John Starke, President of the Telework Consortium, recently authored a short paper on Telework and Economic Development (Oct. 15, 2003).

The face of the U.S. workforce is changing as organizations attempt to make best of use of their knowledge workers. The need for face-to-face collaboration on high-risk, high-complexity problems means that employees are lured to large employment centers at the expense of smaller communities - as well as at the personal expense of the workers, who have to deal with increased cost of living in these same areas. Employees push back in the form of increased salary expectations. Off-shore contracting is one method of keeping labor costs down, but it has a number of issues of its own, including the loss of thousands of jobs from the U.S. economy. 

Mr. Starke offers another solution - move those jobs to small towns. In this paper he outlines what the Telework Consortium is doing to make the business case Telework as a tool for economic development. We invite you to read his 2 page paper, and send him your feedback.

1:41:44 PM    
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There's a report out by the META Group about telework, as mentioned in Tony Kirstner's Telework Beat.

Teleworkers: An Emerging Minority, by Elizabeth Ussher (August 21, 2003) (free registration required), which they summarize this way:

"Force reductions and cost cuts have downsized the brick-and-mortar requirements of many enterprises, presenting the workers who are left with the option of small, fixed remote offices or telecommuting. The evolution of broadband technologies - coupled with a pure-play IP strategy - provides users with a good foundation."

But here are the points I found most interesting:

• Once considered on a case-by-case basis or as a special privilege, telecommuting has become a requirement. Why? It makes sense economically, allowing organizations to saving money in real estate, and retain and make the best use of their employees. And it's just plain inevitable - the workforce is becoming more mobile all the time. If you want your workers to be productive while traveling, say in a hotel or airport, then it's pretty hard to say they can't work remotely from home or any other place. The focus in progressive organizations has shifted from managing by line-of-sight to managing by results. Haleluia!
• functionality requirements for knowledge workers include the ability to access all relevant corporate and customer information, which demands reliable broadband Well, duh: don't expect high productivity over dial-up. Guess what else? Broadband is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. But one more thing... don't expect the broadband speeds that are easily accessible today to be enough, ever. Just as with our computers, as more power becomes available, our needs and expectations expand in lockstep. Today the knowledge worker is content with broadband access to the corporate network. Tomorrow we'll want  voice over IP (as cited by 49% of the report's survey respondents who were considering convergence), and the next day it will be high-quality desktop video to replace the face-to-face lost by not going in to the office.
• Collaborative requirements mentioned in the report include audioconferencing as a base, collaborative applications or teamware (i.e., an easy-to-use collection of tools such as an intelligent document repository, shared tasks/calendars, or a discussion database), Web conferencing applications, and Presence applications such as instant messaging.

It's compelling that in META Group's standard summary statements, Business Impact and Bottom Line, the common theme is Business Continuity (my emphasis added):

Business Impact: Ensuring that workers are provided with tools and support enables enterprises to continue business as usual regardless of circumstances.

Bottom Line: Enterprises must establish guidelines for telecommuters traversing the remote site (home office) and for accommodations while within the corporate premises. This strategy will ensure business continuity regardless of physical location.

The implication here is simple and profound, but not widely acknowledged. Why are businesses interested in supporting telework and remote work? It's not about morale, retension, or even productivity, although these are widely accepted benefits of putting a remote work strategy in place. The message that resonates most with the business decisions makers is more basic that that: it's all about survival.

8:31:36 AM    
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