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MANAGING YOUR WORK OFF-SITE: TELEWORKING
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Teleworking is simply working from a distance – using home offices or other locations nearer to an employee’s home. Telework is rarely implemented for energy and emission reductions alone – it not only reduces the energy consumption and emissions associated with commuting, it can also reduce business costs and increase productivity, and make your company a more attractive place to work.
| POWER PAYBACK! |
Telework benefits include:
 | Reduced emissions: if 5% of Auckland’s drivers didn’t use their cars on two days a week, we’d stop 29,700 tonnes of greenhouse gases and pollutants entering the atmosphere | |
| Reduced congestion: Aukland Regional Council research suggests a 5% reduction in vehicle usage, region-wide is feasible. | |
| Employer benefits: space and cost savings, retention and recruitment benefits, and productivity improvements worth up to $300,000 per annum per 100 employees. | |
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No cost options | Allow (and encourage) staff to work from home on a few days each month. | |
| Offer to help set up a home office instead of providing a company car. | |
| Find out more about the real business benefits telework can offer. | |
| Ensure performance management systems work regardless of where staff are located. | |
Low cost options | Make notebook and portable computing options part of your next office technology upgrade. | |
| Prepare a detailed cost-benefit analysis to see whether your company could make tangible gains from telework. | |
| Establish a formal telework policy for all staff. | |
| Set up a telecentre (a place where telework happens) for your staff, if many travel from the same part of town. | |
Keys to success | Where telework arrangements succeed, they are treated just like any other change in your business: planning, and sound assessments of benefits and costs are important. | |
| Plan for the long term and move towards the goal gradually. | |
| There should probably be an internal ‘champion’ and a commitment to consultation with all staff. | |
| The telework arrangement should be a voluntary arrangement for all staff, within a set of clear guidelines. | |
| Telework arrangements should be established to meet specific objectives. Although telework is almost always beneficial, it is important to know what particular benefits you wish to maximise, and what you intend to measure. | |
| Try to establish your telework arrangements so that it becomes a normal work option – part of the corporate culture. | |
| Be prepared to establish your own telework programme: every company is different and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. | |
Further information and tools For more information on telework and its possible advantages for your business, visit www.telework.co.nz or www.gilgordon.com. Both these sites provide links to a wide variety of resources and organisations that might be able to help. Sample $$ savings For a company with 100 staff and 20 teleworkers working from home 2.5 days a week, productivity improvements, space savings, staff retention and recruitment benefits and reductions in absenteeism can be worth over $100,000 per annum. International case studies suggest that teleworkers benefit the company by between $15,000 and $30,000 each. Such a company could also reduce its office power bill by 10% or more.
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| Hesketh Henry – A Telework Success Story |
During 1999, Auckland based law firm Hesketh Henry trialled teleworking with 5 of their staff in order to determine whether or not the action would be suitable for their company.
The action
The idea to telework was initiated by the proprietors of Hesketh Henry. An external consultant, Bevis England, from Telework NZ, was contracted to design a plan and the General Manager and HR Manager implemented this within the company. Home offices were established for each of the 5 staff and an IT Manager implemented the necessary technology to use remote access to Hesketh Henry’s information systems. Teleworking from home for staff ranged between 1 – 5 days per week and occurred for part of the day when traffic was most congested.
The savings
Hesketh Henry saved 13.5 weeks worth of time in a year through teleworking or, 13.5 weeks worth of time in a year staff would have spent in traffic!
The greenhouse gas savings
One of the other less obvious benefits of teleworking is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that don’t get emitted as a result of avoiding travelling in congested traffic, or avoiding travelling at all! In the case of Hesketh Henry, the emissions savings are based on an assumption about the additional kilometres that could have been travelled had the individual travelled at rush hour. The assumption is that time saved would have been spent travelling at 10km per hour in peak traffic flow. Given this, the total reduction in CO2 emissions for all 5 teleworkers at Hesketh Henry across 12 months amounts to 1792.9kg. Similarly, the reduction in toxic emissions 100.8kg over 12 months.
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