As time marches on the daily commute gets longer according to the U.S. Census Bureau. As an article by Christopher Ingraham in the 16 September 2017 Washington Post points out, the average commute time in the U.S. has grown to 26.6 minutes each way. Among other consequences, this has promoted steady progress in telecommuting.
Let’s go through the numbers. Assume that the average American worker works 49 weeks annually after vacation and holidays are omitted from the total of 52 weeks. At 5 work days per week and two commute trips per work day that’s 490 commute trips annually. At 26.6 minutes per commute trip we find that the average commuter is spending 13,034 minutes, or 217.23 hours annually sitting in traffic. That’s 5.4 40-hours work weeks! More than a month of workdays uncompensated.
Continue reading Commuting promotes telecommuting →
When we first started research on telecommuting in 1973 our focus was on whether telecommuting was practical in the real world, never mind the optimal amount of telecommuting. I insisted that the research involved testing telecommuting in an actual company, one whose bottom line was purely business oriented. The question of the optimal amount of telecommuting/teleworking didn’t come up because we were concerned with whether it was practical at all.
In those days the typical telecommuter was a person who worked using a computer terminal that was connected by wires to a mainframe computer somewhere. The idea of the person doing this from home was simply not practical; telecommunications cost — the cost of connecting that computer terminal to a distant mainframe via telephone connections all day — was simply too high. So in those mid-1970s days we concentrated on people working in what we called satellite offices: typically suburban offices solely owned by the employing company for use by its employees. Only after the arrival of personal computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s was it practical to think about home based telecommuting.
Continue reading What is the optimal amount of telecommuting? →
I recently came across one of the orientation manuals we used in the mid-1980s. Its purpose was to explain telecommuting to prospective telecommuters. It’s interesting to see what, if anything, has changed between telecommuting circa 1985 and today. Here’s an excerpt from The Teleguide for a typical large company. See for yourself how much has changed.
What is Telecommuting?
Telecommuting is the substitution of telecommunications and/or computers for commuting to work. There are two main forms of telecommuting: home telecommuting and satellite center telecommuting. In home telecommuting, a Company employee works at home instead of in the office, possibly with the aid of a personal computer. In satellite center telecommuting, the employee works at an office that is close to his/her home rather than at some more distant location. Telecommunications systems interconnect the home telecommuters, the satellite centers and the “main” offices so that everyone can keep in touch. Continue reading Telecommuting circa 1985 →
How many teleworkers are there today? Who knows? As I noted in a previous blog it is hard to count teleworkers. One problem is that the definition of teleworker/telecommuter varies from country to country and counter to counter. Full-timers working at home for a distant employer are the easy core. It’s at the edges where the counting gets difficult — and the definitions differ.
Another, growing problem in the teleworker counting business is the simple fact that contemporary technology has made it really hard to count reliably. An excellent overview of the problem is given in an article in the New York Times by Cliff Zukin of Rutgers University. Titled What’s the Matter With Polling?, the article paints the picture of the rapid decrease in accessibility of your average pollee. The polling business is changing for the worse
Continue reading How many teleworkers — who knows? →
Those who wish to find an unimpeachable estimate of the telecommuters in the US these days have a problem. For example, my own forecast of the number of US teleworkers (mostly telecommuters) in the US at the end of 2014 says that they will constitute 30% of the workforce (40+ million teleworkers) and account for reducing vehicle travel by 140 billion miles over what would happen without telecommuting. On the other hand, the National Study of Employers run by the Family and Work Institute claims that “today more employers are providing occasional telecommuting (67%) for at least some employees than in 2008 (50%).” On the third hand, Top Management Degrees claims that there will be 3.9 million teleworkers in the US by 2016 — an order of magnitude less than my forecast for 2014.
So which, if any, of these estimates is right? The answer is: it depends.
Continue reading How many telecommuters are there now? →
One of the most confusing issues about telecommuting is that of establishing the number of telecommuters that exist in the world or in your own country. Part of this is a result of the varying definitions of telecommuting/teleworking; apparently not everyone in the world uses my definitions. For example, is someone who works at home in addition to working at his/her office the same day a telecommuter? My definition would say “no”. That definition, when used in a survey, would produce a lower number than the more inclusive one that allows us both home and in–office work on the same day. You can find more about my definitions elsewhere on this website.
With reservations like this in mind you might want to investigate three new surveys of telecommuters. Continue reading Counting telecommuters →
. . . about telework, energy and the environment
