employees and they actively encourage employees to work from home during times they don’t need to come into the office.

Admittedly, the attendees at Interop come from the infotech-intensive part of the economy but it is clear that the growth of acceptance of telecommuting continues. What can we infer from these two articles?

Continue reading Mounting evidence

As the price of oil continues to increase, and the price of gas heads toward—or exceeds—$4.00 per gallon in the US, there is the anticipated hue and cry for lowering gas prices. Presidential candidates McCain and Clinton have proposed eliminating the gas tax for the summer at least.

Here’s why I think that the gas tax should be raised instead.

Continue reading Why gas taxes should INcrease

Yesterday the price of oil exceeded $113 per barrel. Today the Financial Times included an article to the effect that Russia had reached its peak in output last year and would likely not exceed that production level in the foreseeable future. Another production peak heard from. According to the article, Leonid Fedun, of Lukoil, estimated that a trillion dollars would be needed in new exploration and development investments to sustain last year’s level of production for the next 20 years. I suspect Mr. Fedun is an optimist.

Is this another symptom of the decline in global oil production or is it just an anomaly of the Russian situation? Continue reading Another shoe drops

In my experience, as well as that of most of my friends, one of the most powerful reasons for working for a large organization is its health care plan. Big organizations, both public and private, usually have health insurance with coverage and prices that are unattainable by individuals. This is also one of the primary reasons why budding entrepreneurs decide not to take the entrepreneurial leap and go it alone. Quality health care is a powerful safety net. Yet, according to the Center for American Progress: “The share of private-sector workers with a pension dropped from 50.3% in 2000 to 43.2% in 2006, and the share of people with employer-provided health insurance dropped from 64.2% to 59.7%.” So that bastion of support seems to be eroding.

But what if quality health care were available to everyone, regardless of their employer? Then the fear of disaster if you became ill between job changes would vanish because you’d still be covered. The dread of physical and/or financial ruin would evaporate. How could this be possible in the good old US?

Both leading Democratic candidates for President are proposing some form of government-regulated health insurance that would cover most Americans. The Republicans shriek in horror at this idea and scorn it with the label “Socialized Medicine”, something apparently almost as bad as HIV in their minds. As Jacob S. Hacker says in the Washington Post of March 23rd: “Never mind that nobody is proposing to turn doctors into public employees and hospitals into government institutions — the literal meaning of socialized medicine.” What’s being proposed is portable health insurance; insurance you have regardless of your means of income, that goes where you go. The government’s role is to regulate the quality of care and to seriously reduce the inflation rate of such care (Hacker’s article goes into more detail).

The connection between portable health care, telework, and entrepreneurship is obvious, to me, at least. Continue reading Telework, entrepreneurship and “Socialized Medicine”

The world is finally beginning to perceive that oil might just be more dear in the future. Today comes another news note pointing to the concept that we may have reached the peak of global oil production. The news is that discovery of new oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico has hit the lowest level in a decade. Specifically, according to the energy consultancy Wood MacKenzie as quoted in today’s Financial Times and elsewhere, the 2007 new reserves were less than half of those found in 2006. Continue reading Peaking out?

To those of you who are as yet uncommitted: On this quadrennial extra day of the year I urge you to make the leap into a mode of working that may benefit all concerned. Teleworking. Here are some reasons to make the leap.

• Pain and suffering. Do you think commuting to work in your car every day is a pain, not to mention the impact on your budget of $4 per gallon gas? Then consider the impact of omitting at least one of those trips per week while still getting all your work done. Continue reading Time to leap

With apologies to the 2000 Clinton campaign. Every few months or so some alleged pundit is quoted in the press as showing that telecommuting is bad because:

• The productivity of telecommuters plummets;
• The cost of telecommuting technology is too high;
• Supervisors find it to be impossible to manage telecommuters;
• All of the above and more.

A recent example of this phenomenon is an article by Reuters titled: “Telecommuting not great for workers left in the office“. This adds a new twist. After all the years we’ve spent worrying about the telecommuters’ performance we now find out from this article that the real hit is on those poor souls left behind. I feel that I must point out—again—that there is possibly a common thread to these claims.

It’s the training, stupid! Continue reading It’s the training, stupid!

The award of the Nobel Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC has brought much deserved—and long delayed—attention to the prospects of global warming and the influence of human-generated CO₂ thereon. As has been said before here and in many other places, one of the major sources of CO₂ is the burning of petroleum. Most of petroleum is burned in vehicles. Cars and airplanes for example. So, one might think that a rational approach to reducing the rate of CO₂ production would be to:

1. increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles by some combination of better engines, reduced weight and improved structural design;
2. move to carbon-free fuels, provided that their production and use don’t have contervailing side effects;
3. reduce the number of vehicles in use by encouraging or requiring them to always carry at least some high percentage of their potential passenger loads;
4. reduce the need for vehicles by altering the requirements for transportation.

Here’s where the tunnel vision comes in. Continue reading Tunnel vision and alternate routes

Our inaugural SOFA goes to AT&T. Yes AT&T, one of the world’s leaders in the implementation of telecommuting in the 1980s and 1990s, is now described as calling back the teletroops, according to an article in Network World. Many of AT&T’s telecommuters must now go back to the traditional office and traffic jams. It appears, no surprise to those following the history of the telcom’s, that SBC (the latest owner of AT&T) in it’s wisdom has decided, once again, to rid the world of these newfangled means for improving productivity, saving energy, reducing the rate of global warming, and otherwise enhancing the company’s bottom line.

Now suppose that you are the CEO of a major company that has just acquired a treasure trove of talent, resources, and capital. Would you act to improve and expand those riches? Continue reading The first annual SOFA (Shooting Oneself in the Foot Award)

Although the title of this piece derives from the antepenultimate sentence of The Communist Manifesto, it is a phrase that has long occupied the back of my mind when thinking about the future of telework. Specifically, what would happen to the growth rate of telework if all workers had portable health care and pension plans?

I suspect that the numbers of teleworkers—particularly telecommuters—would quickly show a major increase. If your are dissatisfied with your job, and you have marketable skills and experience, what is holding you back from changing it? Continue reading …nothing to lose but their chains