Reasons to Implement a Telecommuting Policy

Living in N.E. with the winter not too far away got me thinking about
the ‘awesome’ commutes us New Englanders have to look forward to on
our way to work. Which immediately brought one word to mind:
Telecommuting. Being in the “Web Sphere” as it were, 3Prime has the
luxury of being accessible anywhere – at the office, from home, etc.
b/c we have implemented a telecommuting policy that works for the
company b/c it works for our employees.

But what else dawned on me was how many businesses through New England
(and country wide) DON’T have any intention of implementing a
telecommuting policy anytime in the near future, and how these
businesses are putting themselves at a great disadvantage.

So, I came up with a short list of reasons to implement a
telecommuting policy, and how doing so will put businesses at an
advantage in the short term as well as the long term.

1) Increase Employee Moral
Workers will embrace their employer when telecommuting becomes
available b/c they are being given the opportunity of flexibility,
which is a critical in-road to embracing your staff as a key business
asset. Any attitude an employer takes that conveys the concept that
employees are valuable and not expendable, will generate a reciprocal
feeling of appreciation, which will bolster employee moral, job
satisfaction, and motivation to excel. Which leads to my next point:
Increased Productivity.

2) Increased Productivity
A satisfied worker is a good worker. And a good worker is productive.
Think about that: People LIKE to work. If they didn’t, we’d ALL be
looking for government handouts!! People work to make a living, and
to advance their stance in life. They may not like their JOB, but
they understand the value in working. So make them like their job a
bit more, and they’ll give it back to you. By introducing a means by
which to access their working resources from many locations, you are
increases the means to produce, and that is good in itself for morale,
as well as the employer.

3) Maximize Resource Allocation
Telecommuting policies provide an opportunity to down-scope resources
through data centralization, hardware consolidation, and
virtualization. This in turns drives deployment opportunities for
said-resources regionally, nationally, and globally, and in a global
economy, this is a must. What’s more, the overall overhead of
managing hardware resources is reduced dramatically, so along with
allocation improvement you affect a lower cost of operation. And
through advancements in Cloud Computing, implementing complete
web-based solutions are now possible, which further reduce operating
costs further.

Many businesses that offer a service (b/c, as we know, America is
becoming more and more a Service Economy), have the potential for
having an “always open” persona that makes their services more
accessible, more effective, and ultimately, more marketable if they
would but embrace too philosophies: View your employees as your
greatest assets, and provide them the means to telecommute.

Telecommuting in this day in age, IMHO, represents a major departure
from traditional Business management policies – and also the most
important thing for ownership to implement.